Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs Written Evidence


Written evidence from The Butler Trust

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

  The Butler Trust was set up as a registered charity in 1985. The Trust exists to recognise and celebrate the work of prison and probation staff working with offenders. The Trust receives nominations from staff and offenders, which it considers in the light of their significance in the treatment and resettlement of offenders. At the annual award ceremony at Buckingham Palace, HRH The Princess Royal presents certificates and awards to the winning staff who are accompanied by their families and senior staff as well as key UK Prison and Probation Service personnel. The work of the award-winning staff is enhanced through the Trust's development programme. It is disseminated at conferences and seminars through research visits to other countries, publication of leaflets and training manuals or promoted on DVDs. Creating good practice networks enables staff to learn from each other in effective ways.

  Outlined in this submission are some of the projects we have recognised. We have made some recommendations to support the good practice developed over the years by our experience.

SUBMISSION

  1.  The Butler Trust works to recognise, promote and celebrate good work carried out on behalf of the public by prison and probation staff in their work with offenders. It seeks to help the community learn about the hidden work carried out in corrections on their behalf.

  2.  The Trust was established in 1985 to promote and disseminate a scheme then known as The Prison Service Annual Award Scheme. In 2005 Trustees approved the extension of the Annual Award Scheme to include employees of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and probation staff working with offenders in the community in England and Wales. During 2005 criminal justice social work agencies in Scotland and the Probation Board of Northern Ireland agreed to join the Scheme from 2006 and there have been some nominations and awards from these bodies for the first time this year.

  3.  HRH The Princess Royal has been the Trust's Royal Patron since 1985. The Princess undertakes 10-12 engagements a year for the Trust and has presided at every Annual Award Ceremony, usually in Buckingham Palace. This prestigious setting has proved to be very popular with award winners, their families and the staff involved in their nomination.

  4.  The Trust started a development programme in 1998 in response to the needs of major award winners to take their work further. The Trust has a thriving volunteer programme, consisting largely of retired prison service staff, of which there are currently ten. They visit Butler Trust Local Assessment Panels to provide encouragement and advice. The Trust has a Local Assessment Panel in all UK prison establishments and Probation areas and many Headquarters, Directorates and prison service colleges. Most establishments incorporate the Butler Trust panel into their Performance Recognition Committee. The Chair is typically Head of Human Resources.

  5.  Lack of formal recognition or sustained quality work and innovation was the primary reason for the creation of the Trust. For some years the Trust offered the only public recognition of `ordinary work extraordinarily well done'. But in the last seven to eight years there have been big changes in the three prison services. All now have recognition awards of their own which complement the Trust's work.

  6.  The cultural shifts which have allowed recognition schemes to emerge balance the more hard-edged performance management measures introduced in recent years—smarter financial management, performance tables, weighted score cards, more open criticism by inspectors, accountability for performance and market testing for prisons assessed as poor performers.

  7.  The Trust still has an important role in recognising quality performance because it does so from a fiercely independent position. Moreover, for the last ten years the Trust has helped many award winners develop their work. Increasingly the emphasis has been on spreading good practice, an aspect that has not been effective in UK prison services.

  8.  There have been marked advances in performance recognition by the prison and probation services. But they need nurturing. The issues facing the Trust call for continuing engagement with the service providers as well as exploring opportunities beyond its traditional boundaries as the distinctions between custodial and non-custodial care become more blurred.

  9.  Some of these issues include identifying and promoting excellence and innovation by Prison and Probation Service staff, contractors and volunteers; developing and disseminating best practice; providing professional and personal development opportunities through the Annual Award Scheme.

  10.  Dissemination of good practice identified through the Award Scheme has led the Trust to organise a number of national events with partner organisations focussing on award-winning work: an offender management seminar for prison and probation practitioners in Yorkshire and Humberside; a restorative justice conference with the Scottish Prison Service; and a conference with the Northern Ireland Prison Service involving award winners presenting and running workshops on a number of topics.

  11.  The three prison establishments in Northern Ireland—Maghaberry, Magilligan and Hydebank Wood—are all represented regularly in the nominations to The Butler Trust and there have been some outstanding award winners over the years.

  12.  A major theme of The Butler Trust's work in promoting and developing excellence in Northern Ireland has been the work carried out by staff to support their peers. The Central Benevolent Committee gained an award this year for its work with staff. This Committee was set up 25 years ago by staff across the service who felt that the widows and families of murdered colleagues should be offered practical and emotional support. Funded by voluntary contributions from staff, it supports serving or retired members of staff and their families in times of trouble, illness or bereavement. Committee members give freely of their time outside working hours. They organise entertainment, holiday accommodation and social events and consistently offer support to those who need it, often in very difficult circumstances.

  13.  Other staff orientated awards are reflected in the very personal nature of individual nominations that describe the extreme pressures that some staff have worked under in the past. Thus an award for outstanding development of a drug treatment programme to Cyrus McCormick of Hydebank Wood. Despite serving in some of the most highly charged areas and surviving a vicious assault, he remained totally dedicated to his work. He used the opportunity of formulating a drugs strategy to introduce an imaginative, incentive-based drugs-free environment. Raising the remarkable sum of £157,000 enabled him to develop a partnership with Opportunity Youth which provided one-to-one help and drugs education inside the Centre and an individual support package and sustained contact with young offenders on release.

  14.  Other themes include working with specific crimes in the community such as the car crime initiative of IMPACT, the Inclusive Model of Partnership Against Car Theft. This was a multi-agency community initiative aimed at engaging persistent offenders committing car crimes against their own communities and diverting them into more socially acceptable behaviour. Accredited programmes of prevention in schools, diversion in the community and intervention in custody are still delivered through individual and group work. Based in West Belfast, the project team required extraordinary skills to involve all social and political groups. Over the last five years some outstanding results have been achieved including a marked decline in car theft. The Trust helped to publicise and establish this work as mainstream for the future.

  15.  Creating a culture of respect and consideration for all those affected by crime is an increasing concern of prison staff in Northern Ireland. This is nowhere more exemplified than in Magilligan where an award was given to Principal Officer AP Wilson who developed strong community links and challenged negative stereotypes of prisons in Northern Ireland. The restoration of derelict buildings in Limavady by prisoners who were "courteous and proud of their work" was only one of many community and environmental improvement projects to benefit the local area economically and socially. He has developed restorative justice processes within the prison so that victims of crime have been helped to move on in their lives by prisoners taking fuller responsibility for their crimes. Through this excellent work a wider strategy for developing restorative processes is being developed for the whole service in Northern Ireland.

  16.  The Butler Trust has considerable experience of working with prison staff in their demanding work with prisoners which is rarely recognised or celebrated. Working with Northern Ireland's prisons and prisoners has been taking place over the years with some success. We make the following recommendations:

    —  Staff development should play a higher profile in prisons than it does now. Our staff are the least trained of European prison staff with current training programmes being reduced. The commitment to staff development, leadership programmes and similar life-long learning systems should be part and parcel of the Prison Service's approach to its staff to get the most from them and to develop work in prisons which reflects current thinking about criminality.

    —  Prisons should be encouraged to share good practice. There tends to be a more competitive culture in prisons than before.

    —  Similarly, greater partnership working with other criminal justice agencies such as the police and probation services is to be encouraged. Some of the best schemes recognised by the Trust have involved this approach.

    —  Diversity in prisons has been a cause of much attention lately and the experience of those working most effectively in this area should be more widely applied.

Anne Fragniere

Director, The Butler Trust

23 April 2007





 
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