Planning for desistance

Content

Case summary
Inspector’s comments
Take-away learning

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Planning should focus sufficiently on reducing reoffending and supporting the service user’s desistance. Practitioners should:

  • sufficiently address offending-related factors and prioritise those that are most critical
  • build on the service user’s strengths and protective factors, using potential sources of support
  • set out the services most likely to reduce reoffending and support desistance.

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Case summary

Helen is a 26-year-old female who was sentenced to a community order of nine months for a number of offences of shoplifting. The order consisted of an exclusion requirement, forbidding Helen from entering an area of the city centre where she regularly offended, and a drug rehabilitation requirement. Helen’s offending was linked to a long history of heroin and crack cocaine use and she had been homeless for three years.

Helen was identified for inclusion in the local Integrated Offender Management (IOM) scheme due to the frequency and pattern of her offending. The IOM team was based in the city centre (outside of Helen’s exclusion zone), and probation, the police and drug services all worked from the same building. In addition, a housing worker from the homelessness team at the council, a representative from the job centre, women’s services and a selection of other partners all worked from the IOM office at various times throughout the week. Female-only reporting was scheduled every Friday, which provided an opportunity for women subject to IOM to attend a safe, female-only environment.

Following sentence, Helen was given an appointment to attend an induction with her responsible officer the next day, which just so happened to be a Friday. The meeting went smoothly, and the responsible officer explained what it would mean for Helen to be supervised by IOM and they talked about her current situation and circumstances in detail. The aim of IOM was to ensure that Helen had wrap-around support to help her address the underlying causes of her offending, achieve a level of stability that had been absent for a number of years, and break the cycle of drug use and offending. During the induction appointment, Helen was introduced to the worker from the local women’s service and an IOM police officer; both would be working with Helen over the coming months. The responsible officer explained that following induction, where possible, the IOM team aims to hold a sentence planning panel with the service user and agency representatives, relevant to the service user’s criminogenic needs. Helen agreed that she would be happy for this to take place.

A sentence planning panel was therefore scheduled for the following Friday. The responsible officer invited the worker from the women’s service, the IOM police officer, a substance misuse worker, the housing advice worker and the member of staff from the job centre to attend.

The responsible officer chaired the sentence planning meeting and each of the criminogenic factors were explored in turn. The aim of the meeting was to construct a sentence plan and identify relevant objectives and activities to support Helen to address the factors that were impacting on her offending.

The following objectives and activities were agreed in order of priority:
  1.  A homelessness assessment would be carried out immediately and applications for supported housing would be made within the next few weeks. The women’s centre and the housing worker would work together on this. Helen needed somewhere to live urgently.
  2.  Immediately after the sentence planning meeting the substance misuse worker would meet with Helen to review her current package of treatment and develop a new plan.
  3.  The staff member from the job centre would meet with Helen to review her financial situation and make a new benefit claim.
  4.  Helen’s next appointment would be at the local women’s centre and she would be introduced to the full range of interventions available there.
  5.  In addition to their role in monitoring intelligence around Helen’s offending, an agreement was also made with the IOM police that they would help with transport so that Helen could get to all appointments over the course of the first four weeks of the order.
  6.  Once Helen is more stable, the job centre staff member would help her to explore potential employment opportunities. She is a qualified hairdresser and would like to return to this work in the future.

Helen was extremely grateful for having had the opportunity to meet those who would be supporting her during the course of the new order. She had been subject to probation in the past but did not have a positive experience. Her homelessness had never previously been addressed with such urgency and she felt as though everybody that she met at the sentence plan panel all shared the same goals.

Following the meeting, the responsible officer recorded the details of the plan within OASys and shared a copy with each agency representative as a record of what was agreed. A date for review was also set at the 12-week stage and another panel scheduled.

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Inspector’s comments

Although in some ways this is an exceptional case, given Helen’s inclusion in IOM, it provides an excellent example of sentence planning and how effective it can be to involve other agencies in the process. The responsible officer coordinated the sentence plan effectively, following local processes in identifying the agencies that needed to be involved in the panel. There was a clear focus on the issues that had contributed to Helen’s pattern of offending and these were prioritised in order, with key tasks identified and made clear for all parties.

Despite there being a mountain to climb in some ways, and Helen’s homelessness and drug misuse requiring urgent attention, the responsible officer was absolutely right to identify a strength, her skills and experience as a qualified hairdresser, that could be explored and capitalised on in the future. This gave Helen something to work towards.

Helen’s status within IOM was also identified as a potential protective factor and with the support of the police to help get her to appointments, the list of sentence plan objectives and activities became more manageable.

Setting a date for review and scheduling a follow-up meeting was also good practice. This made it clear to Helen and all agencies that progress would be monitored, and actions followed up.

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Take-aways – applying the learning

  1. The assessment had already addressed the service user’s degree of maturity and personal history. The priority was to address the primary social circumstances: in this case, the lack of suitable accommodation. Do you prioritise your planning so that you address primary needs before beginning the desistance elements of planning, such as motivation to change and attitudes to offending?
  2. What stood out for you in this case illustration? Can you identify similar efforts in your practice, such as coordinating relevant stakeholders to plan together, with sequencing and a tailored approach?
  3. Based on the learning from this case, what if any changes will you make to your desistance planning practice?

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This case summary is intended for training/learning purposes and includes a fictional name.