Information

I thought readers might be interested in some snippets from the latest (12th March) MoJ/Noms Senior Leaders Bulletin:- 

HMCTS provision of Court Orders to NPS

There are currently a variety of practices in place nationally for HMCTS to provide Court orders or Notifications of sentences at Magistrates court to probation, depending upon locally agreed practice.

A National process has now been agreed to enable prompt, electronic notification of the details of sentence to NPS. An electronic copy of the Court order or Notification of the order of the Court will be automatically sent direct from Libra to functional mailboxes set up within NPS. This electronic process will replace all existing local procedures.

• Libra will generate a court order/ notification of order of the court to be sent to 7 NPS Divisional mail boxes.
• These will then automatically forward to the appropriate NPS court functional mail box by using the OU code (code of the sentencing court).
• NPS Court SPOs will have a process in place to monitor the local and Divisional mailboxes on a daily basis
• On receipt of the court order/notification, NPS administration staff will check NDelius to confirm where the case was allocated to. NPS administration staff will then send the court order/notification on to the NPS or CRC office holding the case in line with PI 05/2014 Case allocations.

Functuality is due to be available from 23rd March 2015.

Prisons and Probation Ombudsman publishes thematic report on prison suicides in 2013/14

Learning from PPO Investigations: self-inflicted deaths of prisoners – 2013/14

'There is no simple answer to why the number of prisoners committing suicide rose so sharply last year, but the rise was unacceptable', said Nigel Newcomen, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) when he published a thematic study on 10th March on the lessons to be learned from investigations into self-inflicted deaths of prisoners in 2013/14.

The lessons that need to be learned are:

• staff working in prison receptions should actively identify known risk factors for suicide and self-harm and not simply act on a prisoner’s presentation;
• relationship breakdown and violent offences against family members are known risk factors for suicide and being subject to a restraining order can be a sign of increased vulnerability;
• all new arrivals should promptly receive an induction to provide information to help them meet their basic needs in prison;
• mental health referrals need to be made and acted on promptly and there should be continuity of care from the community;
• prisoners are most at risk in the first month of custody; 

• the cumulative impact on potential suicide of restrictions, punishments, IEP levels and access to work needs to be considered; 

• prisoners on open ACCT documents should only be segregated in exceptional circumstances; • suicide prevention procedures should focus on the prisoner as an individual and the processes must be correctly implemented;

• increased risk of suicide and self-harm should be considered when a prisoner is a suspected victim of bullying; and
• effective and confident emergency response saves lives. 

This document is available on the PPO website at www.ppo.gov.uk. Please cascade to all relevant staff.

Offenders Sentenced to Less than 12 Months Custody

Following the implementation of the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014, all offenders sentenced to less than 12 months custody will, for the first time, be subject to a period of post-release licence from the point of release. Furthermore, this post-release licence will be supplemented by a further consecutive period of Post-Sentence Supervision that will take the overall period of supervision in the community up to 12 months. As such, all offenders sentenced to less than 12 months custody who are assessed as High RoSH and/or having an RSR score greater than 6.89% must have a full OASys assessment and Initial Sentence Plan within 4 weeks of the date of sentence.

PQF Learner in NPS or CRC (Cohort 3)

Applicants to become a PQF learner in the NPS or CRC as part of Cohort 3 (starting in May 2015) will hear their results this week. The overall standard of applications was high.

The new qualification pathway for probation needs to be ready to be launched in April 2016.

To develop the pathway a board and project group have been established: the Probation Qualification Review Project is now underway and the Board meets regularly. Both have a combination of NOMS, NPS and CRC representation and anyone who would like to join the virtual Reference Group to review drafts and ideas is welcome to contact...

New E-learning - The Basics of Custodial Screening & Resettlement Plans

From the 8th December 2014, the OASys application was changed to incorporate the new Basic Custody Screening (BCS) form that is part of the new Through the Gate (TTG) Delivery Model.

From May 2015, Community Rehabilitation Company staff will begin to complete the BCS part 2 on prisoners for all receptions into custody who will have received a BCS part 1, which will have been completed by prison staff.

It is likely that CRC staff working in prisons completing BCST Part 2 will have had no previous experience of OASys and access will be limited by role based access (RBACS) to the BCST function on OASys.

As it is a contractual requirement of CRCs to complete BCST Part 2, learning has been developed for CRC staff who will not be OASys Assessor or OASys Case Administrator trained, but who will be required to complete the Basic Custody Screening (BCS) Tool Part 2 or administer the BCS Part 2 process.

The course will be available to learners on the Justice Partnership Academy and Justice Academy from April 7th 2015.

Pre-course reading of all of the BCS Guidance documents is required prior to completing the e-learning.

By the end of this course learners will be able to:

• Gather username and password required to log into the OASys application from both Quantum and OMNI infrastructure 
• Describe the support process for practice queries, functionality queries and when the application does not work as expected 
• Navigate around the OASys system correctly 
• Navigate to the ‘Pending BCS (Part 2) View’ and correctly use the view to administer the BCS process. 
• State the difference between an OASys assessment and a BCS. 
• State the timings for BCS Part 1 and BCS Part 2 
• Complete BCS Part 2 resettlement plan 
• Complete BCS Part 2 Pre-release activity 
• Understand how to enter in resettlement activity at any point during the custodial sentence 
• Print BCS 
• Describe the context of the BCS as a part of the Through the Gate delivery model
• Describe the offender management process 
• Administer the functions that will enable the BCS process.

Completion of this learning will provide good assurance that CRC staff have the requisite skills and knowledge to be granted access to the OASys platform.

NPS Bail Information Officer Training

Following the implementation of Transforming Rehabilitation, local training on bail information was no longer available. As a result, there was a need for us to provide national training in this area for NPS Court staff.

From March 27th a newly developed e-learning course – Bail Information Officer Training will be available on the NPS Faculty page on the Justice Academy:

Before undertaking the course, there is a pre course requirement for staff to have undertaken one shadow visit to Court with a Bail Information Officer (BIO) or to have previous experience of working as a BIO.

This new course is mandatory for all new NPS court staff and it will provide learners with the core knowledge and skills to enable identification of appropriate bail cases, completion of bail enquiries and creation of bail reports to a sufficient standard.

By the end of this course learners will be able to:

• Reference legislation relating to bail
• Explain key tasks of your role and how to prioritize
• List potential grounds for refusal of bail
• Understand the issues involved in gathering and verifying bail information
• Complete a bail report to a satisfactory standard
• Make a well-considered proposal to court including bail conditions where required. 

There is a pass/fail test at end of learning package but staff are able to repeat the learning until a pass is achieved.

The new learning is intended to help to reduce remands in custody for defendants suitable for bail, increase referrals to bail accommodation services and improve the quality of information provided to the Court.