Greater Manchester Community Chaplaincy

The idea of supporting offenders on release from prison under the name of Community Chaplaincy came to England from Canada, where for over 25 years it has been a successful way of supporting men and women when released from prison.

The success of the scheme is the co-operation between a faith-based organisation, Greater Manchester Community Chaplaincy, and the statutory agencies, prison, police and probation.

GMCC was developed by prison chaplains at HMP Manchester, Greater Manchester Churches Together and Greater Manchester Probation, by working together to establish the project and secure funding to enable the project to develop.

We have an office in the city centre of Manchester, on Oldham Street, which is gifted to us by the Methodist Church based in Central Buildings. This church has a long history of supporting people who are on the edge of society and an involvement with people in prison, especially HMP Manchester.

GMCC is part of a larger organisation called Commitment in Communities. This organisation is a registered charity and a company ltd by guarantee. The aim of CIC is to help capacity build projects like ourselves. They are also an umbrella organisation for other pieces of criminal justice work, including Community Safety Network and Excel.

Excel offers employment and accommodation opportunities for ex-offenders and GMCC provides the one to one support.

‘Community Chaplaincy offers a valuable and caring service to offenders of all faith and no faith within Greater Manchester. We are delighted to be involved in this work to develop support for offenders and provide positive opportunities for safe and constructive reintegration into our communities. This helps people get their lives back on track, reduces offending and makes our communities safer.’
John Crawforth, Chief Officer, Greater Manchester Probation