Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 16
16
Accepted
HMPPS has awarded over 130 contracts for Commissioned Rehabilitative Services supporting prison leavers.
Conclusion
Probation staff can draw on specialist support from Commissioned Rehabilitative Services (CRS) providers from the private and voluntary sectors to help support the resettlement of prison leavers. HMPPS issued 110 contracts to CRS providers ready for ‘day one’ of the new unified probation service in June 2021, covering accommodation; employment, training and education; personal wellbeing; and tailored services for women.36 A second wave of contracts for a wider range of services, such as finance, benefits and debt support, is still underway.37 As at July 2022, HMPPS had awarded 131 CRS contracts with a maximum total value of £340 million.38
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and states HMPPS is reviewing its approach to ensuring good outcomes, highlighting actions taken such as digital referral tool enhancements, working with providers, and making contract changes to expand support. HMPPS also commits to gathering and using better evidence on outcomes in the future.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
4.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 4.2 HMPPS is reviewing its approach to ensuring good quality outcomes for prison leavers and people on probation are both achieved and evidenced. 4.3 HMPPS has taken a number of actions to improve achievement of outcomes. These include; • significant enhancements to the digital referral tool; • working with providers to improve services; and • making contract changes to increase accommodation and women’s services support to include remanded people in custody and increased finance, benefit and debt provision in more prisons. 4.4 HMPPS has evidence of successful improvements from a recent internal audit of Commissioned Rehabilitative Services (CRS). The audit reports for Personal and Wellbeing and Education, Training and Employment contracts show that most CRS providers are: • better at delivering activities that are likely to meet user’s needs; • making reasonable efforts to engage users; • making positive progress to support successful outcomes; • finding that session attendance and content delivery are better supported by the improved staff guidance and digital referral tool updates; and • finding that improvements in the Accommodation Contracts have been slower and are therefore yet to meet all of the required standards. 4.5 HMPPS is committed to gathering, analysing and using better evidence on outcomes in the future, and is assessing the options available to improve data on outcomes including a tool to measure progress from the start of the order to completion. The Area Executive Directors (AEDs) will consider which models are best for their region, working with frontline teams to develop more locally tailored services. AED is a senior, operational delivery role, that brings together leadership of both prison and probation services. They are responsible for driving up operational performance and increasing collaboration across HMPPS and with partners.