Impact case study database
Creating a novel model of Personalised Practice in Offender Rehabilitation
1. Summary of the impact
Professor Chris Fox’s Policy Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU) has been a pioneering force in the development of innovative, personalised, asset-based ways of delivering offender rehabilitation in England. Between 2012 and 2020, Fox and his team worked with the service provider ‘Interserve/Purple Futures’ to trial radical new models of offender management - the largest scale attempt to date to operationalise the desistance literature. Research-informed reforms were deployed across five Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) as part of a GBP650,000,000 contract that collectively covered a quarter of the UK’s population. The collaboration with Interserve led to the development of the Interchange model, the Enablers of Change assessment tool and the creation of a methodology for devising and evaluation personalised practice. The research has directly changed the rehabilitation of 40,000 offenders and the working practices of 2,000 probation staff. PERU’s research continues to exert a national and international influence; it has been commended by the UK’s Chief Inspector of Probation and has fed into high-level meetings with the Minister of State for Prisons and Probation.
2. Underpinning research
Through collaboration with key figures in criminal justice (Caroline Marsh, independent consultant and former National Offender Management Service (NOMS) Director), and social care (Alex Fox OBE, Chief Executive, Shared Lives), Prof. Fox recognised that new personalised services emphasising capabilities and assets could be developed to support offender rehabilitation more effectively. In 2013, he co-authored a conceptual article asking what, if anything, the criminal justice sector could learn from the personalisation of social care [1]. The question was highly provocative for a sector, in which the public expects to see punishment and risk management as the primary concerns. PERU worked with Interserve plc (a service provision and construction company) over several years. Interserve drew on PERU’s research to develop a personalised offender rehabilitation model to implement in five CRCs under its management. The model resonates strongly with ‘desistance theory’, a prominent, yet contentious, criminological theory that has frequently been criticised for its lack of practical application. PERU’s underpinning research in this area is highly original in combining practical application and a robust evidence base with a rigorous conceptual framework, refined from the domain of social care as well as criminology [2].
Most simply, personalisation means that public services respond to the needs of people rather than service providers. In its more radical forms, it encompasses ‘co-creation’, an increasingly influential idea in public services often associated with social innovation, where service users work with professionals to design, create and deliver the services they use. A theme in the development of personalised practice in offender rehabilitation has, therefore, been to explore personalisation models as a form of public service co-creation and social innovation. Working with Professor Sue Baines and other PERU members, Prof. Fox has theorised the role of social innovation and co-creation in public service reform [3, 4].
After taking over the management of five CRCs, Fox supported Interserve to develop the Interchange case management model. Interserve developed a new assessment tool, *Enablers of Change (*EoC), based on a personalised (asset-based) approach to offender assessment. Fox and other PERU members (Wong, Szifris, and Ellison) advised on the development of EoC and evaluated it [5]. During 2015 and early 2016, Fox worked with staff at Interserve and within the CRCs to develop more radical models of personalisation . Drawing upon their work on social innovation [3] this involved the design, testing and evaluation of a series of small-scale ‘proof of concept’ pilots in 2017, each involving only one or two probation staff and a handful of clients. Fox led the evaluation of these pilots, and his findings were written up in two reports for Interserve and a peer-reviewed journal article [6].
Fox, Baines, and Harrison then helped Interserve to design a more ambitious pilot involving nine front-line staff and more than eighty offenders in one CRC. Implemented in 2018-19, this pilot - called ‘My Direction’ - was funded as part of a Horizon 2020 project ‘ Co-creation of Service Innovation in Europe’ (CoSIE). PERU undertook evaluation of ‘My Direction’ as well as leading evaluations of co-creation pilots in nine EU countries.
3. References to the research
Fox, A., Fox, C. and Marsh C. (2013) ‘Could personalisation reduce re-offending?’ The Journal of Social Policy, 42: 721. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279413000512.
Fox, C. and Marsh, C. (2016) ‘Operationalising Desistance through Personalisation.’ European Probation Journal, 8(3): 185-206. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2066220316683132
Grimm, R., Fox, C., Baines, S. and Albertson, K. (2013) ‘Social innovation, an answer to contemporary societal challenges? Locating the concept in theory and practice.’ Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 26(4): 436-455 https://doi.org/10.1080/13511610.2013.848163.
Fox, C. and Marsh, C. (2016) ‘‘Personalisation’: Is social innovation possible under transforming rehabilitation? ’ Probation Journal, 63(2): 169-181. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0264550516648402
Horan, R., Wong, K. and Szifris, K. (2020) 'Enabling change: An assessment tool for adult offenders that operationalises risk needs responsivity and desistance principles.' European Journal of Probation, 12(1): 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/2066220319883555
Fox, C., Harrison, J., Marsh, C. and Smith, A. (2018) ‘Piloting different approaches to personalised offender management in the English criminal justice system.’ European Sociological Review, 28(1): 35–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2017.1422886
Funding and Indicators of Quality:
- Interserve research contract with PERU: Co-creation of Service Innovation in Europe (CoSIE), funded under the European Union’s Horizon2020 programme, Project Reference: 770492, GBP279,212
- Output [3] was cited by the European Commission Joint Research Centre Science for Policy report ‘Social Innovations for the Energy Transition – An overview of concepts and projects contributing to behavioural change, and increased wellbeing’ (Dec 2020)
4. Details of the impact
“I have got everything I wanted to get out of probation now. When I first got out of prison and I came here I had nothing. But now I have a job, my daughter is back, I have an amazing girlfriend – my life is back on track.” (Service User) [H].
Impact on innovating service provision
Prof. Fox’s research on offender rehabilitation has been highly influential in the criminal justice sector. In 2012, he was appointed as an advisor to Interserve plc (a FTSE 250 company) and in 2013 his input helped them win five contracts to run CRCs, worth approximately GBP650,000,000. The Managing Director of Interserve’s Justice Division confirms that Fox’s “evidence-based approach…provided independent evaluation and advice which assisted us in preparations to the Ministry of Justice” [A]. Fox and the research team helped Interserve to develop their Interchange model – a completely new approach to offender rehabilitation that moves away from a focus on problems and barriers, and instead focuses on strengths and opportunities, empowering offenders to make better choices and to take individual responsibility [B]. In 2015, Interchange was rolled out across Interserve’s network of CRCs (West Yorkshire, Humberside, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, Merseyside, Cheshire and Greater Manchester, and Hampshire and the Isle of Wight), which covered one quarter of the UK’s population,1,900 staff and 38,000 offenders. The model required all staff to work differently as it put the service user at the heart of three interlocking sets of activity: 1) to interact better with service users, 2) to deliver better interventions, and 3) to integrate service users better into their communities. This collaboration represents the largest scale attempt, to date, to operationalise the desistance literature.
Reaction to Interchange amongst service users and staff was positive. In a 2016 report, service users were quoted as saying: “I’ve been on probation five times – this is the first time I have really understood what it is all about”, and “ My mum passed away when I was 11 and I moved into kids’ homes and started doing crime and basically started going in and out of prison. I think I’ve changed lots. I’ve got more support. All I need now is a job, and probation is helping set me up with opportunities. Because of the support, the friendship I have with my probation officer, I feel motivated.” Similarly, staff were positive about its introduction whilst acknowledging the challenge of moving to an entirely new approach. “The Interchange Model focuses on desistance theory and embraces ways of working in which we are encouraged to foster the service user’s strengths. Brilliant! I want rid of the older models that ask staff to focus on what service users lack.” and “The biggest challenge has been the fact that we are currently running two-systems side-by-side as the new structures and ways of working are bedding in…but as we move into the Interchange model I think we are already starting to see some really, really good benefits from Interserve’s approach.” [B].
**Impact on practice: Enablers of Change
Beyond Interchange, PERU informed Interserve’s implementation of specific elements of desistance-based delivery [C]. Notable differences from business-as-usual included changes to sentence planning, supervision sessions and risk management. Their practice became more strengths-based and individualised, with greater emphasis on the service user’s ‘assets’, particularly family and community resources. Mainstream practice changed as a direct result of their research. One outstanding example was the development of a new assessment tool for service users, called ‘ Enablers of Change’ [D], which was approved for deployment across Interserve CRCs by the Ministry of Justice in November 2018. Interserve’s Policy Managers underline the significance of PERU’s research for probation practice, stating: “Enablers of Change is a significant practice change for probation, since the introduction of OASys [existing assessment tool] in 2001. The expertise of Chris [Fox], and the team at MMU, have supported us to deliver a complex redesign of assessment, engaging with multiple stakeholders including offenders, case managers, the Ministry of Justice and the Correctional Services Advice and Accreditation Panel.” [E].
CRC staff and their supervisees have described the difference Enablers of Change made to them. Supervisees valued the co-produced nature of the process that empowered them to actively contribute to their own assessment. One supervisee summarised the reciprocal nature of co-produced assessment as follows: “…it doesn’t feel like it’s your opinion and my opinion” (Supervisee 1 in **[F]**). Co-production resulted in both supervisees and supervisors regarding themselves as legitimate and relevant partners in a mutually-beneficial process, facilitating engagement by considering and respecting each other’s perspectives, and building trust in their relationship. Many supervisors and supervisees reflected that the Enablers of Change assessment elicited a great deal of personal information; supervisors often noted that this was new information (for those with prior contact and knowledge of a supervisee). Supervisors also remarked that the Enablers of Change assessment and process promoted greater honesty: “…it’s all very behind closed doors when you are doing an OASys’ (Supervisor 1 in **[F]**). Enablers of Change and its co-production approach to assessment “…meant that I was able to be a lot more honest with him than possibly I would have been able to previously” (Supervisor 1 in **[F]**). This applied particularly to the area of risk assessment, which had previously been a task carried out in the supervisee’s absence, whereas in the Enablers of Change tool it is explored in dialogue with the supervisee [F].
A new direction for personalisation in probation
In addition to systemic changes to rehabilitation, Fox and his team also developed more radical models of personalised working that were piloted and evaluated within Interserve’s CRCs. This work started with five ‘proof of concept’ pilot innovations that reached approximately 35 service users and eight staff. These innovations helped staff and service users to co-produce a rehabilitation plan that gave them access to an ‘enabling fund’. This approach was inspired by cash-in-lieu-of-services models in social care and was entirely novel in a criminal justice setting. Three of the innovation pilots were implemented successfully and formed the basis of a larger project called ‘My Direction’ that was funded through a Horizon 2020 grant within CoSIE [G1], a pan-European Innovation Action on co-creation in public services. My Direction confronts the formidable challenge of advancing co-creation for population groups who typically have services ‘done to them’ without their consent or consultation. During 2018-19 ‘My Direction’ was trialled in Hull where a series of public-facing events for the probation service and the wider community drew attention to the potential value of co-creating services. At the ‘Conversation of Change’ event (September 2018), PERU used the findings from the stories of the participants to facilitate a discussion about wider service improvement and personalisation with probation workers (frontline and management) and current/ex-service users. Feedback from participants picked up on the major themes: “Storytelling confirms my fears that the way probation is organised is very wrong in a moral and practical sense”, and the event was considered to be an “amazing opportunity to help try to create change” [G].
An evaluation by Fox and his colleagues included in-depth interviews with service users participating in ‘My Direction’, who reported that the new personalisation model had helped them change their lives and that it encouraged trust and generated a more flexible and responsive probation experience: “She [Case Manager] listens to me unlike the others, they never cared. I know she knows I want good and that she believes in me. She knows I am doing well, she has been to my work, she has been to my home and met with my mum.” (Service User) and “I have never trusted probation in the past because of the way they have treated me – this time around my CM [Case Manager] is sound, she listens and is there for me.” (Service User) [H]. This was a view shared by the service providers, who also found the new way of working improved understanding of service user needs: “I get more information this way in comparison to OASys [the standard needs assessment used in the sector]. It is so structured and rigid. This time I have much more insight, it tells me about where he is. It is focused on him, it opens up a conversation.” (Case Manager) and “When I first started things were rigid. Now it seems that people are more aware of the service user and care more about their life. I think personalisation has been more flexible . . .” (Case manager) [H].
National impact
The Chief Inspector of Probation highlighted the collaboration between Interserve and Manchester Metropolitan University in her national report (2019), commending it as a refreshing countermeasure to movements away from evidence-based practice in probation: ‘Interserve/Purple Futures has been working with Manchester Metropolitan University to pilot and evaluate more innovative approaches to personalised supervision, in line with desistance theory. Refreshingly, the evaluation outlines a methodology for developing and evaluating personalisation work.’ [I].
Despite substantial Government reform of Transforming Rehabilitation policy, and a late 2019 announcement that probation services were going to be renationalised, PERU’s work on personalisation in criminal justice continues to be influential in the sector. For example, Fox is a member of the Probation and Youth Justice Expert Advisory Group of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation, and Wong is Chair of the Criminal Justice Alliance. Fox was recently invited to a one-to-one meeting with the Minister of State for Prisons and Probation (27th February 2020) to introduce her to PERU’s research, including its approach to personalisation models [J].
5. Sources to corroborate the impact
Testimonial, Managing Director, Interserve Justice to corroborate the impacts of PERU’s research on Interserve’s approach and its successful contract to run five CRCs (Testimonial supplied as part of the Commissioning Offender Rehabilitation 2014 impact case study).
Interserve (2016) Transforming Rehabilitation: Progress Report Autumn 2016 corroborates the reach, significance and impact of the Interchange model developed with Manchester Metropolitan University
Testimonial, Head of Performance and Research, Public Sector Operations, Interserve PLC (provided 2018) corroborates influence of PERU’s research on Interserve in particular around desistance theory.
The Enablers of Change tool described in video produced by Interserve; Report commissioned by Interserve Justice: Horan, R. and Wong, K. (2017) Evaluation of the enablers of change tool and process: Technical Report. Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University.
Testimonial, Policy Manager, Interserve plc (provided 2019) corroborates PERU involvement in the development of Enablers of Change.
Wong, K. and Horan, R. (2020) ‘The Role of Needs Assessment in the Effective Engagement of People with Convictions.’ The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/hojo.12397 provides details of impact of Enables of Change on service users and staff.
Institute of Community Reporters (2018) Personalisation in Probation Services: Exploring the Contributors to a Working Culture of Personalisation https://cosie.turkuamk.fi/uploads/2020/03/e248b5de-personalisationinprobationservicedigital-3.pdf; Evaluation and feedback from events in relation to personalisation pilots and innovation.
CoSIE Consortium (2020) A synthesis of evidence from implementation of all pilots. Horizon 2020 end of project report to the European Commission.
Page 60 of the Report of the Chief Inspector of Probation March 2019 corroborates PERU’s influence on the wider criminal justice sector.
HMIP website sets out the Terms of Reference for the Advisory Group, with Prof. Fox in the list of members at the end: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2020/06/HMI-Probation-probation-and-youth-justice-expert-advisory-group-TOR-April-2020.pdf The CJA website lists Kevin Wong as its Chair: http://criminaljusticealliance.org/board-of-trustees/
Additional contextual information
Grant funding
Grant number | Value of grant |
---|---|
770492 | £279,212 |