How a Gloucestershire charity beat a £billion business to double in size
This week our blog comes from guest writer Andrew Merrell, founder and lead journalist of The Raikes Journal who first published this article in The Raikes Journal on Friday 21st February 2025.
An interview with the in-coming CEO of The Nelson Trust in its 40th year has revealed not just her own journey, but the charity’s life-saving work, an incredible contract win - and a familiar face as catalyst.
This is a significant year for The Nelson Trust, the Gloucestershire-headquartered charity that supports people with dependency issues and more – much more. It celebrates its 40th year.
It’s been an astonishing journey that began in a converted Five Valleys pub (hence the name) and today is an operation dedicated to offering ‘holistic, trauma-informed and gender specific support’ to thousands of individuals annually across the Southwest and Wales.
That support is delivered via four single-gendered residential treatment centres for abstinence-based recovery, three more housing units for those leaving treatment, and five community projects as part of its Hub enterprises.
These include the Hub Academy in Stroud and The Sober Parrot cafe in Cheltenham, with all of them offering training and work experience for what the Trust calls the recovery community to help build lifelong skills and return successfully to society.
In 2010, after years of paving the way for gender responsive support throughout the UK, the Trust also opened its first women’s centre in Gloucester, providing holistic support to women leaving prison, and women in the community on probation orders, as an alternative to custody.
And that’s still only part of what it does - it works now also outside Gloucestershire, a sign not just of the recognition of its success, but the ambition of its leadership team.
The Raikes Journal was lucky enough to speak to its incoming chief executive officer, Christina Line, who helped us understand how the charity has developed, the recognition it now gets and partnerships that make it all possible.
And through talking to others too it led us to understand how that success is being driven by a focus on staff development, and how it is using a Gloucestershire business to achieve that - one we are also very familiar with here at Raikes.
Plus, we got the inside track on how that partnership delivered a knockout blow to one of the UK’s biggest firms in a truly David v Goliath-like contract battle.
A contract that jet-propelled the Trust’s growth! We’ll get into all that and more below
“The Trust now has a 12 million turnover and has undergone significant growth in the last few years. We now support over 5,000 people annually,” said Line, who until she takes over her new role remains chief operating officer.
Christina Line, incoming CEO of The Nelson Trust
She’s been with the charity for more than a decade now, and integral to its growth as it has sought to shape its services and build the relationships with all stakeholders that make it work so effectively.
That work remains at the very forefront helping to change attitudes for the better, especially around the treatment of women caught up in drugs, alcohol, abusive relationships, prostitution, and the criminal justice system.
“We have helped develop best-practice for working with women in difficult circumstances and delivering better outcomes,” said Line, who referenced the ground-breaking review of vulnerable women in the criminal justice system, carried out in 2006 by Baroness Jean Corston for helping explain the value and potential of the work it does and drive change.
The review made 43 recommendations about the treatment of women in the criminal justice system and argued “the need for a distinct, radically different, visibly-led, strategic, proportionate, holistic, woman-centred, integrated approach”.
It focused more generally on vulnerable female offenders, recognising a large proportion of them were mothers, and recognising the effects of imprisonment on their children, recommending that those young people should be taken into consideration by the criminal justice system.
It is this that has helped the Trust help women to break destructive behaviour and find ways to rebuild, reconnect and live meaningful lives again.
“It can cost perhaps £50,000 a year to keep a woman in prison. We can help provide rehabilitation for about £3,000 to £4,000,” said Line.
It is truly difficult and challenging work on all fronts – personally, for all involved, and financially for the organisations trying to deliver sustainable services.
How on earth does it actually work?
“We have incredible, passionate and dedicated staff,” she added.
What Line neglected to say, and what Raikes found out afterwards through others, is that the Trust’s expansion into South Wales was a true David and Goliath moment.
The charity pitched for a contract to deliver its services across the border and found itself in the ring with an industry giant with major resource and an annual turnover close to a billion pounds.
“It was bidding for a contract that was half the size of its existing turnover. It was for the whole of Wales – and it was up against G4S.
“And the Welsh Government was asking what each bidder had done towards particular sustainable development goals,” Dr Stewart Barnes, the CEO of leadership development specialists QuoLux™.
Why does Barnes know this?
Kirsty Day, The Nelson Trust’s director of recovery, has been on QuoLux’s LEAD™, GOLD™ and GAIN™ leadership programmes, and the trust turned to Barnes’ Gloucester-based business for help in a consultancy capacity.
Kirsty Day, Director of Recovery Services, at her LEAD™ programme graduation
That’s how it came to use what QuoLux™ calls its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) configurator, a digital tool that helps a business align what it does with the United Nation’s SDGs (sustainable development goals).
It helps firms demonstrate in a meaningful way how they’re focusing on areas like people, operations, social innovation and how its leaders create lasting impact and ‘ensure a sustainable future for generations to come’.
It’s a tool that allows a business to spell out what QuoLux™ calls the ‘Good Dividends’ it is delivering, and to understand how those actions benefit its bottom line.
“Basically, it allowed The Nelson Trust to demonstrate the social value it delivers,” said Barnes.
It proved a key differentiator for the Welsh Government and the Trust walked away with the five-year rolling contract, delivering a 50 per cent boost to its turnover.
According to the Trust it’s meant more women’s centres, more help supporting women at a point of crisis and that’s resulted in reduced reoffending, homelessness, pressures on services like the NHS and other statutory services, and reduced harm and substance use.
It’s kept more families together safely, disrupting intergenerational cycles of abuse, substance use and offending.
Line has been with the charity for 10 years, a graduate in psychology and criminology from the University of Gloucestershire, who worked her way up from an initial role as rural outreach worker.
She’s made a success of roles including team lead, service manager, women's community service business development manager, director of partnerships and development and head of business development.
And it was Line who helped develop the ideas of the women’s centres that help identify and work with vulnerable women, many at risk from predatory gangs and known to the police.
Those safe havens aim to offer a way out for women, by creating a network of communication across all manner of agencies.
For most of us the leafy rolling hills of Gloucestershire and relative wealth of the county don’t fit with such stories, but they are here and many – our eyes just don’t see them, or we choose not to.
A clue to Line’s ambition to continue making an impact is in her CV. Today she also holds an MBA from the same county university and she sits on The Howard League for Penal Reform.
When she takes over from current CEO John Trolan later this year she will take the reins at an organisation which now runs nine centres across England and Wales, in Swindon, Somerset, Bristol, and a first of its kind inside HMP Eastwood Park; as well as more recently centres in Newport, Swansea, Cardiff and a mini centre in Dyfed Powys, as lead partners of One Wales, established in 2024.
Although Line knew the organisation inside out and was brandishing an MBA she turned to a familiar name to make sure she stood out.
Through its Mentoring service, QuoLux’s consultancy helped her prepare for an interview series which saw her in the ring with outstanding candidates from across the country.
QuoLux™ has also just begun working with The Nelson Trust to help take all 250 of its staff through its How-To SkillBuild programme, contained in its e-learning library, and Beth Hughes, Registered Manager, is currently also on its LEAD™ programme.
How-To SkillBuild launch at The Nelson Trust
One of the great strengths of the Trust that has also helped it grow and be effective is its ability to work with other organisations.
“We are now working with 43 different women's centres nationally, helping support the range of services they deliver. We are part of a network of women’s centres that collaborate, share learning and best practice,” said Line.
One such group is Via. Based in Harlow. The organisation started life 30 years ago as the Westminster Drug Project (WDP), changing its name in 2023 in recognition of it now supporting adults and young people across the UK around their mental health and sexual health.
We asked Via why it worked with the Gloucestershire charity. Its answer was comprehensive, and name-dropped Line too.
Prince William's visit to The Nelson Trust
Anna Whitton, CEO of Via, said: “We approached The Nelson Trust a couple of years ago to explore how we might work in partnership to meet a significant gap for women who needed access to residential detox services.
“We knew that their organisation had important expertise in the delivery of services for women, in women-only residential rehab services and in drug and alcohol service delivery.
“What we knew about them made us feel like they were likely to be a good partner for Via. Essentially, we needed to understand whether our culture, values and approach were a good fit.
“Christina was part of our initial meeting, and it was clear from the start that as leaders in our respective organisations, we were going to be able to work together well.
“We shared an ambition – address a much-needed gap in the system – and recognised and respected the strengths that both organisations could bring to a partnership.
“There are some significant overlaps in our organisations’ strengths and expertise, so there was of course a possibility that this could create a competitive tension.
“However, we were able to have transparent and honest conversations about who was best placed to deliver the different elements of the partnership, with the focus always being about doing the right thing for the women that we work alongside.
“When the Gloucestershire Integrated Drug and Alcohol Services came out to tender, The Nelson Trust was an obvious partner for us, and we were delighted to have been successful in that tender process.
“This new service is heading towards the end of its first year now and our partnership continues to strengthen, underpinned by honesty, integrity, and a focus on finding solutions with and for local people.
“Christina and the senior team at The Nelson Trust are key to our working relationship and to making the partnership a success.
“They are genuinely exciting to work with and I know we’ll make lots of important things happen together.”
* The story of how The Nelson Trust won the contract is about to be featured as one of the case studies in a forthcoming book by QuoLux™, due out in March, called ‘Realising Good Growth’.
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(Main photo from SoGlos.com)