03/04/2020
Police Oracle
Work with Offenders examines the latest Probation Inspectorate report
While both the prison and probation inspectorates have suspended their programmes of inspections due to the coronavirus pandemic, both organisations had already completed the fieldwork on a number of projects and are continuing to publish these reports.
Yesterday, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation published an inspection report into the work of the Durham Tees Valley Community Rehabilitation Company for which the fieldwork was undertaken in November and December last year. Hearteningly, for we are all in need of positive news of any kind, the inspectors found a substantially improved service since their last inspection visit in 2018. Probation inspectors operate a four-band rating system: “excellent”, “good”, “requires improvement” and “poor”. In the first round of inspections using this new rating system, just one CRC was rated as good, 19 were rated as requiring improvement (including Durham Tees Valley) and one was rated as poor. Pleasingly, the inspectors had found sufficient improvement to rate the North East CRC as good this time round.
Durham Tees Valley CRC is an anomaly among Community Rehabilitation Companies in that it is not run by a private business. Instead the CRC is owned by a not-for-profit consortium made up of nine partners including local authorities, charities, other philanthropic bodies and social enterprise organisations providing wrap-around services. Its parent organisation, Achieving Real Change in Communities (ARCC) was set up specifically to bid for the CRC contract and is the only staff mutual proposition (from the former probation trust) that was successful in securing a contract.
Probation inspectors rank every probation area, whether a CRC or a division of the National Probation Service over 10 domains organise within three areas of work: organisational delivery; case supervision and agency specific work (for the NPS the two areas are work with victims and court reports and case allocation and for CRCs unpaid work and through-the-gate).
Chief Probation Inspector Justin Russell summarised the CRC’s improvements:
“The CRC has maintained its ‘Outstanding’ rating for leadership. Experienced and committed leaders are driving change and developing the workforce’s skills to improve the quality of work. The CRC is also making better use of information and facilities compared to our previous visit. The biggest area of improvement has been to the Through the Gate service, which supports people as they prepare to leave prison and resettle in the community. The Ministry of Justice has provided additional funding so the CRC has increased staffing and put a more effective service in place. We were particularly impressed by the way mentors and volunteers build positive working relationships with service users.”
Inspectors also noted the success of two projects. A unique scheme in Middlesbrough provides medical treatment and intensive support to a small number of offenders who are entrenched heroin users. The scheme aims to support individuals to stop reoffending and to turn their lives around, while also reducing the cost and strain on public services.
The CRC’s work with the charity Three13 was also praised. The partnership supports people who have been sentenced to complete unpaid work to access training and employment opportunities while doing so.
Between October 2019 and January 2020, the partnership helped more than 40 individuals to gain a vocational qualification and a further four people have found employment. One participant spoke highly of the scheme:
“My probation officer suggested working in the kitchens at a community centre. It wasn’t my calling, but I gave it a try. By being there, I was helping other staff and learning new skills. Thanks to this place, I am at my best and I have got my family back. My probation officer and this place have saved my life.”
However, despite these improvements, there remained a number of areas in which the CRC was underperforming. There are four domains which probation inspectors examine under the theme of case supervision – assessments, planning, implementation & delivery, and reviewing. Performance in all four categories was deemed unsatisfactory and rated as “requires improvement”.
Overall, however, Durham Tees Valley CRC is to be commended for continuing to improve its services even during a time when the organisation knew that CRC contracts are in the process of being cancelled with responsibility for all offender management being returned to the National Probation Service.