Through the Gate Special

Yesterday was the day for TTG, is it actually up and running ANYWHERE??

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Not in my northern area. No clearance so sat thumb twiddling whilst colleagues trying to pick up the pieces are left pulling hair out, their own that is.

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I thought that too, TTG roll out. Not heard a peep. I guess the first thing we will hear is trying to direct a lifer or RSO to AP and finding they have a nice shining new flat or B and B with vulnerable people and children.

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It's up and running in Wales with CRC staff seconded in, including trainee TPOs, while St Giles get their act together.

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I thought Catch 22 were comissioned for TTG in the Working Links CRCS?

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In Mersyside, OMs in prisons do the BCST within 72 hours of arrival and shelter will review it by day 5 and create a Resettlement Plan comprising of either debt/accom/ete advice.I won't hold my breath, but so far no CRC PSOs directed there, which is a positive.

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St Giles will be in some of the S.Wales prisons. New staff were taken on after Easter so I guess waiting to work their notice and get prison clearance. The current CRC TTG staff do the BCST and run the in house programmes. 25 new prisoners every day into Cardiff prison with 5 TTG staff, 3 are p/t.

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Heard a lot about resettlement plans they are going to create, not entirely sure what that amounts to. How are they going to resettle Mappa 2 and 3 with 12 weeks notice?

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New CRC staff aren't trained to work with high risk offenders. Some TPSOs are doing TTG in the prison. Even worse to think about new inexperienced St Giles staff working with them.

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They are all gradually beginning to find out that what they have got is not what they thought they would be getting and that this business is a lot more complicated than they were led to believe.

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St Giles is a phoney organisation. They marketed themselves as this lovely, organic, holistic, cosy little bunch of ex offenders who knew the ropes and could show the young uns where they'd gone wrong. They went wrong by saying they could scale it up. A project like that will have so many false starts, but they portrayed it as shelling peas. Shame on them.

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I was told that TTG is not compulsory for prisoners. It is compulsory to offer it but if they prefer to go to the gym etc., they can. This was from someone who has just finished their 1 week TTG training.

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That's just a cop out. Can't deal with the numbers involved, so we'll 'select' volunteers.

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. 

ORA Special

The Offender Rehabilitation Act comes into force tomorrow and the predominantly clueless 'caterers and cleaners' officially take over the running of most of the former world class Probation Service. 

Disgracefully, it would seem 'probation' as a household name is already being 'airbrushed' out of existence. Within the Act and guidance notes, the term is being studiously avoided with talk instead of 'responsible officer' and the like. Perhaps even more significantly there was absolutely no mention of probation in yesterday's Guardian article by Zoe Williams on the excellent work being undertaken at HMP New Hall. It's not as if she doesn't know her stuff either, seeing as she's a trustee of the Butler Trust:-

"Everybody knows that prisons are not as simple as sending people away and having them slip back seamlessly into society afterwards as if nothing has happened. Women’s prisons are particularly complicated, and this week the justice minister, Simon Hughes, acknowledged the problem when he announced the rollout of a scheme to keep women from ending up behind bars. The female prison population has shot up since 1995, more than doubling by 2010; there are now around 3,800 women inmates. Yet, in that group, Hughes said, “There are so many women who ought not to be in prison. About half ought not to be there at all.”

But they are, and many who serve one sentence will go on to serve another. As everyone agrees, the prevention of reoffending is the key aim of the penal system. From that starting point, everything else will flow: all successful rehabilitation, all prevention of crime and all avoidance of creating more victims will come from the prison estate dealing imaginatively with what happens after inmates are discharged. The big untold story in all of this is how much is down to individuals: prison officers, psychologists and people from the third sector working inside and outside the prison walls. These people are often working way beyond their job descriptions, not to targets or directives, not to improve a measured outcome, but because that’s how they are."

It's widely accepted that there's been hardly any preparation for this brave new world and the most commonly heard refrain is 'we haven't got a clue'. Before I selectively quote from a 53 page NPS ORA briefing document, here's some reader reflections:-  

"The sentencers will be required to impose a Rehabilitation Activity Requirement based on a number of days. The CRC will, post-sentence, decide what activity is to be undertaken. The contentious part for me is that the CRC can, if it deems it appropriate, 'complete' an RAR WITHOUT USING ALL OF THE DAYS. So the sentence is, in fact, determined by the CRC OM, not by the Court. Also, a 'day' is any single event and could be 10 minutes or three hours. It's all up to the CRC. The only checks and balances are the contract management process and we know about the MOJ's record on that. The potential for abuse and tokenism is massive. I fear for the credibility of community sentences, I really do."

"35 hours a week 'job search' (which is compulsory anyway if on JSA), will become part of the rehabilitation activity. All the privateers have to do is register the client with their employment team. Job done!"

"We had a 1.30 hour briefing on RAR and Through the Gate on Tues am. It sounds as though its going to be chaotic. We got a communication from NAPO chair today saying that one of the successful bidders for CRC had thought we were already working with the Through The Gate lot and was shocked to realise that we weren't - their bid had not taken into account ADDITIONAL work."

Overview of the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 and Through the Gate

The Offender Rehabilitation Bill received Royal Assent on 13 March 2014. Two sections of the resulting Offender Rehabilitation Act (ORA) came into force on 1 June 2014 (creation of the new enforcement officer role for breaches of court orders, and a requirement that contracts for probation services set out provision for female offenders). The remaining sections of the ORA will come into force on 1 February 2015. The ORA makes changes to three main areas of the sentencing framework:

1) The expansion of licence to offenders released from short custodial sentences of less than 12 months.

2) Creation of a new Post-Sentence Supervision (PSS) period that follows licence for offenders released from custodial sentences of less than 2 years.

3) Changes to Community Order and Suspended Sentence Order requirements, particularly the introduction of the Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR).

Most of the new provisions of the ORA (with the key exception of changes to the drug testing requirement) will only apply to offenders who have committed an offence on or after 1 February 2015. Eligible caseloads will therefore take some time to build up.

The ORA will have several operational implications for the NPS with process changes and developments in practice required to embed the new provisions. The operational impact on court staff, report writers, staff involved in supervising offenders sentenced to community penalties and custodial sentences including the enforcement of these sentences, has been outlined in this Guidance.

Through the Gate (TTG) is the resettlement service that CRCs will provide for all those received into custody. TTG services will commence fully on 1 May but in some establishments services may be mobilised earlier. TTG begins with the Basic Custody Screening Tool (BCST):

BCST Part 1 is a needs assessment and will be completed by prison staff within 72 hours of reception. Questions in the BCST link to the 7 resettlement pathways, which are:

Accommodation
Education, employment and training
Health
Drugs and alcohol
Finance, debt and benefit
Children and Families
Attitudes, thinking and behaviour

BCST Part 2 is the resettlement plan and will be completed by CRC staff for all prisoners (including NPS) within 5 days of receiving BCST Part 1. The CRC will then know what resettlement needs a prisoner has, and decide how best to meet that need. There are a suite of resettlement services that the CRC will be contractually obliged to deliver to all offenders, and will be paid for this on a fee for service basis. These are:

Accommodation & employment brokerage
Finance and debt advice
Support for sex workers
Support for victims of domestic violence 

The CRC must also provide pre-release activity no sooner than 12 weeks before release. In addition to this, the CRC will provide additional rehabilitative services that they believe will reduce reoffending, and so gain payment on a Payment by Results (PbR) basis. These services will be available to the NPS on an ‘elective’ basis where it is an appropriate and cost effective response to tackling specific offender needs.

Pre Sentence Report Writers

The approach to report writing continues to be informed by the existing framework of assessment involving reference to Sentencing Guidelines, offence seriousness, risk of conviction/reoffending, EOASys Risk of Serious Harm (RoSH) screening and full analysis when required, together with RSR, OGRS, SARA and other specialist assessment tools, offender's criminogenic need and responsivity issues.

The ORA makes no direct change to this existing framework for report writing. The report writer will continue to inform the Court of their comprehensive assessment and make a proposal as to what particular risk factors and offending related needs may require addressing but not specifically ‘how’ this should be done. There are however a number of changes, either made by the ORA or the wider Transforming Rehabilitation programme, that report writers will need to take into account.

The first is the fact that the rehabilitative services offered by CRCs – either to offenders they are supervising or, in some cases, to NPS-retained offenders – are likely to change in the coming months as new providers put in place what was in their bids. Clearly, assessments and recommendations to the Court regarding public protection and rehabilitation can be better informed by an awareness of what interventions are available to offenders both in custody and the community. The range and availability of local interventions on offer will be regularly communicated by local CRCs to NPS report writers and sentencers. The nature of this communication will vary depending upon the CRC.

The second is the creation of the Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR) by the ORA, which replaces the existing Supervision and Specified Activity Requirements for offences committed on or after 1 February 2015. Under the RAR, the Court does not specify the activity or activities the offender must participate in. Instead, this is left to the discretion of the Responsible Officer (RO). The RAR therefore allows the RO the freedom to make their own professional judgement about the most appropriate means to address the risk factors outlined in the PSR and as such make decisions about the form that supervision will take. However, where a Court is considering imposing a RAR, report writers will still need to give the Court an indication of the type of services CRCs are likely to offer in that case. Report writers should assume these services are unchanged on 1 February unless the CRC has communicated a change to the interventions they offer.

Report writers may also need to consider likely allocation decisions as this may have an impact upon their completion of EOASys, the content of their report and their Court proposal, for example if it is a case deemed to be of high public interest.

Finally, in light of the new ORA requirement for offenders serving community orders or suspended sentence orders to seek permission before changing place of residence, it is of increased importance that Court staff and report authors gather sufficient information regarding the suitability of the offender's address. Relevant information should be recorded. There is no specific expectation at the point of sentence that NPS court officers will need to confirm suitability of address for the purpose of the PSS resident requirement where offenders are released direct from court.

Proposals

For offences committed before 1 February 2015 the options available for report proposals are as outlined in the relevant legislation, in particular CJA 2003 and LASPO 2012.

For offences committed on or after 1 February 2015 Supervision Requirements and all Specified Activity Requirements (SARs) will no longer be available. The ORA introduces the Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR). Other requirements DRR, ATR, Mental Heath Treatment, UPW, Curfew/Electronic Monitoring, ACO, Exclusion, Residence, Prohibited Foreign Travel, Prohibited Activity Requirement) are still available and should be proposed where appropriate as before.

A RAR allows for the Responsible Officer (RO) to instruct the offender to attend activities, appointments, or both. The Court sets the maximum number of days of activities that the RAR can involve. The number of days stated is the maximum that the offender can be required to undertake but the allocated RO can decide to use fewer days at their discretion. By contrast, there is no limit set by the court on appointments, which can carry on for the duration of the RAR (which last for the length of the overall order).

It is for the court to first decide whether a Community Order (CO) or Suspended Sentence Order (SSO) with a RAR is an appropriate sentencing disposal and then to set the length of the sentence and the maximum number of activity days. Please note that the RAR does not allow for a minimum number of days only a maximum. The allocated RO is then responsible for deciding the content of the activity days, how they will be delivered, how frequently the offender attends and to whom. In some instances the content of the RAR activity may be decided pre sentence where there are bespoke interventions in place. So the Court may be aware of the proposed content, however the Court cannot set what specific rehabilitation activities should be delivered under the RAR.

Where a DRR, ATR, Mental Heath Treatment Requirement or an Accredited Programme is being proposed good practice suggests a RAR should also be proposed if there are additional needs. However, the requirements recommended should be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence. ROs can instruct offenders to report as needed under the auspices of the CO/SSO if there is no RAR in place, by virtue of sections 198 and 2220 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (which require the RO to make any arrangements necessary for the requirements of the order, and which place a duty on the offender to keep in touch with the RO in accordance with any instructions given).

ROs can utilise the RAR activity days to require offenders to attend Accredited Programmes. However, if at the pre sentence report stage it is assessed that a particular Accredited Programme (known to be on offer) would be a suitable intervention, it would be regarded as good practice for the report writer to inform the Court. This therefore enables the Court to impose a named Accredited Programme requirement as part of the CO or SSO. 

Community Supervision

Rehabilitation Activity Requirement

Section 15 of the ORA introduces the Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR) for COs and SSOs. The RAR replaces the Supervision Requirement and all Specified Activity Requirements (SARs) in cases where the offence was committed on or after the 1 February 2015. However, the Supervision Requirement and the SAR remain for legacy cases where the offence was committed before this date.

The RAR is designed to provide maximum flexibility for probation providers to deliver rehabilitation activities during the sentence that address criminogenic needs and achieve a reduction in the likelihood of re-offending. The RO has discretion as to how use the RAR and as such decides what interventions are suitable for the offender to undertake. Activities which were formally covered by SARs can be included into the activities undertaken within a RAR.

Activity Days

A RAR can involve the RO instructing the offender to participate in activities, up to a maximum number set by the Court when sentencing. The RO can decide to use fewer days at their discretion. The Court specifies the end date of the CO and the end of the supervision period of the SSO. This is the date at which the RO stops being able to require the offender to attend activities (even if the maximum number of days has not been reached). The RAR therefore differs to unpaid work, where if the hours set by the court have not been completed within 12 months, the order automatically extends until they have been completed. The RO has the ability to complete the activity element of the RAR at any point before the end of the order.

An activity day is not defined in legislation, but it does not mean 24 hours of activity. Therefore, if an offender attends to an activity at 11.00am for 1 hour and then again at 2.00pm on the same day for 30 minutes then it counts as one day. If the offender attends on one day for an activity of 1 hour and then next day for an activity lasting 45 minutes then this counts as two activity days. The number of maximum days of activity set by the court cannot be exceeded.

Appointments and Activities

The RAR can be used for both the delivery of 1-2-1 supervision appointments and activities as required. In contrast to Specified Activity Requirements there are no set number of appointments that can be made by the Court. The RO can instruct the offender to attend appointments either with the RO or with someone else nominated by the RO. The RO still has the length of the CO or SSO supervision period to continue to supervise the offender by way of appointments if they so wish. This means that an offender can complete their activity days and still be required to keep appointments with their officer. It is therefore important that officers ensure that the content of the activities, the reporting requirements for these activities and supervision appointments are clearly recorded in the plan and understood by the offender.

The range of activities that may be included in the RAR is broad and the flexibility afforded by the requirement allows for innovative interventions to be delivered however they must be focused on rehabilitation. They can fulfil other purposes in addition to this – for example reparation or restorative justice. Whilst a RAR can include the delivery of an accredited offending behaviour programme. If the information regarding suitability is available at the pre-sentence stage it would be regarded good practice to provide this to sentencers. This will give the opportunity for the Court to specifically include a particular Accredited Programme as part of the CO / SSO.

A RAR should not be used to deliver any other requirements available under a CO / SSO – for example, drug treatment or unpaid work. This is because these requirements have particular safeguards associated with them that the RAR does not provide for. For example, the treatment requirements available under a CO / SSO require the offender’s consent, and the unpaid work requirement has safeguards with regards to the offender’s suitability.

The range and availability of local interventions on offer will be regularly communicated by local CRCs to NPS staff and sentencers. The nature of this communication will vary depending upon the CRC.