Yesterday I outlined the 5 areas a CRC needs to do well in the future. Now we are going to look more closely at one of those, CRC led initiatives involving partners.

What do we mean by partner?

Our heritage is in partnering and it means different things to different people. In this context we are thinking about the key organisational relationships that impact on offending behavior or public protection. Examples include statutory partners like police, health and local authorities. Depending on how some CRC’s see it they might also deem their new supply chain of tier 2-4 providers as partners too, whereas others might just see them as suppliers.  The National Probation Service (NPS) is also arguably a partner too. (but lets save that debate for another day).

Why are partners important to probation?

Much has been written about causes of offending behavior by more learned people than me so I’m not going to address the theory here. Put simply, it’s a complex ecosystem where actions taken (or not) by partners can impact on an offender and whom they are connected to, or where and how they spend their time.

Each agency working alone is unlikely to hold enough information or have all the expertise to make the best decisions and get optimal results. It’s why so much time is rightly spent working with partners on initiatives, but the way its done today is just too inefficient and risky for the new commercial world of CRCs.

What are some examples of CRC led initiatives that involve partners?

These include proactive work like Integrated Offender Management (IOM), and when things go wrong, reacting to Serious Further Offences, Case Reviews and Offender Complaints. This work is offender centric and relies heavily on probation encouraging partners to work for the greater good together. Clearly the aim is for partners to get some associated benefit too. (Watch out for the next post about partner led initiatives involving probation).

So what?

New owners and leaders not only need to raise the game of the CRC but also find ways to encourage partners to improve their performance in these areas as well.  A big ask perhaps, but one way that can happen is to provide an integrated solution for the partner ecosystem, not just another probation point product.

A system can only totally change at the pace of the slowest part and no one wants to operate multiple systems.   Ironically that is exactly what happens today, but it has just become an unconscious behavioral habit – and a very risky inefficient one at that!

If probation CRC owners have to wait for all partners to invest in change, the offender reduction goals will be missed and any rewards lost, as well as an increased fear of failure.

Smart CRC owners can however be heroes for probation, their partners and ultimately their local communities, all effectively for lower cost and risk than the way work gets done today.

How can pam help?

pam offers the only pan-government accredited cloud environment for this type of work, up to OFFICIAL SENSITIVE levels, for all partners to work together from the same place at lower cost and risk than existing practices. Not only can probation have confidence and trust in the system, all partners can be sure that their information and work is safe. It’s a much more efficient and effective solution than today and an ideal complement to the offender case recording and risk management systems being used.

pam is a place growing in importance for police and other partners to get their partnering work done from too, meaning one shared system is achievable. Police and Crime Commissioners like Martyn Underhill  also see this as the way forward. Dorset residents should be able to sleep more soundly knowing that someone intends to join the system up digitally as well as physically.

Smart CRC’s will recognise the gains for their organisation outweigh the initial cost of providing pam licences to prove the concept to the partners (at least those who are not already using the platform). Being an SME we can also create commercially innovate business models to help speed adoption and prove that multi-agency working with pam is the way to go.

Tomorrow we shall look at those areas where CRC’s can be of help to their partners. Contact us now to learn more about how we can help you achieve more from less.