Creating the campus model to reduce re-offending through skills & employment: comments on the next steps

CREATING THE CAMPUS MODEL TO REDUCE RE-OFFENDING THROUGH SKILLS & EMPLOYMENT: COMMENTS ON THE NEXT STEPS

TLJ Occasional Paper, Dominic Murphy 8 January 2007

THE NEXT STEPS TO REDUCE RE-OFFENDING: CREATING A CAMPUS MODEL

On Wednesday 13 December the government launched its new plan to reduce re-offending.  The first step is to recruit two National Offender Management Service regions to pilot the implementation of the plan on a rollout stretching to 2010.   

One major component of the plan is a Campus Model to help the participating organisations and other stakeholders to work together in a more joined–up way to reduce re-offending.  This paper offers thoughts on how the path-finding regions might implement the Campus Model.

MAJOR RECOMMENDATION

• A campus needs a community website where professionals and ex-offenders can share information, discuss and collaborate, www.thelearningjourney.co.uk is a model for such a site
• The website won’t work on its own, it provides a medium for on-going collaboration sparked by face-to-face contacts made at regular work-shops, conferences and other meetings
• The meetings and website should be mutually supportive, so that meetings define the agenda and projects to be developed on-line, to be followed up at the next meeting
• Support the stature of the website by using it to make official announcements, provide services and disseminate news
• Ensure that it is available and effective for practitioners inside prisons
• The regional offender managers and LSC should devote resources to sponsoring a programme of such meetings (events) to support such a website in the regions piloting the campus model
• The campus should be organised as a self-sustaining social enterprise itself employing ex-offenders.

 WHAT MUST THE CAMPUS DO?

There is a schematic of the campus in the new plan (HM Government, Dec 2006,  Figure 4 page 17).  Offender learning is set at the centre of the collaborative effort.  So the first thing the campus must do is focus on the needs of the offender.

The question is how to do this successfully.  Evidence of past success in reducing re-offending is far from conclusive.  Recently the trend in re-offending rates has been upwards.   A survey sponsored by the Learning & Skills Research Centre has concluded:

“The latest evidence is that no significant reductions in recidivism are resulting from cognitive-behavioural, basic skills or therapeutic community programmes.  In such circumstances, a rational approach is to find out what is not working as well as ‘what works’.”  (Moseley 2006 Part A  page 72-3).  Moseley calls for greater inter-operation between agencies, particularly psychology, education and vocational training.

It is certainly the case that scope for those engaged in resettlement to collaborate has been limited in the past (Braggins & Talbot 2005). My own research showed inadequate provision for Continuous Professional Development for tutors delivering offender learning and skills (Murphy 2005).

So the second key requirement is that the campus must enable organisations and individuals to share knowledge about lessons learned and outcomes and further, to actively collaborate.  This is particularly important regarding effective teamwork in the assessment process.  A recent study of the assessment process in a large local prison indicated quick wins to be gained in the effectiveness of initial assessment from greater collaboration between education staff and uniformed staff involved in the resettlement effort (Murphy 2006).

Finally, it must do more than enable.  The campus must get used.  It must become popular with the resettlement community as a useful part of the working environment.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GETTING COLLABORATION IN A CAMPUS

Money must be spent to record and spread best practice and to monitor and report outcomes.  This must be participative to encourage “bottom-up” as well as “top-down” development.

The Web is an important medium for assisting this process.  See my website http://www.thelearningjourney.co.uk/ (TLJ) as an example of what can be done in terms of offering a community service to professionals in the Resettlement sector.  It has a public space for information of general interest and a private members’ area for the benefit of specialists that register with TLJ.

It is built to work like a village.  Each member (an individual or organisation) is given their own web space, or house in the village.  They can build what they like with skills no more demanding than use of a word processor.  All the other members can visit and strike up conversations.  There are central services including a notice board, event calendar, news service, library, and members’ directory.  There is scope for defining sub-communities with their own security arrangements and privileges.  It can support general public conversation through to detailed private collaboration.

This is an example of what can be done by one person on a tiny budget backed up by mature and robust share-ware software.  The NHS and other blue-chip organisations, including NASSA and the US Navy, use the Pyhton/Zope/Plone platform which has underpinned the development of TLJ.  TLJ is a highly cost-effective working model.  It has not failed once since its launch in October 2005.

A WEBSITE IS NOT ENOUGH

However, a website alone is not enough.  The Web is littered with examples of moribund community websites.  They are rarely visited.  Go to them and you find a news section with the last entry ages ago and an empty forum.

TLJ, for example has over 200 members.  But examples of interaction between members through the site since its launch in October 2005 are rare.  This is not surprising.  It stands alone without the budget for a plan of work that involves the members meeting face-to-face regularly for a common purpose.

People will use a website to collaborate if they have a strong common interest and already know one another, or at least know of one another.  A community oriented website can assist collaboration, but it cannot generate the activity alone. 

So a campus approach will need effective promotion through a range of media, including direct mail and perhaps a “road-show”, to inform the relevant community.  It will need plenty of networking opportunities through conferences and other events to stimulate activity.

Then a website will help by providing an on-going focus offering follow-up and momentum for such events, including supportive resources and the opportunity to continue discussions as the participants choose.  Events and the website should be planed together, as part of an articulated strategy to generate collaboration.  The website will further gain in stature if it is used for delivering important policy, news, announcements and services (e.g. a document library and procedures repository).

IS THE CAMPUS A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE?

The question arises of how to organise the delivery of the services.  In what is outlined above the core activity is communications, or media services.  An organisation will have to take a policy brief and turn it into an action plan, delivering a website and a coherent programme of meetings and events to establish and develop the campus.

A business plan could be drawn up for such an enterprise to operate on a self-sustaining basis.  It could be a Community Interest Company.  It could deliver campus support services to the NOMS regional offender manager and the LSC. It could itself employ ex-offenders.

Why stop there?  Perhaps the campus in its entirety would benefit from structuring as a social enterprise.  The major output is jobs for ex-offenders.  The campus could sustain itself by obtaining revenue for placing ex-offenders into jobs as well as offering media services.  That would directly address the issue of how to effectively target the campus to deliver measurable social and economic benefits.

Such a plan would certainly integrate well with the new action plan for third sector involvement in the provision of public services, championed by Ed Miliband, Minister for the Third Sector.   The plan specifically includes involvement with NOMS and highlights work being done in Yorkshire and Humberside (Office of the Third Sector Dec 2006 p38-39).

Relevant commissioning authorities should consider engagement with an appropriate CIC to take on the task.  Such a plan could provide the core for a bid to become one of the pilot regions.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

In the last TLJ occasional paper New plans for delivering Offender learning and skills (see news section of www.thelearningjourney.co.uk 20-12-06) it was said of the policy launch on the 13^th December:

“The launch day was well managed by Nick Ross.  The audience was able to participate by using computer terminals on every table to add their comments about key issues.  Nick Ross promised that this valuable information would be made available in its entirety through the … DfES website.  At the time of writing this has not happened.”

I had an email concerning this information from the webmaster of the DfES Offender Learning and Skills website (www.dfes.gov.uk/offenderlearning) on 3 January.

It stated: “All comments will be uploaded onto the OLSU website as soon as it is ready.”  So watch that space.

And, by the way, their email address is offender.learning@dfes.gsi.gov.uk not “offenders.learning…” as currently presented on their website.

REFERENCES

H M Government (Dec 2006) Reducing Re-Offending Through Skills and Employment: Next Steps. From Internet WWW site at URL:   www.dfes.gov.uk/offenderlearning (accessed 29-12-06).

David Moseley (2006) Developing oral communication and productive thinking skills in HM prisons, Learning and Skills Research Centre.  From Internet WWW site at URL: www.lsneducation.org.uk (accessed 29-12-06).

Braggins J. & Talbot J. (2005) Wings of  Learning: The Role of the Prison Officer in Supporting Prisoner Education, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Kings College :London.  From internet WWW site URL: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/ccjs/wings-of-learning.html (accessed 30-12-06).

Dominic Murphy (2005) A website can help. From Internet WWW site at URL: http://www.thelearningjourney.co.uk/networking/ (accessed 29-12-06).

Dominic Murphy (2006) Case Study: Improving use of educational resources in a large Local London prison. A report on Induction and Diagnostic Assessment.  From internet WWW site URL: http://www.thelearningjourney.co.uk/file.2006-12-30.8320942988/file_view  (accessed 30-12-06).

Office of the Third Sector (Dec 2006) Partnership in Public Services

An action plan for third sector involvement.  From Internet WWW site at URL:   http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/third_sector  (accessed 3-1-07).