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

42 Women offenders: after the Corston Reporttreatment of female offenders with personality disorders is similarly difficult to discern.These gaps in mental health and accommodation will be costly to overcome. We ask theGovernment in its response to this report to set out the extent to which existingdiversion and liaison schemes are making provision specifically for women; howMinisters intend to ensure that new schemes meet the needs of women; and, why thenew strategy for the management of treatment of women offenders with personalitydisorder does not appear to have made any difference to service provision.Funding for women’s community services108. The Government initially committed funding of £15.9m for two years to develop andexpand the network of existing women’s centres. Following the close of this fundingstream, a unique arrangement developed between the Corston Independent FundersCoalition, a group of 20 independent philanthropic foundations, and the Ministry ofJustice to create the Women’s Diversionary Fund in an effort to support women’s centresthrough a transitional period as they became mainstreamed. Corston Independent FundersCoalition provided investment of over £5m to sustain the network and to establishWomen’s Breakout, a national infrastructure organisation to support the network. 215Latterly, CIFC provided a “rescue package” to prevent projects from folding when MoJfunding came to an end. 216109. Responsibility for funding women’s community services moved wholly from MoJ toNOMS and NOMS identified £3.5 million to continue funding the projects from April2012, effectively covering the funding that had been contributed by the CorstonIndependent Funders Coalition which had ceased in March. The budget was delegated tothe 15 Probation Trusts which were served by one of the existing projects with arequirement that this must be used to re-commission them.Funding 2013-2014110. From April 2013 responsibility for commissioning community based services forwomen offenders transferred, along with a budget of £3.78m which remained ring-fenced,from NOMS to all probation trusts. An additional £300,000 was provided both for“deepening and strengthening” services at some facilities and for providing new servicesand facilities where none currently exist. 217 NOMS Commissioning Intentions for thisfinancial year set out an expectation that Probation Trusts would ‘ensure that appropriateprovision is in place to enable women offenders to complete their sentences and reducetheir risk of reoffending.’ 218 Probation Trusts were also expected to use their existingresources to develop new interventions and sustain existing provision.As this transitiontook place we heard concerns that as resources would be spread over whole Trust areasrather than concentrated on specific centres, levels of provision through the centres werelikely to deteriorate. A challenge would be providing appropriate services to all women,particularly those located in more rural locations.215 Ev 88, Ev 69216 Ev 69217 Qq 265–266218 Ministry of Justice, National Offender Management Service, NOMS Commissioning Intentions 2013–14, 2013, p 36