Somewhere to Live 2

The Probation Service has a long and proud history of innovation and in particular of being able to find solutions to social problems. In essence this was because two key elements were present at one and the same time. Firstly some very able and life experienced officers and secondly a benign management structure that gave staff encouragement and freedom to innovate. Unfortunately a predominantly young and first career workforce, coupled with a centralised command and control structure means that innovation is very definitely not on the agenda nowadays. We are therefore pretty much stuck with what has been developed in the past, or responding to outside initiatives.

In my part of the country we were very fortunate that many years ago a probation officer had the foresight, initiative and freedom to found a housing project for offenders. Basically it became hugely successful, was floated off by the Service and is today a major Social Landlord serving all kinds of disadvantaged people, including many offenders still. In such schemes it's vital that support is provided as part of the package, with the hope that a transition can be achieved either to a full council tenancy, or to a private landlord. But supply has never come close to meeting demand and there seems to be a continually reducing quantity of Local Authority housing available. Also, resources for offender accommodation is no longer 'ring fenced' and it has to compete with other groups, such as the disabled for funds out of the local 'Supporting People' budget. When this change was brought in I pointed out, sadly to no avail, that this would merely serve to re-introduce the notion of the deserving as opposed to the undeserving. To a certain extent this has indeed happened.

One glimmer of success in recent years has been the growth of the Foyer  movement, an idea borrowed from other European countries and that has rapidly taken hold here in Britain. Basically each project takes in young people, provides supervised accommodation for up to 12 months and during that time arranges either employment or training as well as general support and guidance. A great idea, but I still have a few misgivings about some Foyers selection policy. The same old issue arises of the distinction between who is perceived as deserving as opposed to undeserving. Now in the good old days, I'm convinced the probation service, or to be precise, one or two individual officers, would have been right in there sorting issues like that out. But we're not allowed to now of course, that's a job for management and they don't like rocking the boat with partners. 

Basically if Ken Clarke is going to achieve his aim of reducing the prison population and particularly the re-offending rate for short term prisoners - the group most likely to have serious housing problems - some extra resources have got to be found from somewhere to help with their accommodation needs. At the risk of repeating myself, in an era of spending cuts, I can only see the likelihood of this coming through the new idea of Social Impact Bonds and Payment by Results.