Working with the third sector to reduce re-offending
Securing effective partnerships 2008-2011
This paper outlines the importance of the third sector in meeting the Government's objectives in reducing re-offending. It makes clear the commitment that Government is making towards the third sector and sets out how Government will cosult widely with the third sector and community and faith groups in drawing up principles and expectations placed upon the Minitry of Justice and NOMS (National Offender Management Service) in their relationships with third sector organisations.
Title: Working with the third sector to reduce re-offending - Securing effective partnerships 2008–2011
Author: Ministry of Justice and NOMS
Number of pages: 60
Date published: October 2008
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The Government sees a thriving third sector as being at the heart of a successful modern democracy, transformed public services and community cohesion, with the sector and the state working together to bring about real change.
The third sector has unique and positive attributes that are different from the public and private sectors, and working together we can achieve more than government and any one sector can achieve alone. The help of third sector and other partners is needed, particularly at local level, to create the right policies, access mainstream services for offenders, and transform services to reduce re-offending.
Their vision is of a thriving, independent and diverse third sector, playing a full role in supporting the effective management of offenders, helping in the delivery of both the Government Public Service Agreements and the Ministry of Justice’s Departmental Strategic Objectives to reduce re-offending and protect the public, and contributing to making communities safer.
The third sector has a critical role to play as advocates of service users and communities, as partners in strategy and service development, and as service providers. Government values their role as enablers of effective community engagement, volunteering and mentoring.
The third sector, particularly the small organisations that make up the vast majority of the sector, face significant barriers to winning and delivering public service contracts and engaging more broadly with Government at all levels. This document has been developed in partnership. It is informed by public consultation and a third sector task force which looked at overcoming barriers to third sector service delivery and how a Best Value Framework for probation services will be credible, transparent and neutral. It sets out the direction of travel, the principles, commitments and actions that will reduce barriers and support collaboration at all levels in order to meet the shared goals of reducing re-offending and protecting the public. The Ministry of Justice and the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) will also promote these principles in their work with partners when jointly planning and commissioning services.
Key commitments
- To increase compliance with the Compact on Relations between Government and the Voluntary and Community Sector in relation to funding and procurement, consultation, and partnership working.
- To transform services by:
- reviewing and refocusing work and resources on achieving agreed priorities and the outcomes needed;
- selecting the best providers through competition and creating a ‘fairer playing field’, actively reducing barriers to diverse third sector involvement;
- strengthening joint commissioning, and the involvement of all sectors in designing as well as delivering services;
- using grant funding alongside commissioning, where this better delivers outcomes;
- providing clarity on commissioning opportunities and undertaking Best Value reviews of probation services;
- working in partnership to strengthen the evidence base and to agree and demonstrate outcomes; and
- strengthening user engagement in service design and review.
- Taking account of the forthcoming report by Baroness Neuberger, the Government’s Volunteering Champion, on volunteering across the Criminal Justice System, to drive up the quality of volunteering and mentoring and the number and diversity of volunteers, including offenders and ex-offenders as volunteers and mentors in prisons and the community.
New strategic funding from the Ministry of Justice – to Clinks, Action for Prisoners’ Families, the Development Trusts Association, and a new Reducing Re-offending Arts Alliance – will strengthen the role of diverse front-line third sector organisations. Investment supports representation and voice, communication and partnership working, capacity building and volunteering, with a particular focus on meeting the needs of black and minority ethnic, faith-based, women’s, and small community-based organisations.
Voice and partnership working
At all levels Government will develop knowledge and make use of the code of practice on consultation, the Compact and its Codes of Practice, and Working Together: Co-operation between Government and Faith Communities (Communities and Local Government, 2004). It will support policy makers, planners and commissioners in understanding the diversity of the sector with regard to inequalities between communities and organisations in their current ability to engage. This will include recognising that smaller and community- based organisations may need resources to participate fully in consultations and partnerships, and the need to make use of informal networks and contacts as well as infrastructure and more formal networks.
The Government is committed to engaging more effectively with the many, diverse and mainly local organisations that work with offenders and their families or which have the potential to do so. The Ministry and NOMS will:
- review stakeholder groups and arrangements, establishing a Reducing Re-offending Third Sector Advisory Group with members recruited through open advertisement;
- put in place NOMS operational policy for working with the third sector, backed by practice guidance for directors in regions and Wales, prisons and probation; and
- work with the third sector to identify options for ‘brokerage’ to provide a gateway to the wider third sector.
They will work with:
- the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) to produce guidelines on accessing faith-based organisations, making better use of faith umbrella bodies and networks; and
- representatives from the black and minority ethnic, women’s and faith sectors to identify mechanisms for ensuring that there is a voice for these parts of the third sector in reducing re-offending, including service design and review.
NOMS will further explore opportunities and potential for partnership work between the Prison Service Chaplaincy and the faith- based sector in the community. They will also highlight the key role of the third sector in helping the Ministry and NOMS inform, consult and engage communities. The work will be informed by the new Community Empowerment White Paper Communities in Control: Real people, real power (CLG, 2008) and Louise Casey’s report on confidence in the Criminal Justice System, Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime (Cabinet Office, 2008).
Transforming services
To achieve better outcomes and value for money, NOMS aims to review and refocus work and resources across prison and probation, and harness the skills and creativity of people and organisations across the public, private and third sectors. Commissioning will be used to select the best providers through a competitive process, alongside encouraging collaboration in the design and delivery of adult offender services. Government will ensure that there is clarity around commissioning opportunities, and identifying the best provider will require proactively working towards ensuring a ‘fairer playing field’ for providers from all sectors. This will involve addressing the specific barriers faced by the third sector, underpinned by raising awareness of and adhering to Compact principles. Priorities include:
- where appropriate, moving to multi-year funding and contracting so that three-year funding becomes the norm;
- simplifying contracts and using common documentation wherever possible;
- ensuring that the price of contracts and grants relects the full costs of delivery;
- promoting the legitimate use of social benefit clauses in service specifications; and
- reducing the reporting and administration burden for providers.
To support these changes, operational policy and guidance for NOMS regional directors and prisons and probation staff will include good funding, commissioning and procurement practice. This will be backed up by advice, shared learning and training, building on training that Ministry of Justice and NOMS staff are receiving through the government-funded National Programme for Third Sector Commissioning. NOMS will map prison and probation funding and contracting arrangements with third and private sector providers every two years and will report on trends. NOMS will also work with the third sector to strengthen the involvement of users in decision making, service planning and delivery.
With around half of all resources to support reducing re-offending coming from outside the Criminal Justice System, there is scope for strengthening joint commissioning, and for cross-sector working to jointly access potential funding streams and make a stronger case for investing in offenders. The Ministry of Justice’s Departmental Strategic Objectives will encourage joint working across the Criminal Justice System; and the new shared Government Public Service Agreements (including those on safer communities, social exclusion, and drugs and alcohol) give powerful shared targets that will encourage joined-up working at all levels. Activity to support joint commissioning will include:
- scoping existing mapping of the key funding streams supporting work with offenders and identifying information gaps;
- identifying mechanisms to promote good third sector schemes to funders and commissioners; and
- producing guidance for third sector organisations working with offenders and their families on how to engage with local authorities and local area agreements.
Specific activity will support the role of small, diverse and community organisations in planning, delivering and reviewing services, recognising that this is a challenge across public service reform. Funding for national third sector infrastructure will target development support. Investment in the Future Skills Wales local demonstrator on cross-sector working to design and deliver offender services will provide learning on the involvement of small, community and black and minority ethnic organisations. Recognising that grant funding can be particularly effective in supporting smaller providers and specialist services, NOMS will use grant funding alongside commissioning where this better meets outcomes, and will develop guidelines on the appropriate use of grants. To help overcome specific barriers faced by faith- based organisations, and to support effective funding and commissioning, the Ministry of Justice will support and promote the work by the Department of Communities and Local Government to create a charter on funding faith-based organisations.
To support third sector organisations, particularly smaller community organisations, to develop skills in demonstrating the results of their work with offenders, the Ministry of Justice has commissioned a toolkit for providers on monitoring and demonstrating effectiveness and outcomes. The Ministry and NOMS will also take active steps to work better with other government departments and the third sector to assess the impact of a wide range of initiatives on re-offending and to agree outcomes for offenders. A more joined-up approach to developing and assessing the evidence base in all areas of offender interventions and management may be achieved in the longer term through partnership and stakeholder working within a Correctional Services Centre of Excellence, the feasibility of which is currently being scoped by government. The findings from this project are due in April 2009.
To encourage income generation in the third sector and to promote understanding of social enterprises and the opportunities they present, NOMS will map and promote examples of social enterprise provision within prisons and probation. A national conference will support raising awareness and skills development on generating earned income.
Volunteering and mentoring
The consultation document Volunteers Can: Towards a volunteering strategy to reduce re-offending (NOMS, 2007) set out the challenges and opportunities for increasing the number and diversity of volunteers, improving the quality of support, and assessing more effectively the impact of volunteering and mentoring.
Baroness Neuberger, the Government’s Volunteering Champion, has begun her review on volunteering across the Criminal Justice System. Her report will provide an opportunity to build on Volunteers Can and think through with partners how we can promote and drive up the quality of volunteering opportunities across the system. It will assist NOMS in building on the work of thousands of volunteers and mentors already working with offenders in custody and the community. Through Ministry of Justice funding to Clinks, we will be supporting the establishment of a new Reducing Re-offending Volunteering and Mentoring Network to promote collaboration, identify good practice, help increase diversity, and collate examples and evidence of the added value that volunteers and mentors bring to offender management and rehabilitation.
Getting a copy
Last update: Monday, October 20, 2008