Recommendation 3

Effective implementation of the strategy has been undermined by insufficient joined-up working. Working across government is always challenging and the Ministry is reliant on many other bodies for the female offender programme to 6 Improving outcomes for women in the criminal justice system be successful. For example, the NHS, several government departments, local authorities and the voluntary sector have key roles in providing treatment for mental health problems and addiction, support to escape domestic violence, housing advice, children’s services and help finding employment. Such bodies need to work together to provide clear routes to the support individual women need to turn their lives around. The Ministry has taken a first step to build co-operation between government departments by negotiating a concordat with them, although this took two years longer than it had promised. There are good examples of bodies working together locally but several of these started doing so before the female offender programme. The Ministry says it recognises the importance of joined-up working locally, which it calls the ‘whole-system approach’, but it has not committed nearly enough to bringing this about. In fact, it has not spent anything on helping new areas to set up these types of approaches since some it provided some seed funding for 2017–19. Recommendation: The Ministry should set out how it plans to influence more joined-up working. It should write to the Committee alongside its Treasury Minute response with an assessment of any barriers to local areas implementing ‘whole system approaches’ and how it plans to work with other government departments and organisations to address these barriers.