Written evidence from Home Group (PB 82)
1.0 HOME GROUP
Home Group is one of England's largest registered
providers of affordable rented housing. We house over 110,000
people in our general needs and supported housing stock. Stonham
is part of Home Group and leads on providing specialist care and
support services dealing with many client groups. Starting with
500 beds for ex-offenders in 1976, we have since grown to become
the largest provider of care and support services in England.
We believe this unique mix gives us a broad understanding of working
with offenders in a wider community setting at both a local and
national level. Within Stonham we work with over 22,000 vulnerable
people in over 140 local authority areas each year. We provide
housing, care, support and employment, training and education
opportunities to people who:
— have
a history of offending;
— have
mental health issues or a learning disability;
— are
under 25 and who are vulnerable or at risk;
— are
fleeing domestic abuse; and
— are
vulnerable for some other reason.
Our portfolio of services for ex-offenders is broad.
We work with over 3,300 ex-offenders each year in 75 accommodation-based
settings and 19 floating support (non-residential) services commissioned
by local authorities, probation trusts and the Ministry of Justice
(MoJ) through our Accommodation and Support Services for Bail
and Home Detention Curfew (BASS) contract.
We have highly specialised knowledge of the particular
issues faced by young offenders and women offenders, and how tackling
these issues appropriately not only delivers sustainable outcomes
but can also minimise other costs to the public purse (for example,
reducing the number of children being taken into care). We understand
the importance of both support and compliance and can evidence
successful outcomes. For example between April 2009 and march
2010:
— Only
12% of offenders in our services returned to prison in this period;
— 78%
of offenders complied with their statutory orders;
— 82%
of offenders managed their mental health better;
— 87%
of offenders became more integrated into their local community
and engaged with groups;
— 24%
of offenders participated in paid work; and
— 66%
of offenders participated in training and voluntary activity in
preparation for work.
This document highlights our stance on the role of
the private and voluntary sectors in delivering probation services.
2.0 SUMMARY OF
MAIN POINTS
This main points of the document are summarised below:
— Home
has had a positive experience from winning the BASS contract commissioned
by the MoJ. It has broadened our knowledge of probation services
and improved outcomes for our clients.
— There
is a role for the private and voluntary sectors in delivering
probation services. This is likely to relate to the compliance
and enforcement roles of the probation services.
— Handling
different offender groups appropriately is vital in acting to
reduce reoffending rates.
— We
support the use of payment by results models and we are already
successfully integrating them into our services.
3.0 THE ROLE
OF THE
PRIVATE AND
VOLUNTARY SECTORS
IN THE
DELIVERY OF
PROBATION SERVICES
Home views the integration of the private and voluntary
sectors in delivering probation services as a positive step. The
private and voluntary sectors can deliver the compliance and enforcement
role present in probation services, and Home is an organisation
that has the experience to do so. Home can demonstrate this through
our BASS contract and 94 other offender services. These schemes
illustrate how Home has a vast experience of working with offenders
offering support to those on community based sentences and those
released on home detention curfew. Home enhances the delivery
of probation services through our key objective—supporting
offenders to build better resettlement outcomes. 87% of the offenders
we support become more integrated into their local community and
engaged with groups. Home is particularly suited to working in
partnership with the MoJ due to the access we have to accommodation
and our offers of an integrated support plans.
Prior to the BASS contract, Home had little interaction
and knowledge of courts. Through BASS contract has broadened our
knowledge of the probation system which has acted to improve our
ex-offender support services. BASS has enabled Home to contribute
to sentence plans and we now believe that we can be seen as a
probation function and a vital element in helping the Government
"break the cycle" of offending.
3.1 Private and Voluntary sectors—Payment
by results
In addition, Home believes that through the combination
of private and voluntary sectors with payment by results initiatives,
the financial strength and level of innovation required to deliver
probation services can be achieved.
Our Atlas service, jointly commissioned by the local
authority and Probation Trust in Gloucestershire is a payment-by-results
individual budget service for prison leavers. Each prisoner leaving
HMP Eastwood Park receives support, brokerage and a small pot
of money to aid resettlement. This voluntary scheme has had an
overwhelming reaction from offenders on release, supporting four
times the anticipated level. As a result of the Atlas project,
70 offenders have successfully resettled into the local community
and been supported to access private rented sector accommodation
and a life away from crime. This innovative and successful model
could be rolled out at low cost across the prison estate and deliver
reductions in reoffending rates.
4.0 THE HANDLING
OF DIFFERENT
GROUPS OF
OFFENDERS BY
THE PROBATION
SERVICE
Offenders need to be treated as individuals in order
to improve the chances of successful rehabilitation. Different
offender groups have specific issues connected to them which need
to be readdressed to reduce the risk of reoffending. Below there
different offender groups are highlighted, and an explanation
is provided as to how Home tailors their support.
4.1 Women
When dealing with female offenders alternatives to
custody and tough Community Orders are of particular value. These
alternatives can help prevent the children who we know are at
a greater risk of being taken into care from ending up in the
criminal justice system. The Corston Report (2007) in particular
has highlighted the need to alter how women offenders are addressed
and supported. From this report, we have used the findings to
work innovatively and improve our services for women.
Our specialist services such as Promise in Plymouth
have excellent results in reducing future demand on services.
We have supported 23 out of 25 women to successfully complete
Community Orders in the first six months. Our Family Intervention
Projects in Hampshire and Norfolk also evidence how intensive
support can deliver real decreases in reoffending rates for families
with offending histories. A national expansion of these programmes
will deliver significant decreases in custodial costs, decreases
in the number of children taken into care and the associated costs,
and deliver significant respite to communities blighted by low
level and petty crime.
Consideration should also be given to women who offend
and have complex needs, including very high levels of drug and
alcohol abuse, often linked to domestic abuse and sex-working.
We believe that a different approach is required for women offenders,
focused on specialist support around mental and emotional health.
We operate 38 refuges and a further 19 projects for vulnerable
mothers and children. Often our clients are women with an offending
history and chaotic behaviour; they enter these services due to
the lack of a more suitable alternative. We believe this places
a high degree of risk on other clients in these services and in
the wider community and would welcome the opportunity to work
with MOJ colleagues to pilot alternative approaches such as supported,
semi-secure housing in the community. This would be supported
by basing staff in courts or in partnerships with Integrated Offender
Management (IOM) to engage with women at an early stage.
Home is currently integrating this work into our
BASS contract, recognising that women on Home Detention Curfew
(HDC) have different support needs than men. Home would be in
favour of more open debate between the private and voluntary sectors
and the probation trust to increase innovation and flexibility
when handling different groups of offenders.
4.2 Young people
From our perspective as the biggest provider of foyers
for young people in the country, we are convinced that developing
more semi-secure foyers is a step in the right direction when
dealing with young offenders. We see education, training and resettlement
as the key objectives to reduce young people reoffending. With
75% of young offenders in custody reoffending after 12 months,
there is much room for improvement. The focus of the private and
voluntary sectors on the individual as opposed to the offence
is key in developing the way in which young offenders are managed
in probation services.
4.3 Older people
We also believe that older offenders, particularly
those who have been on high tariffs, present with specific issues
and their rehabilitation requires a specific approach to help
them learn to live in a noninstitutionalised setting. Often rehousing
these ex-offenders directly into a community setting is not successful
as they do not have the tenancy management skills required to
manage independent living. This could be overcome through the
use of tenancy training within the prison establishment such as
our Home Achievement Programme (HAP).
In addition to pre-release pre-tenancy training,
we also believe there is a need for tiered support and accommodation
for a small cohort of older offenders, especially those on life
licence, who have been in prison for many years. Their risk of
offending is higher due to their institutionalisation and a step-down
approach, similar to that delivered in mental health settings
(where step-down accommodation is the route between secure wards
and independent living in the community) will be beneficial.
5.0 THE RELATIVE
MERITS OF
PAYMENT BY
RESULTS AND
PLACE-BASED
BUDGETING MODELS
AS MEANS
TO ENCOURAGE
LOCAL STATUTORY
PARTNERSHIPS AND
OTHER AGENCIES
TO REDUCE
RE -OFFENDING
Home supports the use of payment by results and place-based
budgeting models in relation to encouraging local statutory partnerships
and other agencies to reduce re-offending. We envisage that these
models will have to be tailored to different groups of offenders
in order to be successful, or alternatively be flexible enough
to allow movement to address individual issues eg different models
will apply to low and high tariff offenders.
Home does agree that payment by results and focusing
on outcomes as oppose outputs will free up providers to deliver
more innovative solutions. However, in order to ensure the diversity
of the market, careful thought needs to be given to the phasing
of payments. Smaller and community-based organisations will be
unable to survive financially without payments for a two-year
period, leaving only larger and private sector organisations able
to compete for contracts.
Home is already incorporating payment by results
services into our portfolio, for example our Education Training
Employment and Volunteering (ETEV) and drug and alcohol service
in Worchester.
In operation since April 2011, the service offers
free and confidential support for individuals and ex-offenders
with problematic drug or alcohol use. Support is provided either
through supported accommodation, floating support or through a
drop-in service. Support is provided for those in any tier of
substance misuse treatment, with the aim of sustaining the support
for 13 weeks. The purpose of this Drug and Alcohol Action Team
(DAAT) commissioned service is to increase the number of service
users who are supported to access and sustain education, training,
employment and volunteering opportunities.
The service is a combination of a payment by results
contract and supporting people contract. For year 1 80% of payment
is fixed with 20% dependent on results; in year two this balance
changes to 70%/30% and in year three and subsequent years, payments
are made on a 60%/40% basis. The "by results" element
is based on profiling of achievement towards outcomes via agreed
indicators. Providers can choose from a basket of between five
and 20 indicators to be assessed on for this variable element.
If four out of five selected outcomes are achieved, 4/5 of the
20% payment is paid to the provider. However, if the provider
selects 20 outcomes to be measured against and achieves 18/20,
then 18/20 of the 20% is paid. This enables providers to balance
their own risk and focus on achievement of outcomes that they
are confident they can deliver.
6.0 CONCLUSION
We believe that this approach would enable the Government
to reduce re-offending rates, "break the cycle" and
ultimately embed localism through small, medium and large providers
of services.
May 2011
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