Planning to keep people safe in case supervision – low risk
Content
Case summary
Inspector’s comments
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Planning should focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe. Practitioners should:
- address risk of harm factors and prioritise those which are most critical
- set out the necessary constructive and/or restrictive interventions to manage the risk of harm
- make appropriate links to the work of other agencies involved with the service user and any multi-agency plans
- set out necessary and effective contingency arrangements to manage those risks that have been identified.
Case summary
Oliver is a 24-year-old male who received a 24-month suspended sentence order with a 15-day rehabilitation activity requirement after pleading guilty to possession of a knife. He has no previous convictions and the offence was related to a self-harming incident whereby Oliver tried to take his own life by cutting his wrists in a park. The offence was committed away from the general public in a wooded area and he was assessed as posing a low risk of causing serious harm to others. Oliver suffers from depression and experienced most of his childhood in the care system. Although he has the support of an elderly aunt, her health is deteriorating, and Oliver is unable to live with her. As a consequence, he spends most of his time sofa surfing, sleeping rough or in short stay hostels. Oliver drinks alcohol to excess to cope with his depression and at the time of the offence was not taking any medication. He does not use drugs.
Oliver expresses deep remorse for the index offence. Although he says his suicide attempt was genuine and not a cry for help, he was sorry for putting a member of the public, an elderly female dog walker, through the trauma of finding him in the wooded area covered in blood. He has a good understanding of the likely impact this incident had on her. Oliver has been overwhelmed by the kindness she has shown him: she visited him in hospital, asked the police not to charge him with an offence and attended court to support him through sentencing. The magistrates imposed the order in the hope that Oliver would get the support he needed.
The responsible officer completed a full risk of serious harm analysis in this case and provided a detailed analysis of Oliver’s self-harm/suicide risks and his conviction for possession of a knife. On balance, the responsible officer was correct to assess Oliver as low risk but did take full account of the potentially harmful aspects of his behaviour, as well as providing detailed analysis regarding his self-harm/suicide risk.
The assessment flowed to an outstanding sentence plan that prioritised the need for a mental health assessment and possible on-going treatment, support to find suitable long-term accommodation, and intervention to address Oliver’s propensity to misuse alcohol. These were all factors intrinsically linked to the index offence. The sentence plan contained the detail of the agencies with which Oliver would work to help address these issues, and their contact information and the frequency of contact and attendance arrangements were made clear. It was evident within the sentence plan and nDelius contacts that the responsible officer had made referrals and got agreement from the relevant agencies that they would work with Oliver prior to completing the plan. The responsible officer also shared the sentence plan with those agencies once it was complete.
Inspector’s comments
This case gives an excellent example of where, despite the low risk of serious harm assessment, the potential for harm is not understated and results in detailed planning activity to support the service user to improve their life. The sentence plan effectively prioritised the factors that contributed to a period of crisis for Oliver and making suitable referrals and getting agreement from agencies to work with Oliver prior to completing the OASys sentence plan were fantastic.
While the responsible officer addressed the use of a knife and the potential impact on others, they appropriately focused to putting in place arrangements to support Oliver and address his risk of self-harm, which was the underlying reason for his offending.
This case summary is intended for training/learning purposes and includes a fictional name.
