The Warwickshire and West Mercia Community Rehabilitation

Since West Mercia was formed in 2001 we have maintained a close relationship with our sentencers through the sentencer forums that run three times a year throughout the area and are co-ordinated by the thrice yearly meeting of the Steering Group made up of the forum chairs, legal advisers and senior probation management. We had such a meeting last week and I was struck by how much we had to communicate to them for dissemination through the local Forums. It often seems that not much changes day by day, but when you step back and give account over a longer period the pattern of profound change becomes clear. Since the beginning of the operational year in April we have: Introduced the Care Farm Specified Activity Order, which sentencers have picked up with enthusiasm and which has generated three cohorts of successful graduates in its first four months, well on target for the annual total required. Successfully negotiated with NOMS to take on the commissioning of Senior Attendance Centres and after years of no provision have opened the first one in Shropshire and will open the second in Worcestershire before the end of the month, significantly widening the sentencing options available locally. Piloted, through AIM, the ESF project that we host, a women's project at Willowdene Care Farm that we intend to further develop next year into a Residential Community Order with the objective of reducing the use of custody for women in West Mercia by 50%. Along the way we are very proud to have won the ESF Award for Gender Policy Leadership, largely on the back of this work. Assumed, from the 1 October management of the newly formed West Mercia Youth Offending Service, opening up significant opportunities to focus on the Transition 2 Adulthood issues that have been illustrated by the T2A pilot led by our Strategic Partners, YSS. Developed a suite of post graduation qualifications in partnership with Worcester University, and have begun work on an Applied Criminology Degree Programme. Established Clarent Commerce CIC, in which five other (potentially several more) Trusts are joining us to create a specialist procurement arm that can manage commissioning at scale for the probation trusts involved. All of this, when financially we are under huge pressure and when the common view seems to be that the public sector is in retreat. The old saying has it that necessity is the mother of invention and maybe that is true of hard times, but increasingly it seems to me that the danger is primarilly in standing still. If we indulge ourselves by saying, "enough, no more" we become overwhelmed and start going backwards.