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In this edition:-
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Ministry of Justice Organisational Review – update
On 20 February 2008 Phil Wheatley and Helen Edwards provided further information as to how the Ministry of Justice restructure would impact on staff in the current NOMS and Prison Service headquarters, as well as for the staff in the Office for Criminal Justice Reform (OCJR). From April 1 2008:
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A new Criminal Justice Group, led by Helen Edwards, would be formed in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to lead on strategic criminal justice and offender management and policy issues across the Criminal Justice System, setting the legal, strategic policy and performance management framework within which the Agency will operate.
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The operational delivery aspects of NOMS and the Prison Service would be merged to create a re-structured NOMS Agency led by Phil Wheatley.
Subsequently, the Director level posts within both NOMS Agency and the Criminal Justice and Offender Management Strategy Directorate have been announced.
The restructure also impacts on the future of commissioning within the organisation. There will be a Director of Offender Management (DOM) post in each English region and Wales (combining the Area Manager and Regional Offender Manager roles) to commission custodial and community services at regional and local levels. DOMs have already been appointed in London and Wales and it is anticipated that over the next twelve to twenty four months a DOM will be appointed in the remaining regions.
As of 1 June 2008 Regional Offender Managers will assume responsibility for Probation performance and HMPS Area Managers will continue to be responsible for public sector prisons’ performance. The authority for contracted prisons, both operated by private providers and those sites operated by HMPS under
commercial Service Level Agreements, will transfer to the Office for National Commissioning (ONC), led by Michelle Jarman-Howe, except where appointed Directors are in post (i.e. Wales, London and the High Security Estate). This is a transitional arrangement and the authority will transfer back to each region at the point when DOMs are appointed.
Future editions of the bulletin will provide updates as more details emerge. |
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Since our second bulletin, things again have moved on in a number of areas. We have appointed an Administrator for the Academy, Vivienne Ahmad, who comes to us with a wealth of experience in the public sector from the Home Office, NHS and Charity sector to the Academy for Justice Commissioning.
She has already started compiling a list of courses on commissioning and has made contacts with various organisations such as the Learning Skills Council, NHS Connecting to Health and Young People’s services in East Midlands and so on.
Vivienne has taken over managing the bulletin and will publish an annual programme of events by taking over the seminars from September 2008 onwards. Seminar information can be seen at the end of this bulletin. She has also started examining the requirements for our first Academy Conference to be held in February 2009 in the West Midlands.
We are preparing to form a Senate by recruiting
board members. A constitution is being set up with a set of agreed rules governing how the Academy will run, how the members will work together and what they are working towards. |
With the ongoing development of national
standards for justice commissioning, the
Academy held a meeting on 15 April with major
players including National School of Government,
Office of Government Commerce, Government
Skills and Skills for Justice. Discussion included
how other sectors have progressed on developing
national standards and to develop a set of
competencies for justice commissioning. Please
see page 17 for further details.
We are progressing very well with our website
and have attached additional links and
information including an interview with our guest
editor for this bulletin, Alison Liebling.
WE ARE ALWAYS KEEN TO HEAR FROM YOU
AND WELCOME YOUR INPUT INTO FUTURE
BULLETINS AND EVENTS. TO CONTACT US
OR REQUEST INDIVIDUAL MEMBERSHIP OF
THE ACADEMY (ENABLING EARLY
NOTIFICATION OF EVENTS AND ACCESS TO
BULLETINS) EMAIL US AT:
academy@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk |
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In some quarters the debate about commissioning
being little more than some form of polished
procurement lingers on. Eventually, one hopes, the penny will drop all round.
The long-term, strategic activity by which service
needs are assessed and then appropriate services
specified, secured and monitored is, of course,
rather more elaborate. And it needs to be
sophisticated if it is to be done really well.
This means that commissioners and providers alike
need to have knowledge, skills and understanding
that go far beyond the general mechanics of
procurement and contracting. An in-depth
understanding of the climate and environment in
which services are to be provided is a paramount
need. As is an appreciation of the issues and factors that can be critical to both success and failure.
Dr Alison Liebling is our guest editor in this edition of the bulletin, giving its content this time a distinct ‘corrections’ flavour. She highlights some of the recent work of the Prisons Research Centre at Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology. |
Issues such as values and practices, and what
makes senior management teams successful, as
well as reducing re-offending rates of Young
Offenders, are vital to understand if good
commissioned services in corrections are to flourish.
Read on.
Dr John Graham
Academy for Justice Commissioning Executive
Group
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Alison Liebling
Institute of
Criminology,
University of
Cambridge |
Cambridge University Institute of Criminology’s Prisons Research Centre held its Annual Steering Group meeting and research conference in April 2008 and published its Annual Report to coincide with this event. This bulletin summarises some of the activities of the Centre and refers to some of the research currently being undertaken by its members. For the first time, we invited a broader audience to our annual Steering Group meeting, and attempted to organise our presentations thematically. The main reasons for this were to communicate the findings to a wide range of senior managers, and to engage with an expert external audience on the implications of our work. We hope to repeat the exercise in 2009 and would be happy to receive expressions of interest from those who would like to attend.
The Prisons Research Centre was formally established in 2000, with modest funding of £18,200 from the Prison Service. The Centre’s aims were to develop a new generation of prison researchers – to enhance capacity, and to provide a stimulating research environment in which a coherent strategy of research could be facilitated. Since its inception, the Centre has generated funding of more than £1 million, and has seen several research projects as well as PhDs through to completion. We hope that the long-term and integrated nature of the work being conducted is providing ‘added value’ to the prisons research community.
Whilst we have always drawn the majority of our funding from sources outside the Prison Service, one of the very useful pieces of advice our Steering Group members gave us at a previous meeting was to diversify our sources of research income further. This has been achieved, so that our two largest projects, on ‘values, practices and outcomes in public and private sector corrections’, and on ‘project cascade’ (a study of a staff transformation initiative in secure institutions for young people) are funded by the ESRC and KPMG respectively. We continue to work closely with Standards Audit Unit, advising on the development and interpretation of the MQPL (Measuring the Quality of Prison Life) survey, and we hope to revise the quality of life questionnaire next year to take account of some newly emerging dimensions of prison life arising in our ongoing research projects, as prison life, prison sentences, and the management of prisons change.
One aspect of the work of the Centre I am particularly pleased by is the increasing focus on prison officers as key agents in prison life. Several of the team (in particular, myself and David Price, and Helen Arnold) have looked explicitly at officers at their best, but have also in various ways and to different degrees explored what happens when prison work goes wrong (for example, in Sarah Tait’s PhD on culture and care). Together these projects
provide an important framework for thinking about the recruitment, training and socialisation of prison officers, as well as raising larger questions about the use of discretion and authority, mechanisms of accountability and the management of prison staff by both the public and the private sector. The SQL, a prison staff version of the MQPL, is now out there somewhere, and several PRC members are making good use of it in their own research projects. We hope to carry out some further analyses of links between the
prisoner experience and staff perceptions of their quality of life in the near future. That work will be led by Clare McLean and Vicky Gadd.
There have been some interesting requests to us to use versions of the MQPL survey in other jurisdictions, including Norway, Sweden, America, Australia and recently, Israel. We are encouraging translations and comparisons, as well as on-going dialogue about the use of appreciative inquiry, the experience of prison in different jurisdictions or among, for
example, Aboriginal populations, the role of the prison officer, and the direction of penal policy elsewhere. So our collaborations with others are growing.
We are in discussions with our colleagues in Scotland about the possibility of extending our public-private sector research north of the border, and we have tried to respond to ad hoc requests from the Prison Service to host seminars, for example, on professional standards and ‘Titan’ prisons, to visit prisons experiencing high numbers of suicides, to conduct ad hoc surveys, or attend and speak at Area conferences about our work. We find these events stimulating, and it is always encouraging to find interested audiences for
our ideas. We have to balance this proximity with a certain critical distance and continued objectivity, of course, and I hope that we are getting that balance right. So we look forward to continuing dialogue and discussions of emerging research evidence with those of you working in the field.
Alison Liebling
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Alison Liebling, Ben Crewe, Clare McLean,
Susie Hulley and Sara Snell March 2007 -
August 2009 – funded by the ESRC
In March 2007 Alison Liebling and Ben Crewe
embarked on a three part study of ‘Values, practices and outcomes in public and private sector corrections’, with Clare McLean, Susie Hulley and Sara Snell. The study is funded by the ESRC, following a proposal submitted to their open competition. The study includes an observation and long interview study of
senior managers in public and private sector
corrections; an ethnographic and survey study of two public and two private sector prisons; and a case study of modern management reform techniques relating to performance improvement. Together, these projects
will form a detailed empirical evaluation of the
strengths and weaknesses of public and private sector management of prisons and impact of private sector values and practices on contemporary penal life, and outcomes for prisoners.
Study 1. The relationship between the characteristics, values and practices of senior managers, and outcomes in the prisons world, has never been explicitly explored, who are senior managers? How do they construe and experience their world? What are their values and priorities, and how do these values
and priorities make themselves felt at institutional level? Are there differences of emphasis between the public and the private sector, and if so, how do these |
differences shape management practices, staff
approaches to their work, or the prison experience for prisoners?
The aims of this part of the study are:
- To generate insight into the criminal justice power elite and the effects, if any, of private sector entry into criminal justice work.
- To map out the organising ideas and principles of senior managers in the public and the private sector and to explore how these ideas work at establishment level.
- To determine whether utilitarian, vocational, and public service objectives and aspirations are distributed differently among public and private sector personnel, with what effects on delivery, and via what mechanisms.
- To discover what social, moral and cultural
contexts frame contemporary prison life.
46 interviews have been conducted to date.
Study 2. The second part of the research is an
ethnographic study of two public and two private
prisons. The aim of this part of the research is to
investigate the differences between public and private sector establishments (and between companies) in terms of practices, ideologies and cultures, at a number of organisational levels and along a range of dimensions. |
| Current research suggests that contractual obligations and incentives, institutional aspirations, and staff ideologies differ in each sector, in ways that have complex and inter-related effects on culture, quality and performance. Likewise, managers may manage,prioritise and communicate differently in each sector. It is important to understand the basis on which they do so, how their commitments and practices influence and coincide with those of uniformed staff, and the effects on the everyday and post-release lives of prisoners. This study is well underway, with the fieldwork in the third main establishment due for completion in May 2008. In addition to observation and interviews, a revised version of the MQPL questionnaire, adapted in the light of emerging themes, has been used in each establishment.
Study 3. on a new performance improvement technique, is under development. We are looking for an interesting case study (perhaps a clustering exercise, or a policy decision on new builds) to observe. |
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Alison Liebling, Caroline Lanskey, Deb Drake
and Joel Harvey November 2006 – July 2008 – Funded by the KPMG Foundation
The final phase of data collection is currently
underway in the evaluation of a Youth at Risk staff transformation programme: ‘Project Cascade’. The year-long training intervention was launched in Medway Secure Training Centre in March 2007 and in the Juvenile side of Feltham Young Offenders Institution in October of the same year. According to Youth at Risk, staff who participate in the training will ‘find new ways to work with the young people in their
care’, which will ‘reduce conflict, restraint and
animosity between the young people and staff and ultimately improve the life chances of young people leaving custody’.
The Programme has three strands:
1) A two and a half day intensive residential course for a group of up to 35 staff, some of whom would be selected as ‘cascade leaders’ to deliver the training to the rest of the staff in the institution.
2) The cascade of the programme to the remaining staff in each institution in eight or nine modules, one per month. |
3) Approximately eight days of group training and
twelve months of individual coaching to support the ‘cascade leaders’ with the delivery of the training modules and with their own personal development.
The programme is being evaluated by means of:
1) A ‘before and after study’ to measure the quality of life in the establishments prior to and after the intervention. This has consisted of:
- Measuring the Quality of Prison Life (MQPL)
Surveys delivered to staff and young people in each institution
- Institutional data, such as, on use of force,
numbers of complaints, bullying reports, staff sickness collected for the same six-month period over two consecutive years.
2) A process study to follow the implementation of the programme and staff and young people’s
responses to it. This has included:
- Observations of the residential course and
institutional training sessions
- Interviews with the ‘cascade leaders’ and other staff attending the training.
- Observations of the daily routine in each
establishment and the interactions between staff and young people.
- Interviews with young people about the impact of their experience of custody during their time at the institution and with a small ‘follow-up’ sample a few weeks after their release.
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3) A comparative study to gain a more detailed understanding of the working context of Young
Offenders Institutions and Secure Training Centres. This has involved the distribution of MQPL surveys to staff and young people at Rainsbrook STC and Huntercombe YOI.
Data are currently being collected for the final phase of the before and after study at Medway and will commence in Feltham in May. The research team will be analysing this data for evidence of the impact of the Youth at Risk training at an institutional level: on policies and practices and on the quality of life of staff and young people. This data will also be considered alongside reports from individual young people about their experiences in each institution order to assess the programme’s aim to improve the life chances of young people on leaving custody.
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Victoria Gadd
Despite management practices arguably being one of the most important factors influencing the quality of a prison, very little is known about prison management and its impacts, both on the establishment and the individuals within it. As Bryans (2000) states ‘it is only when we understand how prisons are governed and by
whom that we will have a better insight into life behind bars’ (pp.15).
“Studies of prison management are few and far
between” and this is an area “in need of much further empirical study” (Liebling, 2004:376). Of those studies that have been conducted, few have focused on the British penal system, and to date no systematic empirical study has considered senior management teams in any detail. DiIulio concluded from his exploratory study of correctional institutions in three US states, that ‘prison management may be the single most important determinant in the quality of prison life’ (1987:255) and that ‘poor prison and jail conditions are produced by poor prison and jail management; cruel and unusual conditions are the product of failed management’ (1991:12). If management are indeed as important as DiIulio argues, then it is timely in the current performance climate of market testing and contestability that the question of what makes a good SMT is posed. What values, attitudes and practices do they embody and can these attributes be disseminated more widely across establishments in order to improve practice?
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To date no equivalent volume to DiIulio’s (1987)
‘Governing Prisons’ exists in the UK and no study has systematically and extensively studied management teams as a unit. Bryans (2000) analysis of governing governors is informative and influential but only considers the one individual who publicly leads the establishment. Indeed Bryans highlights the need for ‘further research looking at prison governance from a
team perspective’ (p.186) as ‘insufficient attention has been paid to the development of management groups within prisons (Newell, T. 2003: 21, as cited in Bryans 2000). It would be timely, interesting and useful therefore to consider in more detail the characteristics,
working practices and attitudes of senior managers in public sector prisons.
The current study aims to provide a systematic and detailed investigation into what constitutes an effective and successful senior management team. It will consider how senior management teams operate, how they differ, why they differ and whether their effectiveness can be quantified. I will use innovative and exploratory methods to investigate the attitudes, approaches, values, motivations and backgrounds of senior management teams in contemporary correctional establishments.
This study involves intensive observation and
shadowing of the SMT at two public sector
establishments (HMP Guys Marsh and HMP
Wandsworth) noted for their innovative management structure and methods. This is being followed by appreciative interviews with the senior managers and the area manager. I assess the views of prison staff by conducting focus groups and quality of life surveys. In
order to triangulate the results further I am completing
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Myers-Briggs and Belbin Team Role type tests with the SMT at each establishment. Once the fieldwork is complete I will be designing a questionnaire to measure the attitudes, working practices, professional orientations and relationships among senior managers and assess quantitatively the themes and constructs
produced by the qualitative investigation. The
questionnaire will be piloted at five establishments that were not part of the original fieldwork in order to test its reliability and validity as a measure of senior management style and composition. Once revised it will be distributed to all the SMT members who took
part in the original fieldwork as well as to a sample of other establishments. The revised questionnaire should form a valid and reliable descriptive measure of senior management team style and characteristics.
Bryans (2000) notes that ‘research based solely on managers’ accounts of what they do is necessary but not sufficient. There is a need to analyse how they act, through, for example, participant observation (Lawton 1998) and future researchers should consider such a
methodological approach’ (p. 186). By studying only the ‘best’ teams there is more chance of openness, and of identifying examples of good practice.
Fieldwork began in August 2007. To date I have
completed the research at HMP Guys Marsh and I am currently partway though my investigations at HMP Wandsworth. |
Other research being conducted at the PRC includes a study of quality of life and prisoner well-being in public and private sector prisons (Clare McLean), a study of therapeutic communities (Guy Shefer), and a comparative study of prison officers in the UK and the
Ukraine (Anton Symkovych).
For those interested in reading further, here are a few relevant references:
Liebling, A; assisted by Arnold, H. (2004) Prisons and their Moral Performance: A Study of Values, Quality and Prison Life Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Liebling, A., Tait, S., Stiles, A., and Durie, L (2005) ‘Revisiting Prison Suicide: the role of fairness and distress’, in A. Liebling and S. Maruna (Eds.) The Effects of Imprisonment, Willan, Cullompton.
Arnold, H., Liebling, A. and Tait, S (2007) 'Prison
Officers and Prison Culture', in Y. Jewkes (ed)
Handbook on Prisons. Cullopmton: Willan Publishing.
Liebling, A and S. Tait (2007) Improving staff-prisoner relationships, in G. Dear (ed) Preventing Suicide and other self-harm in prison. New York: Palgrave.
Crewe, B. (2005) ‘The Prisoner Society in the Era of Hard Drugs’, Punishment and Society, 7(4): 457-481.
The PRC’s Annual Report is available from Ann
Phillips, on amp57@cam.ac.uk or Alison Liebling on al115@cam.ac.uk.
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Understanding Prison Staff
Edited by Jamie Bennett, Ben Crewe and
Azrini Wahidin - Willan Publishing
During discussions among the Prison Service Journal editorial team about whether to commission a second edition of Alison Liebling and David Price’s The Prison Officer, it was suggested that it might be worthwhile to
consider a separate publication on prison staff in
general i.e. not just officers, but the range of personnel who work within the prison system. The outcome, Understanding Prison Staff, is an attempt to provide a comprehensive, accessible guide to contemporary issues and concerns facing the range of prison staff. It includes chapters from highly-established and up-andcoming researchers doing research within the field, plus a number of practitioners and one former prisoner.
The book is divided into five sections: ‘prisons and staff issues’, which includes chapters on ‘the
experiences of black and minority ethnic prison staff’ and prison staff in the public and private sector’; ‘prison officers’, which has chapters on issues such as ‘industrial relations in prisons’, and ‘pain, punishment and prison officers’; ‘prison managers’, including |
chapters on ‘prison governors: new public
managers’ and ‘the role of middle and front-line
managers’; ‘prison staff’, with contributions on
probation staff, teachers, psychologists, drug
workers and health professionals; and ‘developing
the human resources of prisons’, which looks at
issues of recruitment, training and development of
prison staff. Many of these areas have received very little academic scrutiny until now, despite their growing importance in the practices of modern imprisonment. This book hopes to provide
considerable insight into the variety, value and
complexity of all kinds of prison work, and to provide a starting point for further research in these areas.
Further details on the book can be found
through the following web-link:
http://www.willanpublishing.co.uk/cgibin/
indexer?product=9781843922742
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| East of England Test Bed Project |
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Following the production of the Government document ‘Reducing Re-offending Through Skills and Employment: Next Steps’, the East of England was chosen as one of the two Test Bed areas to work on an initiative which aims to help offenders develop skills and secure jobs, thus reducing the number of re-offenders. The other selected region was is the West Midlands. The Test Bed will be working with employers to improve understanding of the skills they need and any help and support that is required by them to employ offenders. Test Bed and will also be looking to develop the skills on offer for offenders to meet both their needs and those of potential employers.
The Test Bed partnership project involves the National Offender Management Services, Prison and Probation Services, the Learning & Skills Council, Jobcentre Plus and all providers and will run until March 2009. The first phase of the project has been completed and the team, headed co-ordinated by Project Manager, Diana
Edwards, is moving forward onto the second phase.
So what has been achieved during the first phase of the Test Bed? Well strong bonds have been formed with employers and a regional Employer Leadership Group, chaired by Stephen Bourne CEO, Cambridge University Press, is working together to gain insight into employers’ views on supporting and employing offenders with the aim of developing a strategy for future employer engagement.
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To further support employer engagement, the Test Bed will be funding Business in the Community (BITC) to run a further ‘Seeing is believing’ events between May and September 2008. These events take groups of employers into prisons to see, at first hand, the education and training which prisoners receive. The employers are then asked how they might support the prison e.g. by offering work placements or providing interview practice. We will also be arranging a community event which will enable employers to see first hand the types of activity offenders undertake as part of their unpaid work requirement.
A successful meeting has been held with some of the region’s key Sector Skills Councils to enable the Test Bed to gain support for the work of the project. One of the Test Bed projects is developing links with employers in the hospitality and construction sectors. Initially these have been to arrange work placements and jobs for prisoners from HMP Wayland and Hollesley Bay. However, the Sector Skills Councils will be able to help us develop this work further by advising on relevant skills and qualifications and brokering support from employers. We will also be able to develop the project further to encompass other
sectors and other prisons within the region.
It is important that prisoners have access to good careers guidance and we have two projects underway to support this. The first is developing a model within prisons for joined-up induction and work allocation. The second project is helping each prison in the region to achieve cross-prison Matrix Accreditation.
Matrix is a quality standard for the delivery of advice and guidance, usually held by individual
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organisations. Under Test Bed all of the organisations within a prison apply jointly for the Matrix Standard.
We want to raise awareness of the mainstream
provision which is available for offenders and to that end NOMS national office is helping us develop better links between Probation and Jobcentre Plus. Events will be run to look at the offender journey from both perspectives, show-case existing good practice, review the range of provision available and identify where the intervention points are.
Within the community we are also developing various strands of activity. We are looking at ways to increase the range of employers offering unpaid work, including public sector, so that it offers more opportunities to develop skills. We also aim to develop offender consultation arrangements to ensure that offenders’
feedback is incorporated into the design and delivery of services provided for them.
Finally, vital work has started to develop an
employability compact which will set out what an
offender needs to achieve and what returns they will receive. The compact will be trialed in three of the region’s Probation areas, Suffolk, Essex, and Cambridgeshire and in HMP Hollesley Bay, Edmunds Hill, Wayland and Littlehey.
Test Bed Project Manager, Diana Edwards, said “the development phase of the East of England Test Bed has been completed and we now move with confidence into the delivery phase where we will continue to work closely with all of our partners.” |
Further information on the work of the Test Bed can be obtained by speaking to Diana Edwards, the Test Bed Project Manager, on Tel: 01733 425 235 or Joy Cradick, the Test Bed Communications Adviser, on Tel: 01733 425 222. |
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This article first appeared in Commissioning News, issue 11, March/April 2008. Published by CJ Wellings on behalf of The Centre for Public Innovation. www.publicinnovation.org.uk
A scheme to drive up standards in
strategic Commissioning has been
announced by the Improvement and
Development Agency.
The Beacon Scheme, set up by IDeA and the
Department for Communities and Local
Government to share best practice in service
delivery among councils, will launch its
strategic commissioning theme on 4 March.
The topic is one of 12 themes selected to
represent “issues important in the day-to-day
lives of the public” as well as to reflect key
government priorities.
In addition, IDeA are stressing the importance
of linked strategic objectives and the use
of a variety of delivery options through contracting, grants, partnerships, asset-transfer,
behavioural change and co-production with
users and local communities.
IDeA will be hosting a series of events across
the country throughout March to promote the
theme. Events have proved popular in the past
and the agency say that places are allocated on a first-come first-served basis. |
The application brochure will be published on
4 March on the Beacons website. This will set
out the commissioning theme’s application
criteria and give supporting information. The
closing date is Friday 29 June 2008.
See: www.beacons.idea.gov.uk. |
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This article first appeared in Commissioning News, issue 10, December/January 2008. Published by CJ Wellings on behalf of The Centre for Public Innovation. www.publicinnovation.org.uk
Treading a new path with Chris Bull –
working in the first post of its kind as joint
chief executive of Herefordshire Council
and Herefordshire PCT under plans to
create a single ‘public service trust’
through a merger of local government and
health functions
The Commissioning news interviewed Mr Bull back in December 2007 just when he was about to move from Southwark Council to start work in Herefordshire.
Q: What attracted you to the Hertfordshire post?
CB: Two things – firstly and self-evidently, the job itself. I think it is an incredible exciting job, and a fantastic opportunity to think about public services and how we can get better outcomes for people by joining things up.
Secondly, its Herefordshire the place, I think it is really beautiful and I am quite excited to be going there.
Q: How will you manage the differences between inner city Southwark and rural Herefordshire?
CB: They are clearly different places. The population is certainly older and the cost and quality of social care are real issues for Herefordshire. But interestingly, the really big challenges are common across all public
services – achieving efficiency, understanding how services impact in terms of outcomes for people, and |
managing resources. The important task for me is to make sure the solutions we reach in Herefordshire make sense in Herefordshire – you cannot just take and implant solutions from London.
Q: How do you feel about working in the national spotlight given the pioneering model in Herefordshire?
CB: Of course it is right that people are going to be interested in how this job progresses and how I do, and it is important to contribute to a national debate and to make sure that we both learn from others and offer learning to others. But my focus is going to be on doing what is right for Herefordshire.
Q: What do you consider to be your biggest
achievement in Southwark?
CB: The work I did in bringing together health and social care in Southwark is probably my biggest achievement. I previously held the joint post of director of social services and chief executive of Southwark PCT (managing budgets totally £520m) and I think the level of service integration we achieved is something which we can be proud of. Just as one example, as I
look out of my window now, I can see a brand new child development centre, in a building built by the PCT through LIFT ( the NHS public-private investment scheme for primary and community care facilities). It is a single building offering an integral service delivered by various health and social care professionals for
children with learning disabilities.
Q: Commissioning currently has a high profile,
particularly with the Department of Health’s plans. Do you believe commissioning is an art or a science? |
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CB: Commissioning never stands still and will continue to develop along a continuum. Fundamentally, it is about understanding need, resources levels and the best practice in meeting needs within resources, and it is about partnership between commissioners and
providers. It is not just about procurement and
purchasing – although that is part of it – it is about squaring that circle of needs, resources and best practice.
Q: how well do you think commissioning is being
carried out?
CB: I think we can always do better, but I also think that there is no end point to this. We are always trying to get better at understanding needs and what interventions really do improve outcomes. I do not think we should beat ourselves up over whether we have been good or not – it is a developing process.
Q: What is your view on contestability of public
services?
CB: I think it is a useful tool. I think we have got past the point where we start from the assumption that everything has to be provided directly, but equally we should not assume that other forms of provision are intrinsically better. I think that contestability offers an opportunity to test out value, to explore alternative ways of doing things and to improve the commissioning process. If a consequence of that is that some services end up being provided by alternative providers, well I do not have a problem with
that. |
Q: How much of a challenge do you face in bringing together health – where you get for example, autonomously working GPs and social care cultures?
CB: I think we should emphasize the things we have in common across health and local government: a commitment to public service, and a belief in wanting to achieve improvements, better services and outcomes for local people. Those are common to public services and outcomes for local people. Those are common across the piece and we need to build on those. It is important not to feed myths as well – when
I talk to GPs, they care passionately about standards of social care because it is GPs, amongst other professionals, who work with users of social care on a day to day basis. They have a role in helping improve standards of social care.
We should not set this up as a conflict. Nor is it about either sector lecturing the other. It is about us building positively on a forward-looking agenda. |
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A meeting on the National Occupational Standards
for Justice Commissioning took place on 15 April
2008 at the Civil Service Recreation Club at 1
Chadwick Street, London. There were
representatives from the National School of
Government, OGC, Government Skills and Skills for
Justice. Here is a synopsis of what took place.
Trevor introduced the first section by stating that the Academy came into existence in September 2007. The Academy is seeking to become the centre of excellence for justice commissioning, encouraging and enabling commissioners to collaborate to ensure we have the right mix of services in place, at the best price, to deliver the right public protection and reducing re-offending outcomes for the public. The Academy has established strong links with other government departments to ensure the skills developed are fully transferable across Government. The objective is to be a catalyst and agree the
standards and competencies. It would require a
template for Learning and Development around it.
Trevor also mentioned that other sectors including
Health, Local Government and Social Care for
example were making their own progress on
developing national standards. The Academy was |
pushing relevant sector skills to develop this. TW stated that 80% would be generic competencies for the …public sector and 20% for competencies relating to Justice.
The Academy is building a relationship across
providers and stakeholders. It is emphasizing a new way of delivering services. The objective is to know what has been developing in commissioning and to develop a set of competencies for justice commissioning.
- National School of Government – Jane
Grant (Head of Individual Development)
The National School of Government conducted a
series of interviews across a range of sectors about commissioning at the suggestion of Lord Victor Adebwole (a National School Board Member and Chief Executive of Turning Point). This followed on from a workshop held in August 2007 by the Strategy Unit (SU) discussing the lessons learned from the projects that had been involved in. Dr Dirk Haubrich subsequently published his findings on the SU website
and called ‘The Commissioning of Public Services: Lessons learned from the Strategy Unit Projects.
From those interviews it became clear that the term commissioning was being used across a number of different sectors and departments; health, education, transport, work and pensions and justice. It is used to describe an activity that influences, creates and shapes markets. It often includes a procurement process, but, for example in local government and |
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education this is not always the case.
Commissioning applies to services sought by the
government for provision to the citizen and provided by the public, or private or third sector.
During the interviewing process Jane Grant met
Trevor Williams and had been invited to join the
Executive Group of the Academy for Justice
Commissioning. As a member of the Executive, Jane had been asked to help identify what would be involved in creating a National Occupational
Standard (NOS) for Commissioning and broker
arrangements that would help with its development.
Jane met up with David Weaver and Nicole Suter
from Government Skills (the Sector Skills Council for Government) to discuss the potential for an
occupational standard in commissioning. Both David and Nicole said it would be helpful to set out briefly in writing the background to this request and what a NOS in commissioning might cover. Jane subsequently sent this to Government Skills and to the Executive Group. Whilst being positive about the idea of a NOS for commissioning, David could not commit at that time until he was able to clear issues of resources and priorities within Government Skills.
Jane went on to describe the National School’s
broader interest in commissioning. She explained that they were also working with the Office of the Third Sector (Cabinet Office) and IDeA on the National Programme for the Third Sector. This involved training for Finance and Procurement Professionals as well as |
developing an e-learning capability on this topic. More broadly the National School want to share best practice and differing approaches to commissioning across the sectors.
- OGC – Suzanne Strowger (Deputy
Director of Policy and Standards)
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC), an office of HM Treasury, is responsible for improving value for money by driving up standards and capability in procurement. A government strategy launched in January 2007, ‘Transforming Government Procurement’ highlighted the central importance of procurement in delivering high quality public services and best value for money. OGC is tasked with delivering the transformation, and with driving up standards and procurement capability across central Government.
Suzanne agreed with Jane on the importance of
sharing best practice in commissioning with the
procurement community. She highlighted the
commonality between commissioning and
procurement lifecycles and explained that the two
groups had been set up in central government to
examine this issue in more detail – the first being led by the Department of Work and Pensions with a wide cross government membership and the second more informal group of commercial directors brought together by OGC. Suzanne highlighted some particular issues that both commissioners and procurers would need to consider the policy and its impact on the market, fostering competition where this is needed and |
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in-house and contracted out approaches. OGC give procurement / commercial advice on these issues. Questions put forward – what are the skills needed for commissioning and procurement and being robust in commercial awareness? Is commissioning in government – procurement?
NOS are UK wide recognised statements of
competencies and behaviour. They identify the key outcomes, behaviours/skills and knowledge required for best practice. They inform operational practice, training programmes, performance management procedures etc. NOS are the basis for qualifications accreditation with NQF/SCQF, eg certificates, diplomas and further vocational qualifications. An NVQ is a work related competence based qualification; reflects skills and knowledge needed for the job; based
on NOS; transferable between sectors; and no formal entry requirements.
Who owns NOS? There are 25 sector skills that deal with NOS. What are the key tasks? What should standards of competencies require? NOS are periodically reviewed to ensure they remain up to date and fit for purpose; this will result in changes to existing units and development of new ones. The NOS for all occupational areas are available through the |
for all occupational areas are available through the NOS Directory website at www.ukstandards.org.uk. Competencies describe the skills, knowledge and understanding of that individuals require to do a task. Individual standards go into the job description and
one can mix and match.
How are skills developed for Government? There is a common need for standards that apply to all areas of Government. Government skills have been carrying out a project with a number of government departments to refresh and expand the NOS on which the L2 NVQ in Public Services is based on and the revised standards are due to be presented for approval shortly. Government Skills are working with City and Guilds and Edexcel to develop an updated NVQ and anticipate this will be accredited and available from late summer.
Government Skills have put in a bid for funding a two stage project related to commissioning. They are taking forward a larger programme of work to develop NOS that cover a broader range of operational delivery functions. It would answer the following questions: do we agree on the definition of commissioning and to review the competency framework. Is this useful or does it need developing? They are hoping to hear from UKCG by the beginning of May on whether the bid was successful or not.
Technically one cannot duplicate NOS even though they are not policed at present. Sue Hunter mentioned about the NOS Finder on the skills for justice website |
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as well as the ukstandards.org site. In the Police sector, there are 943 NOS for justice with 12 referring to commissioning.
In the future each unit on the QCF will have a credit value and level and there can be different levels of competencies for some functions. For example, a policing operation could have three NOS – a) participate, b) planning and c) leading, which would state the level of management performance. Different levels of competencies mean different units. For example, a middle manager at level three will need qualifications, therefore what units or competencies would it require?
Skills for Justice is working in partnership with
employers and other key agencies to ensure that all who work in the Justice sector are equipped with the right skills, at the right levels, to enable them to be productive, effective and efficient. By providing a coordinated
approach to skills issues, Skills for Justice
are helping to join up a number of diverse
organisations and services and overcome barriers that have hampered effective service in the past.
Skills for Justice has three main work programmes;
1) Engaging with and influencing employers, govenment departments, devolved administrations and all key partners:
2) Understanding and articulating clearly the
current and future skills needs of those working in the |
Justice sector;
3) Developing tools and services to improve the skills of the workforce, working with employers, learning providers and individuals. One of the key activities within this programme of work is developing a comprehensive framework of NOS and qualifications for all those working in all parts of the Justice sector. Another key activity is the development of Skills mark which provides a quality mark that recognises providers and endorses programmes and courses of learning.
Sue stated that the demand for NOS started four years ago in NOMS, Police and Porbation. Looked at management in justice and identified 9 justice specific management units to supplement the generic units. Sue further talked about the use of NOS for Quality Assurance. She emphasized that it is important to get
employers to see that NOS are for use in all HR
functions and that qualifications are a result of using the NOS.
For commissioning NOS and justice NOS – is this fit for purpose or not across the board? Commissioners are expert generalists and have knowledge of where to go for a specialist if required. What are the skills of commissioners? There was a wide trawl of professional bodies such as: DWP, Children’s services, NHS and Transport to see what had been done outside.
Any further developments will be reported in future bulletins. |
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We have started collating information on courses that are relevant to Commissioning which will be added to the Academy website in due course. For this edition, we include the following:
Achieving Local Commissioning Excellence
(Probation Trust Programme – NOMS) – Courses
which run for one to two days include ‘Fundamentals of Commissioning’, ‘Corporate Governance & Risk’, ‘Preparing for Commissioning’ and ‘Awarding the Contract’. Fees are £180 per module for all except for NPS and HMPS staff where there is no charge.
Contact: Arlene Munir
Tel: 0207 217 8095
Email: PTPtraining@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
MSc on Public Service Commissioning – This
course being held at the University of Birmingham
which includes a 5 day module on strategic
commissioning. UK/EU fees for 1 year full time is
£7,250 or two years full time is £3,625. They have an open day for this course on 4 July at their campus.
Contact: Sarah Smith, School of Public Policy,
University of Birmingham
Tel: 0121 414 8390
Email: s.e.smith.2@bham.ac.uk
Web: www.publicpolicy.bham.ac.uk |
Certificate of Credit in Commissioning and
Purchasing for Public Care at the Oxford Brookes University – Although the course is set in the context of guidance and legislation by the Dept of Health, it explores links between strategic commissioning, locality commissioning and the personalisation agenda. This includes two modules of two days each. Accredited is £1,250 per person and nonaccredited is £850.
Contact: Julia Whyard, Institute of Public Care,
Oxford Brookes University
Tel: 01225 330313
Email: jwhyard@brookes.ac.uk
Web: http://ipc.brookes.ac.uk
Diploma in Public Management
(Commissioning) - Being piloted from May 2008 at Warwick University. This is a cross public sector programme (central and local government, police, fire service, NHS etc). Course includes: service improvement, managing complexity and uncertainty, change and innovation, strategy in public sector, community engagement and user involvement. Tuition fee for May 2008 is £6,500.
Contact: Jane Miller, Programmes Manager,
Warwick University
Tel: 0247 652 8199
Email: jane.miller@wbs.ac.uk
Web: www2.warwick.ac.uk |
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Summary of our Evening Seminar held on 18 March
Innovation in Offender
Management – ensuring that
good ideas succeed (A systemic
approach to change)
By Gavin Barrett, Chairman, Pica Consulting
(gavin.barrett@picaconsulting.com)
Context: With the implementation of Lord Carter’s reforms comes the potential to think again about harnessing the innovation potential of supply-side stakeholders in offender management.
Challenge: Being a ‘stakeholder’ does not necessarily imply an integrated view of the end-toend architecture of the service. Is it a loose federation of interests, each element broadly following its own agenda and definition of ‘good’, or a dynamic system of common alignment and high interdependency? Given real resource constraints there is an understandable tendency for stakeholders to adopt a partisan view at the expense of the greater ‘good’.
Issues: In any complex process that contains
multiple entities with different, even divergent,
objectives there is a risk of ‘friendly fire’ – wellmeaning actions in one area have an unintended impact on another. |
With Management Information Systems (MIS)
across the service still incomplete the creation of progressive value-add at each stage in the
process is difficult if not impossible.
We argue that there must be joined-up workflow on an end-to-end basis targeted at specific unifying metrics of success. This workflow should ensure both efficient hand off from one stage to the next and collaborative engagement between dependent stakeholders to deliver optimum outcomes at each stage.
Fig.1 Dynamics of collaborative working (Source: Sherwood, D & Barrett, G 2004-6)
This chart illustrates dynamic interdependency
between two stakeholders and represents the
near-ideal state where resource management is
a commonly held issue and collaborative
innovation becomes feasible, even normal.
Dynamic interdependency is vital in order to
mitigate the risks of 2nd or 3rd order effects being adverse to one or more stakeholder.
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Enduring challenge: How to implement an
integrated multi-provider platform for offender
management that is outcome-centric whilst
progressively optimising its use of constrained
resources?
Interim answers: include an unambiguous
commitment to a shared view of success in
considerable detail and, in optimising the system’s workflow, there must be scope for ‘green field’ innovation by each contributing stakeholder. We argue that the common workflow architecture is an enabling horizontal platform upon which each vertical stakeholder operates to deliver defined value that all stakeholders respect.
‘Progressively Optimising’ means….
Innovation approaches that work
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1. Substitutional projects that deliver ‘more of the same
only better’ –Sustaining Innovation – with process and
performance enhancement at their core
2. De-cluttering projects that strip-away redundant
features from extant services with an explicit aim to
deliver ‘more from less’ – ‘Lite Innovation’ – with
performance and causal analytics as its basis
3. Radical projects that are essentially discontinuous with
current practice – designed to deliver ‘more through
fundamental change’ – Disruptive Innovation – often
harnessing new technologies or knowledge that make
existing products, processes and services redundant |
Fig. 2 Innovation Options (Barrett, G 2001)
Disruptive Innovation: is only disruptive if it is
delivered unilaterally – as in the private sector, but antithetical to this service. The challenge it represents is how to persuade stakeholders to move to a fundamentally different way of
operating.
Normally, innovation is seen as sustaining – more of the same only better – which runs the risk of avoiding the question “is what we do already |
fatally flawed?”.
Disruptive innovation, that can achieve a quantum
of benefit for the whole process, demands
collaborative participation.
Fig.3 The disruptive challenge (Christensen, C 1998 The
Innovator’s Dilemma, Harvard BS Press)
In sum: all stakeholders should be engaged in
developing a common definition of success (both
metrics and values) and an enabling work-flow
explicitly articulated so that, within this dynamic
system, purposeful and non-inflammatory
innovation, whether sustaining, de-cluttering or
radically disruptive, can be deployed for the
common weal.
Such joining-up will require significant shifts in
attitudes, knowledge, skills and behaviours as well
as intelligent work-flow systems that offer low
ambiguity and an explicit outcome focus.
Whilst there is evident urgency in getting the new,
post-Carter, infrastructure model to work, an early
application of these powerful innovation tools will
increase the probability of sustainable outcomes
by some considerable margin.
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Summary of our Evening Seminar held on 14 April
Developing Community led
approaches to designing and
delivering services
By Richard Kramer
The theme of the seminar was to set out some
recognised obstacles to delivering formal care to people whose lives are chaotic and to point to some solutions for delivering more user-focused services to people with complex needs. This included Turning Point model for community led commissioning of services called Connected Care.
Often people with complex needs find it difficult to access services, services are not well organised to meet their needs, and when contact is made it is hard to sustain. From the user’s perspective, services are fragmented. Services focus on core services. People don’t fit in and are bounced around the system. Some groups face real barriers to getting their social care needs met. People rarely have one problem, when in reality they have a range of problems that give rise to a combination of needs. We need to work with whole people not single problems.
Populations of prisoners and homeless persons
harbour a large number of people with high levels of needs often talking about those people with:
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- Often more than two challenges, e.g.
personality disorder
- Poorer physical health
- Social care issues, housing, income, social
isolation
- Vulnerable to self harm and violence
themselves
Outside the prison system some NHS funded
services are trying to tackle aspects of multiple
needs and chronic exclusion e.g. through
assertive outreach teams but treatment coordination between agencies difficult.
Turning Point’s Dual Diagnosis Good Practice
Handbook is the result of the 2 year national
project. It includes components of good practice, commentary & case studies. It also gives an insight into successes, challenges & development of dual diagnosis provision. Most are applicable in any setting including the criminal justice system.
It calls for the following:
- A co-ordinated approach to commissioning
to meet health and social care needs – joint working & joint funding with other agencies
- Assessments should be multi-agency &
multi-disciplinary
- Close interagency working – consistent
approaches so different treatment interventions complement each other
- Regular communication & information
sharing
- Involvement of service users, carers &
families.
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Turning Point has also developed a model of user
- led commissioning which integrates health,
housing and social care services in the most
deprived communities. It narrows the gap between commissioners’ priorities and user’s needs and leads to better tailored services. We are carrying out Connected Care in Bolton and Hartlepool. We have established the Turning Point Centre of Excellence to champion this approach across England and Wales.
Whilst users often feel that they are ‘surveyed to death’ but the reality is that they never feel
listened to or could point to improvement brought about as a result of these consultations. Connected Care is not a consultation, nor is it an information gathering exercise. Connected Care is a capacity building tool for individuals, community groups and agencies.
The concept of Connected Care originated from
research carried out by Turning Point, in
conjunction with ippr in 2004. Our report, ‘Meeting Complex Needs’ found that people with the most complex needs are failed by existing provision of health and social care It concluded that health and social care services need to ‘address the “whole person”, meeting their complex needs in terms of breadth (range of need) and depth (severity of need). These are groups of people with a range of often inter-related health, social care, housing, employment and other problems.
At the heart of the process is the Connected Care
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audit that enables the local community to identify their needs and to plan and deliver appropriate Connected Care services around them.
Training for communities in the design and
delivery of research methods, and specifically
working with difficult to engage groups, is seen to be critical in fulfilling this function. The training programme is supported by Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE).
Connected Care will look differently in each area. There are common principles for service delivery that will underpin Connected Care in any area although the actual service may look very different. This includes having services that are easy to access, that are integrated across health and social care, having a work force prepared to work across service boundaries, providing support to enable people to access services.
Turning Point recommends funding across
substance and mental health services to meet
people’s complex needs, a target focused on the requirement to provide integrated aftercare
support for people with complex social needs, built into their treatment plan and an increased
involvement of social care within prisons and on
release.
An expanded role for the voluntary sector is
envisaged given its experience of working in
partnership with probation and in linking offenders to wider community-based services.
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Seminars until June
These events, which are free and open to anyone
to attend, provide important context for our work
as commissioners and providers, open up
networks of contacts and promote the role of the
Academy amongst participants from other sectors.
Places at these seminars are limited; please
contact the Academy at email:
academy@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk, if you would
like to secure a place.
14 May – at the Royal Horticultural Halls,
Conference Centre, 80 Vincent Square, London
SW1P 2PE
‘World Class Commissioning – A new approach
to improving health outcomes’
By Gary Belfield, Director of Commissioning at the
Department of Health
16 June – at the Royal Horticultural Halls,
Conference Centre, 80 Vincent Square, London
SW1P 2PE
Carolyn Regan from the Legal Services
Commission Topic TBA
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Seminars after the summer holidays
We are intending to have the following speakers
from September 2008 to January 2009:
Chris Bull – CEO of the Joint Public Services
Commissioning Trust for Herefordshire
Bob Ricketts – Director of System Management
& New Enterprise, Dept of Health
Dan Burke – Director, Government and Public
Sector, Performance Improvement Consulting,
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Gordon Murray – Programme Manager for the
National Programme for the Third Sector
Commissioning
Nigel Walker – Senior Commissioning Advisor at
the Commissioning & Systems Directorate of the
Department of Health
Details of venues, times and other speakers will
be in the next bulletin. If you would like to attend, please email: academy@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
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Is there something you wish to know about?
In future bulletins we would like to cover a question and answer session and would really like to you to
take part in this.
Please suggest topics for knowledge or submit any questions which will be published in the next bulletin.
The intention is to get readers to answer these questions in order to share best practice and generate further interest and discussion.
Please contact the Administrator at the Academy via email: academy@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk |
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Contributions and feedback are most welcomed –
if you are interested in submitting comments, relevant information including links to other
organisations or an article for inclusion in a future edition with images, please contact Vivienne Ahmad
at the Academy at:
Academy@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk or Tel: 01733 425 205
Members of The Academy Executive Group are:
Trevor Williams, Patsy Northern, Clare Emberley, Richard Heys, John Graham, Stephen Shaljean-Tilley,
David Griffiths, Michelle Jarman-Howe and Graham Towl.
Academy for Justice Commissioning
C/o NOMS Regional Offender Management Office, Unit 6, Cygnet Park, Forder Way,
Hampton, Peterborough, PE7 8GX
Tel: 01733 425 205 Fax: 01733 425 230
Email: Academy@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.noms.justice.gov.uk/about-us/commissioning-07/training/academy/ |
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