The Cork Alliance Centre was established in 2003 with the support of the Probation Service. It works with both men and women on release from prison. With the overarching vision of desistance from crime, it seeks to facilitate the process of personal recovery and empowerment (Cork Alliance Centre, 2016). With the right on-going support and motivation, the Cork Alliance team believe people have the power and commitment to change their lives. As explained by Sheila Connolly, the Chief Executive (CEO), rather than putting people into boxes, the team at the Cork Alliance Centre meet people where they are at, and work at their pace. “The uniqueness here”, adds Sheila Connolly, “is that the Centre is a safe place to talk about why you have been to prison and work through the shame of that” (S. Connolly, personal communication, January 23, 2024).

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The Cork Alliance Centre’s mission involves activities that facilitate service users' becoming better equipped to manage their lives positively (Cork Alliance Centre, 2016). Building self-esteem, self-respect and self-determination is fundamental to their work. The support services offered by the Centre include but are not limited to resettlement support and advice, addressing offending behaviour, addiction recovery support, psychotherapy support, prison in-reach support, an acupuncture and meditation group, and drugs, alcohol, and gambling support and advice. The Centre’s practice framework is grounded in academic research on desistance and guidelines on using a person-centred strengths-based approach (see the IRISS Insights document, 2012).

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Cork Alliance Centre aims to facilitate a stable environment where the service user can set their own goals, realise their strengths and develop existing skills with the assistance of a support worker. As explained by Vicky Seaman, a support worker at the Centre: “We want to get to know the person, giving them the space and time to get comfortable with us and open up so we can work together” (V. Seaman, personal communication, January 30, 2024). The Centre’s values include:

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• Being non-judgmental and open-minded.

• Empowering people who access their services to lead positive lives.

• Believing that people are capable of making positive changes.

• Believing in honest and open communication. 

• Believing in meeting people where they are and being flexible to adapt to circumstances as they arise.

• Working empathically with people and never giving up on them.

• Acting with integrity and respect to build relationships based on doing the right thing: “We will work with you and not on you”. 

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The Cork Alliance Centre manages two programmes with both the Probation Service and the Prison Service: The Desistance and Integration Support Programme and the Community Support Scheme (CSS).

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The Desistance and Integration Support Programme is open to all people who are soon to be released from prison or have already been released from prison and live in the Cork area. Referrals are primarily made through the Probation Service and the Irish Prison Service. Still, the Centre welcomes self-referrals or referrals from family members and other service providers. In addition to helping people address their offending behaviour, the team supports people as they seek to build a constructive and connected life (Cork Alliance Centre, 2016). The support is offered one-on-one as personal plans are developed and built upon. As the Centre works with a service user on all aspects of their life, a better ‘wrap-around’ service is provided, linking in, where appropriate, with other agencies and departments in a more joined-up service (ibid.). This includes linking and supporting access to voluntary and state organisations; supporting access to addiction treatment programmes and services; referrals to in-house psychotherapy support where appropriate; access to weekly acupuncture and meditation sessions; support access to housing advice and support services; and supporting access to secure, and sustain training, education and employment schemes.

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The Community Support Scheme (CSS) was piloted at the Cork Alliance Centre, which supports the CSS programme in Cork Prison and the Portlaoise Prison Complex (Portlaoise and Midlands prisons). It is run in conjunction with the Irish Prison Service. It offers people serving sentences less than 18 months in prison the opportunity to serve part of their sentence in the community, linking in with the community organisation for support to action their post-release plan. The scheme was implemented as a means of positive sentence management, offering a chance for change to break the revolving door phenomenon of people going in and out of prison. As part of the scheme, service users must sign in daily at the Garda station and weekly in the prison. This is Cork prison for men, but for women, it is different, explains Vicky Seaman, “they have to go to Limerick to sign” (V. Seaman, personal communication, January 30, 2024). Service users must also attend the Cork Alliance Centre every week for ongoing support. 

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The Cork Alliance Website provides a collection of stories from service users who accessed the Centre’s support services (see People Share Their Stories). The honesty in the contributions is greatly appreciated and valued by the board and staff. The personal stories presented in such an open and honest way are very powerful, giving people an understanding of the complexities of the desistance journey and the profundity of living it. One contribution was written and shared by Lucy, who discussed her participation and the role of the Cork Alliance Centre in her desistance journey. She wrote: 

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The support I get from Cork Alliance at this moment of my life means so much to me. When I picked up the phone to see if I could link back in with Sheila I was in a place in my life where I was feeling lost, alone and very unsure on how I could move from a life of addiction into recovery and trying to better myself. 

I’ll never forget that first meeting with Sheila and Jean and trying to explain to them that I really wanted to go back to education and try to start doing some work on myself through therapy and the worry of if going back to college was even a possibility for me with my previous convictions. So when Sheila smiled and said we can help you with all that and showed confidence in me that all that can be a possibility for me and talked me through the steps I could take it honestly felt like a warm hug that I didn’t have to walk this road on my own. 

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I’m now a few months down the road and everything we spoke of in that first meeting I have received and so much more. Having the support of Cork Alliance - through my key worker Jean, group sessions and my one-to-one therapy with Donal has given me the confidence and the belief in myself that I needed in order to change my life and get really excited about my future and going back to college so that one day I can be in a position to give back the help that was so freely give to me.

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The Cork Alliance Centre’s core funding comes from the Department of Justice and Equality through the Probation Service and the Irish Prison Service.

Sheila Connolly
Chief Executive (CEO) of the Cork Alliance Centre

Sheila Connolly, the trailblazing Chief Executive (CEO) of the Cork Alliance Centre, worked for many years in East Africa, where she was exposed to the layers of trauma caused by genocide and war (S. Connolly, personal communication, January 23, 2024). After moving back to Cork, Sheila worked alongside the Probation Service as a Training Employment Officer for The Linkage Programme, now known as IASIO (Irish Association for Social Integration of Offenders), before being offered a position setting up the Cork Alliance Centre project. In her new role, Sheila was given an empty office but quickly established a think tank based out of the Nano Nagle Centre. Here, she had regular meetings with the project’s board members, one of whom was Sr Jo McCarthy, who started the Cork Migrant Centre.

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In the Nano Nagle Centre’s garden, Sheila remembers sitting under the magnolia tree with her laptop, envisioning how she could create a service for people who wanted ‘more, not different’ (The Two Norries Podcast, 2020: 11:11). She saw the role of the Cork Alliance Centre as an opportunity to provide a broader, more ‘wrap-around’ support to people who were released from prison and living in the Cork area. For over twenty-two years, Sheila has been the powerhouse behind the Centre. With the shared expertise of the Cork Alliance team - Vicky Seaman, Miriam Ryan, Jean McCarthy and Serena O’Neill - the Centre provides a safe space for people to learn how to take charge and ownership of their lives, tapping into their ‘resilience and brilliance’ (ibid.: 16:39). The Centre’s services have been instrumental in people’s recovery journey (see The Two Norries Podcast, 2021). 

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Sheila found her home in the Cork Alliance Centre, explaining on The Two Norries Podcast (2020) how working here is her passion and joy.

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In 2024, Sheila was named the Cork Person of the Month for May in recognition of the invaluable service she provides and her dedication to making a positive and lifelong impact in the lives of people the Cork Alliance Centre supports.

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Acknowledgement: Thank you to Sheila Connolly and the Cork Alliance team—Vicky Seaman, Miriam Ryan, Jean McCarthy, and Serena O’Neill—for their generosity, expertise, and support. Special thanks to Vicky and Lucy for contributing to the text. Special thanks to Ciara Doyle, who undertook research and interviews and contributed to authoring this text as part of her work placement with Maggie from Cork College of Commerce.

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Website: https://www.corkalliancecentre.com/ 

 

References

 

Connolly, S. (2024) Personal communication, 23 January. 

 

Cork Alliance Centre. (2016) Annual report 2016 [online]. Available from: https://c-cluster-110.uploads.documents.cimpress.io/v1/uploads/cdeb67e0-d878-40ac-9ced-4283956fb031~110/original?tenant=vbu-digital [Accessed 27 June 2024]. 

 

McNeill, F., Farrall, S., Lightowler, C. and Maruna, S. (2012) How and why people stop offending: Discovering desistance. Source: IRISS Insights. Available from: https://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/insights/how-why-people-stop-offending-discovering-desistance [Accessed 27 June 2024]. 

 

Seaman, V. (2024) Personal communication, 30 January. 

 

The Two Norries Podcast (2020). Podcast #5. Sheila Connolly talks about working with people pre and post release from prison. Youtube [online]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tv7mTVFses [Accessed 27 June 2024].

The Two Norries Podcast (2021). Podcast #40. Gillian Butler is James' wife and she gives her story of Oberstown, prison, UCC and employment. Youtube [online]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGuZu6hkp64 [Accessed 27 June 2024].