The Voluntary Sector in TR2

With some trepidation, lets take a look at a recently published position paper from the Probation Institute on the thorny subject of the voluntary sector and its future under TR2. Over the next couple of days I intend to cover the whole document due to its importance, but will be omitting references. 

1. Introduction 

Position papers produced by the Probation Institute are intended for a wide audience including practitioners, academics, policy leads and senior managers across the justice sector. This paper has been prompted by our wish to help to locate the relationship between the Probation Service and the voluntary and community sector (VCS) in a strong and enduring set of arrangements. To do this we provide some background and both the early and recent history of this relationship. We can see that, at times, Probation has viewed the VCS as encroaching on its core activities, whilst the VCS has seen itself as marginalised and underfunded. Our hope is that we can contribute to ways of moving beyond these challenges towards a genuine meaningful partnership in which both parties, located in communities as far as possible, feel secure about their critical contribution to rehabilitation. 

The paper is produced at a time of significant change resulting from the Government’s decision to fully re-integrate the National Probation Service from June 2021, thereby bringing to a close seven years of partial privatisation; and anticipating the formal engagement of the VCS through a Dynamic Framework operating regionally. The paper sets out principles to guide practitioners, managers and policy makers in Probation and the VCS as they seek to build consistent and constructive partnerships for the future. 

2. Principles of Partnership 

1. The core functions of the National Probation Service must be plainly articulated in order to enable the roles and responsibilities of different organisations to be clear. In our view these are case management and the delivery of core interventions requiring enforcement on behalf of the courts. It seems that this principle has been accepted by Government as of June 2020. 

2. The VCS is very diverse in structure and focus. Organisations working with offenders, victims and their families make a vital contribution to reducing offending, rehabilitation, resettlement and supporting people from desisting from crime. This contribution deserves to be better articulated and valued more highly including by probation practitioners. 

3. To increase stability of funding, grants or contracts used to fund voluntary and community organisations to work in partnership with the Probation Service should be for a minimum of two years with suitable break clauses. The funding mechanism should be grants wherever possible. 

4. Probation practitioner training should include the benefits of partnership work and good practice in collaboration and co-production. 

5. Probation managers’ training and performance outcomes should include the effective development and maintenance of strong relationships with the VCS, particularly awareness of successful partnerships and ways that Probation can work in partnership with the voluntary and community sector to co-produce supporting services. 

6. Grants and contracts for work by the VCS in criminal justice must include provision for appropriate levels of staff training. 

7. The views of probation practitioners and of the voluntary and community sector should be regularly sought on gaps in provision that the VCS is well placed to meet and on the effectiveness of existing local partnerships. 

8. Commissioning with the VCS should be at a sufficiently local level to enable small and medium sized organisations to provide services that meet the needs of particular communities. 

9. Commissioning or engagement of the VCS should be jointly developed by agencies working with Probation in the community responsible for issues including: housing; education, training and employment; and physical and mental health. Police and Crime Commissioners have an important, but not exclusive role, in commissioning. 

10. Clear protocols should exist for information sharing between the VCS and the statutory agencies. 

11. Basic risk training in common with probation practitioners should be accessible to VCS practitioners, some of whom work with individuals who pose a risk of harm. Training must include how to protect staff and when to alert Probation of risk behaviours. 

12. Both the VCS and the Probation Service must be accountable for their practice in a transparent and accessible form which is able to demonstrate the appropriate assessment and management of risk. 

13. The resources and capacity of small voluntary and community organisations offering niche local services to undertake repeated tendering for work must be recognised and supported. There is a particularly strong argument in favour of grant funding for small VCS organisations. 

14. HMIP working with Clinks should inspect the effectiveness of partnership between Probation and the VCS and establish good practice benchmarks, methods of identifying unmet needs and a clear focus on diversity and vulnerable groups. 

15. The Level 3 Apprenticeship for probation practitioners should be reviewed at the earliest possible date to include the skills, knowledge and behaviours required in the VCS. 

16. The Independent Regulatory Body which will be introduced by MOJ for the recognition and registration of probation practitioners must seek ways to also include as a minimum those VCS practitioners who work in partnership with the National Probation Service, addressing the resourcing implications.

3. Background and context 

The Probation Order was initially conceived as a voluntary arrangement based on trust. ‘The probation service has its roots in the voluntary sector and throughout the 20th century voluntary sector organizations have contributed to work with offenders in the community. Some of the activities originally located in the voluntary sector were, with the establishment of the welfare state, subsumed by an expanding public sector, for example the work of the Discharged Prisoner’s Aid Societies became the after-care responsibility of the probation service in the 1960s.

The extent and quality of partnerships between Probation and the VCS has ebbed and flowed over the last 50 years.2 Often these changes have been a reflection of the strength or otherwise of personal relationships or local infrastructure. Probation practitioners recognise the value of social and human capital in reducing reoffending. It is essential that they have the time to develop pro-social professional relationships with the people they supervise and that they support service users in the development of the wider relational aspects of their lives. Strong relationships with the VCS, who also support the needs of service users, help to manage risk and promote desistance.

4. What’s the difference? 

The answer to this question – what is the difference between Probation and the VCS - seems very obvious. Probation is a statutory function accountable directly to government and the courts and enshrined in legislation in which roles and responsibilities are prescribed. VCS organisations largely perform work that is philanthropic, social and non-profit making although they may work in partnership with statutory functions and may be contracted to perform some services that are required by legislation e.g. Through the Gate Services. In general however, the VCS does not get involved in sentence delivery but supports people to address underlying issues that in turn support them to complete their sentence. 

The further consequential differences are also very significant: 

• The National Probation Service which will be responsible for all case management, unpaid work and behavioural change programmes is fully funded by government. Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) – currently in place until mid 2021 – are funded by government on a contractual basis. VCS organisations have no consistent funding and rely on grants, contracts and fund raising – all of which have the potential to marginalise the primary aims of the organisations 

• The VCS is governed by Boards – mainly of Trustees - to whom the organisations are accountable. Trustees of charities are accountable to the Charity Commission to ensure that the Charity works in pursuance of its own charitable objects and values. The National Probation Services is accountable in a similar way for adherence to policy set by the Ministry of Justice. 

• As non-state entities the voluntary and community sector can engender greater trust than statutory agencies. • Whereas the Probation Service can offer permanent contracts with job security, the majority of VCS organisations cannot offer the same level of security of employment so there is generally less stability in the VCS. 

• Probation practitioners have a required and funded training regime which includes a range of specific qualifications. Training in the VCS varies considerably and is often on a needs led basis. Many organisations in the VCS invest in training for their own staff and/ or provide aspects of specialist training for statutory organisations. The VCS has neither a requirement for specific training nor is it specifically funded to train staff or volunteers. 

• The VCS is able to focus on charitable aims and outputs which may include practical support, mentoring, help with addiction, housing, education, training and employment. The objectives of Probation are to reduce re-offending and to protect the public. Successful probation work relies on services provided in the community, but Probation is not resourced to provide these directly. 

• The VCS is able to operate with greater flexibility, speed of change and innovation in response to service user need, partly due to funding drivers. VCS organisations have worked increasingly to involve their service users in service delivery and governance. The value of this has only recently being recognised within probation policy making. 

• VCS organisations can be very specific in their focus and develop in depth knowledge and specialism - for example working only with BAME people, women, substance users, with foreign nationals or young people. The Probation Service must work with all those sentenced by the courts who fall under its remit. 

• The strength of the VCS often derives from its specialist expertise and particularly on local or regional focus. Few VCS organisations have national reach, whereas Probation must offer the same services throughout England and Wales. 

• The culture and language that has grown up in the VCS is different from the commercial and management culture that has become a characteristic of many public sector and current private sector probation organisations, although it is the case that larger VCS organisations have also adopted a commercial culture. Proposed changes to the ways in which probation services are delivered offer the opportunity to review and realign both culture and language.

to be continued