Earlier this week I presented the 5 areas where a CRC needs to excel for its future success, and illustrated how important partnering is to meeting CRC objectives. Today we are going to look more closely at Partner led initiatives involving probation, another of those 5 areas that needs to be embedded into the CRC.
I explained what I meant by partner where we looked at CRC led initiatives that involve partners. Initiatives led by partners that involve probation could include the following:
- Organised Crime Groups disruption and management
- Gangs disruption and management
- Child and other safeguarding (MASH)
- Domestic Abuse prevention and management
- Troubled Families solutions
- Anti Social Behaviour
- MAPPA
- Youth Offending
- Victims
In the same way that probation relies on partners for work like IOM, the police cannot get a full picture on areas like Organised Crime Groups (OCG) and Gang work without their partners sharing information and investing time to work together. When you consider that Organised Crime alone costs society £24bn, and Domestic Abuse is 15.7bn per annum respectively there are big prizes to go after. We work with numerous police forces on OCG and gang work so understand the importance of probation and other partners in this work. It’s a fabulous opportunity for CRC’s to embed themselves tightly into the local ecosystem and really deliver on the wider criminal and social justice goals, beyond the probation role per se.
A risk for agency partners is if probation CRC owners adopt a silo-based mentality. Will they only go after the things that directly reduce reoffending and don’t support these areas that contribute to the wider good? Of course these ultimately reduce reoffending and improve public protection too but it takes a strong forward thinking leader to invest in the ecosystem for longer term gain. It is hopefully behind some of the government’s thinking about lengthy contracts for CRCs. Of course in a world where collaboration works both ways, it won’t surprise anyone if partners are let down, they then reduce their commitment to IOM and other probation led initiatives. Local communities and the public purse will then suffer even more. Lets hope that does not happen.
Another issue may well arise with National Probation Service (NPS) for areas like MAPPA and Statutory victim engagement where CRC’s are either directly or indirectly involved.
The benefits outlined about pam for multi-agency working operationally in the previous post are relevant here. However a key difference is that the decision makers on change are likely to be in NPS, the other local agencies e.g. police, or could be a Police and Crime Commissioner. Wouldn’t it be great to live in a community with forward thinking leaders amongst each of these key organisations and the new CRC?
We sincerely hope that new CRC owners see the benefit of investing in the partner led initiatives as well as the ones led by probation. In looking for more efficiency and better outcomes from the time spent by CRC probation staff we believe we can continue to add value. Choosing pam for the whole ecosystem of sensitive partner work means just one shared investment at lower total cost and risk. It also offers better use of time whilst helping shine a light on performance to celebrate what works and quickly address what doesn’t
Contact us now to learn more about how we can help in this area.