Content

Case summary
Inspector’s comments
Take-away learning

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Reviewing should focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe. Practitioners should:

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Case summary

Jarrad is a 37-year-old male. He was sentenced to five months in custody for the possession of a bladed article, namely a meat cleaver, in a public place. He was assessed as posing a medium risk of serious harm. He had a history of violent offending, with two convictions for Section 47 assault from five years ago. Jarrad also used heroin and crack cocaine when in the community. He had a long history of depression and was identified as being at risk from self-harm and suicide. He was housed by the local authority at a supported housing project when released and he received a lot of support.

Records in this case were detailed and showed the responsible officer’s attempts to try and arrange the necessary intervention to assist Jarrad with managing his personality disorder. An assessment with the community mental health team eventually went ahead, and relevant support was put in place. Jarrad’s personality disorder and the concerns regarding self-harm and suicide had not been fully assessed in over five years. He was referred to drug agencies and initially attended appointments, although compliance deteriorated after a few months. He was initially referred to various groupwork interventions.

Following concerns by the community mental health team and appointments with drug agencies, a three-way meeting was convened by the responsible officer when it became apparent that Jarrad was testing positive for both opiates and crack cocaine. Staff at the housing project had also reported that he was becoming aggressive towards staff and other residents during group work sessions.

The three-way meeting, attended by the responsible officer, Jarrad and his drugs worker, was used to review progress and outline the concerns that professionals had regarding his drug misuse, the impact this could have on his mental health, and his aggressive behaviour. Jarrad was also given an opportunity to explain what was happening for him, how he had been feeling since his release and how he felt about the plans and interventions being delivered. It became clear that Jarrad was struggling. He had stopped taking anti-depressant medication, as he said it was making him sick. He was also struggling with the group work in the housing project and with the drug services regime. After consultation with mental health professionals, his medication was reviewed, and it was agreed that services would be delivered one-to-one going forward. Jarrad felt much more comfortable with this.

Following the three-way meeting, a formal review of OASys was completed and the RMP and sentence plan were updated to reflect the change from group delivery to one-to-one work.

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Inspector’s comments

Risk was monitored closely in this case. Jarrad’s drug test results, attendance at appointments and interactions with staff and other service users were taken into account by the responsible officer on an on-going basis.

The responsible officer consulted with all agencies involved in delivering interventions to Jarrad to consider whether risk was escalating. Most impressive was the responsible officer’s decision to involve Jarrad in the review process, which enabled the various agencies involved in the case to be transparent about their concerns. This also provided an opportunity for Jarrad to declare his own concerns about the difficulties he was having attending the group work interventions. The responsible officer rightly explored this issue with mental health professionals, who supported the Jarrad’s assertion that he would feel much more comfortable on with one-to-one work.

This case provides a useful illustration of the interconnected relationship between effective engagement, delivering interventions focused on desistance and taking relevant action to keep people safe. The three-way meeting and process of review addressed all three elements. Adjustments to the way in which interventions would be delivered would improve engagement and in turn result in risk of harm being managed and, ultimately, reduced.

This was an effective example of reviewing, backed up by a comprehensive update of OASys after the three-way meeting. Both the sentence plan and risk management plan were amended to reflect the changes to supervision and to continue to monitor Jarrad’s potential for risk of serious harm.

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Take-aways – applying the learning

In this case, the responsible officer identified and addressed changes in factors related to risk of harm. He was adept at bringing about necessary adjustments through effective reviewing.

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