Women offenders: after the Corston Report - United Kingdom ...

Ev 20 Justice Committee: Evidence15 January 2013 Peter Kilgarriff, Jackie Russell, Sharon Spurling and Joy DoalQ107 Mr Llwyd: Can you say a brief word aboutfunding before I ask Ms Doal to say a word?Sharon Spurling: You will know that the fundinghas changed over the last three years. It was with theMinistry of Justice originally, then moved to NOMS,and this year it has moved to Northumbria ProbationTrust. I want to say at the outset, in relation to the70% reduction in reoffending, that we did anothersample in 2011. We sampled women on suspendedsentence orders who had worked with us. Not one ofthose women went back into custody. However, justbefore Christmas, I received a letter from NorthumbriaProbation Trust saying that they had cut our money andour grant funding would end on 31 March this year.When I look at the consultation document“Transforming Rehabilitation”, it says, “We’re goingto do this with prime providers, and that’s going tohappen before 2014.” When I look at that, and I hearwhat is happening to other women’s communityprojects—they are being rolled on, and some might goout to tender; I understand that our pot of money willbe going out to tender soon—I get a bit confused aboutwhat is happening. On the one hand, it looks as if thewhole of support for offenders is going out to tender,but, equally, the trust seems to be putting that moneyout for tender now. So we’ve got 10 weeks.Q108 Mr Llwyd: So you are supposed to put in atender, presumably.Sharon Spurling: Yes, presumably—for a service tostart on 1 April.Joy Doal: We are in a very different position becausewe are in a city. It is quite different being in an urbanarea. Because of that, we are able to develop a physicalone‐stop shop. We have quite a large centre, whichused to be a school. As we have gradually grown wehave built other bits on to it, but we are able to attract arange of partners to work with us. We have two furthereducation colleges that come in and deliver theircourses with us. The homeless charity Crisis deliverscourses and provides a mental health practitioner oneday a week. We have drug treatment like Addaction,the A-Team for alcohol and a full range of partners.Birmingham Settlement provides debt and benefitadvice two days a week within the centre. We haveco‐located offender managers and a co‐located mentalhealth practitioner now as well. That is a massiveadvantage, as you can imagine, because it is all therein one place.This all came out of some prison inreach workthat we were doing in the days when there werewomen at Brockhill. We saw that in the first 48hours when women came out of prison they had somany appointments to go to. They would be runningacross the city to go to different appointments—theirprobation appointment, and going to this and going tothat. That was when the idea arose to put everything inone place. The woman has everything pretty much inone place and she can attend everything. Women werefailing in those first 48 hours just because of having tomanage the appointments. The women we are talkingabout tend not to have Filofaxes and diaries, or to haveeverything in order. Oftentimes they do not rememberwhat they are doing tomorrow. There are hugeadvantages in having everything in one place. We getthose services in completely free of charge, because itis meeting an alternative funding stream. The collegehas a target to reach a hard-to-reach client group, soit is able to deliver its service free. Equally, Crisis isfunded somewhere else to provide those services, so itis a win-win. The probation service is now giving us agrant to provide something. Obviously, it does not payfor everything, but the added value to that probationgrant is huge. It could not provide all those servicesacross the board.The advantage of having such things as a crèche onsite is massive. Those women can come, leave theirchildren and have that support. If you have to go andsign on and do your supervision appointment at aprobation office, there isn’t even a box of toys or a nicewaiting room. You are sitting in a waiting room withall the male offenders. Most of the women have beenvictims of domestic violence and/or sexual abuse, rape,child sexual abuse and so on. Sitting there with a groupof male offenders is not a nice environment in whichto be waiting for your appointment. Simple little thingslike being able to come into a women-only space andreceive support are so important. To create that safespace has been key.We are able to do so much more outside the funding weget from NOMS currently, because we can attract otherfunding. We go to four women’s prisons on a regularbasis and provide through-the-gate support, but that isfunded by the Big Lottery on a four-year grant, and itgoes down each year. My problem is that, when it goesdown each year, I cannot get that other slice refundedbecause, rightly, the Corston coalition are independentfunders. I am writing bids to all their pots and they say,“No, it’s a statutory responsibility.” You can understandthat, but, unless the statutory responsibility groupsteps up, that is threatened. Our crèche is threatened,because we have Children in Need funding to run thechildren’s work that is finishing, and we have beenrefused a further grant. So that is under threat as well.Q109 Mr Llwyd: Overall, what would you say thefuture holds in terms of the percentage loss of funding?In other words, how much are you short from the nextfinancial year onwards?Joy Doal: Our budget last year was about £750,000,and I have managed to secure nearly £400,000.Q110 Mr Llwyd: So the shortfall is pretty substantial.Joy Doal: Yes.Q111 Mr Llwyd: And you are still working on it.Joy Doal: Yes—madly.Jackie Russell: The probation contribution to Anawimhas already been identified as going down by 17.7%.Originally it was going to go down by 30%, and Joywas asked to put together a proposal based on a 30%reduction. The reality is that they are now saying it isa 17.7% reduction. Probation’s budget is just a part ofthat £700,000.Q112 Mr Llwyd: But surely it is a false economy,because the work you do is saving money, isn’t it,when you analyse it pound for pound?Jackie Russell: Yes, of course it is.