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PERFORMANCE INSPECTION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE SOCIAL WORK SERVICES

Report on Glasgow Council Criminal Justice Social Work Services 2004

Social Work Services Inspectorate

PERFORMANCE INSPECTION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE SOCIAL WORK SERVICES

Report on Glasgow Council Criminal Justice Social Work Services 2004

Social Work Services Inspectorate

Scottish ExecutiveEdinburgh 2004

© Crown copyright 2004

ISBN: 0 7559 4329 5

Scottish ExecutiveSt Andrew’s HouseEdinburghEH1 3DG

Produced for the Scottish Executive by Astron B37372 9/04

Published by the Scottish Executive, September, 2004

Further copies are available fromBlackwell's Bookshop53 South BridgeEdinburghEH1 1YS

The text pages of this document are produced from 100% elemental chlorine-free,environmentally-preferred material and are 100% recyclable.

CONTENTS

Page

Summary 1

1. Context and Arrangements 3

2. How Services in Glasgow are Delivered 6

3. Social Enquiry Reports 13

4. The Community Supervision of Offenders on Probation and Statutory Licence 21

5. High Risk Offenders 37

6. Community Service 46

7. Organisation and Management 57

8. Key Issues from the Inspection 61

Appendix 1 65

Performance Inspection

1

Report on Glasgow Council Criminal Justice Social Work Services

Summary

Background to the report

This inspection of criminal justice social work services in Glasgow is the third in a nationalprogramme of inspections. There are significant levels of social deprivation in parts ofGlasgow and the city has the highest prevalence of drug misuse in Scotland. Criminal justicesocial work in the city, therefore, takes place against a difficult social backcloth.

Inspectors examined the quality of assessments prepared for courts and the Parole Board,and assessed the standard of supervision of offenders on probation, community serviceorders and parole and non-parole licences. They evaluated 208 court reports, 41 homebackground reports and 205 case files and observed 63 separate examples of supervision.They interviewed managers, practitioners and offenders from across the different teams andservices, and contacted the Parole Board, Sheriffs and the beneficiaries of the communityservice scheme to gather stakeholder views about the quality of the service. For the file-reading exercise, inspectors assessed the quality of reports and supervision on a four pointscale: ‘very good’, ‘good’, ‘adequate’ and ‘poor’1.

The inspection findings show that the standard of some practice was good or better, but thatthere was room for considerable improvement in many aspects of service delivery. Work withsex offenders and those on community service was of a high standard. However, the qualityof many court reports was weak, and there was often a failure to offer offenders those typesof supervision that research strongly associates with reductions in offending. There was nosystematic approach to monitoring and evaluating service outcomes.

A central unit is responsible for strategic planning and managing some citywide services.Locally managed area service teams deliver the majority of supervision. This means that thosedeveloping the service strategy have no formal responsibility or powers to implement it at areateam level. The managers and team leaders with this implementation responsibility also havea range of other duties, including responsibility for protecting children. This has contributedto a lack of coherent strategic management of criminal justice social work across the city todeliver a consistent approach to effective practice in work with offenders.

Key Findings

• Between one-half and two-thirds of social enquiry reports were of an ‘adequate’ or‘poor’ standard;

• Slightly more than one-half of the case file sample included a completed structured riskassessment tool, a level of use significantly below the authority’s own target;

1 ‘Very good’ indicates a very high standard which exceeds an acceptable level of competence; ‘good’ means thatwork is carried out to an entirely acceptable level of competence; ‘adequate’ indicates basic competence but withsubstantial room for improvement; and ‘poor’ means that work is below an acceptable standard.

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• Only one of the eight criminal justice area teams was providing offence-focused groupwork although the authority was committed to delivering this in every team;

• The sex offenders’ project produced good quality assessments and delivered groupworkto a high standard;

• Violent offenders did not receive the systematic assessment and treatment services thatthe authority provided for sex offenders, despite the high prevalence of serious violentoffending evident from the case file sample;

• Inspectors found that the community service scheme offered a good range of appropriateplacements and managed non-compliance well. There was a high level of satisfactionamong the beneficiaries of the service;

• The quality of case recording in many case files was very poor, due in part to variationsand systematic errors in the use of the IT system for case recording;

• Nearly two-thirds of offenders failed to comply with their probation or throughcaresupervision at least once, and performance in managing this compliance was of an‘adequate’ or ‘poor’ standard in just over two-thirds of cases.

Key areas for improvement

• The authority must pay closer attention to National Standards and use risk assessmenttools consistently to improve the quality of court reports;

• The service must deliver its planning commitment to provide offence-focused group workprogrammes to offenders supervised by the area teams and the throughcare teams;

• The authority must take a systematic approach to ensure that workers deal rigorously withpoor compliance by offenders on probation and throughcare;

• The service must improve its basic case recording practices ensuring that all staff use the‘Carejust’ IT system in the same way;

• A more thorough and robust approach to quality assurance would support internalperformance monitoring and evaluation, and help to target resources at areas of weakness;

• The authority should review management arrangements for the service to improve theoperational delivery of its strategic plan.

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1. CONTEXT AND ARRANGEMENTS

Introduction

1.1 This report on services in Glasgow is the third in a rolling programme of inspections ofpractice in all the groupings of local authorities and unitary authorities providing criminaljustice social work services across Scotland. The programme focuses on the core elementsof service provision including social enquiry reports for the courts, home backgroundreports for the Parole Board and the community supervision of those on probation orders,community service orders and parole and non-parole licences. This inspectionprogramme does not address other kinds of service2 provided or commissioned byauthorities or groupings.

1.2 The fieldwork for this inspection took place during April and May 2004.

Area profile

1.3 Glasgow City Council has a population of 577,869 (Source: 2001 Census). Over the last20 years, the service sector including finance and banking has replaced the traditionalbase of shipbuilding and heavy engineering. (Source: Glasgow City Council website).

1.4 The unemployment rate stands at 5.48%, compared with a Scottish average of 3.97%(Source: 2001 Census). Seventeen of Scotland’s 20 poorest areas are in Glasgow(Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, 2004).

Crime statistics

1.5 Glasgow City Council area has the highest number of crimes recorded by the police per10,000 persons, standing at 1,318 compared to the Scottish average of 819. Other majorconurbations (City of Edinburgh and Aberdeen City) have figures of 1,189 and 1,195respectively. (Source: ‘Recorded Crime in Scotland’ Scottish Executive, Statistical BulletinCriminal Justice Series 2003).

Drug misuse

1.6 Glasgow has the highest prevalence of problem drug use in Scotland. The city has a rateof 3.8% of the population aged 15 to 54 compared with a national average of 2.0%. Thenext highest is Dundee City at 3.5%. (Source: Estimating the National and Local Prevalenceof Problem Drug Misuse in Scotland, NHS, 2001).

2 These include drug treatment and testing orders, supervised attendance orders, bail information and supervisionschemes, diversion from prosecution, and supported accommodation services.

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Sentencing statistics

1.7 Glasgow Sheriff Court has the fourth highest use of custody in Scotland. The figure standsat 21%, compared with a Scottish national average of 16%. Glasgow’s use of communityservice (7%) is also above the national average (6%). Similarly, use of probation (13%) isabove the national average (10%). (Source: ‘Costs, Sentencing Profiles and the ScottishCriminal Justice System’ Scottish Executive 2002).

Methodology

1.8 Inspectors examined social enquiry reports and case records, observed work withoffenders, interviewed staff and offenders and consulted key stakeholders to assess thequality of practice in the authority. The detailed methodology is set out in appendix 1.

Assessing the quality of reports and practice

1.9 The inspection team used a four-point scale to assess the quality of reports and practice asevidenced in case records. The scale distinguishes between practice that is ‘very good’,‘good’, ‘adequate’, and ’poor’. ‘Very good’ indicates a very high standard that exceeds anacceptable level of competence. ‘Good’ means that work attains an entirely acceptablelevel of competence. ‘Adequate’ confirms a general basic competence, but suggestssubstantial room for improvement. ‘Poor’ means that work is of an unacceptable standard.

The inspection team

1.10 The SWSI inspection team comprised Jo Knox (Depute Chief Inspector), Gerard Hart,John Waterhouse, and Irene Scullion (Inspectors). SWSI invited criminal justice managersfrom services across Scotland to become co-opted inspectors to augment the resourcesand professional expertise available during inspections. For this inspection, an assistantcriminal justice services manager from City of Edinburgh Council and the recently retiredservice unit manager (criminal justice) from East Ayrshire Council acted as co-optedinspectors. A senior social worker with specific expertise in community service fromScottish Borders Council provided assistance with evaluating community service. Localstaff, under the guidance of inspectors, helped with the file reading.

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2. HOW SERVICES IN GLASGOW ARE DELIVERED

2.1 The diagram opposite sets out the current arrangements for staffing and organisingcriminal justice social work services in Glasgow. It shows that Glasgow delivers criminaljustice social work services via two main structures – local area service teams and thebusiness unit.

• area service teams have day-to-day responsibility for a wide range of local services;they are part of the authority’s fieldwork services and are the responsibility of the headof fieldwork.

• the business unit is responsible for those criminal justice social work services that arecitywide as well as a range of other citywide services. The head of children and familiesand criminal justice services manages the unit.

• the head of fieldwork and the head of children and families and criminal justice socialwork services report to one of the three depute directors of social work (children &families and criminal justice) who is also the authority’s chief social work officer.

Area services

2.2 Eight area service teams and the homeless persons’ team are responsible for the deliveryof local criminal justice services. Each team has a dedicated criminal justice sub-team. Thiscomprises social workers (responsible for preparing the majority of reports for court3 andfor supervising probation orders), and community service officers (responsible for assessingoffenders’ suitability for community service and for supervising community service orders).Criminal justice senior social workers manage these staff. They are accountable to teamleaders who manage both children and families and criminal justice services. Teamleaders in turn report to area service managers who carry overall local managementresponsibility for community care, children and families and criminal justice services.Glasgow has well advanced plans to re-organise all the management arrangements forlocally delivered social work services (discussed more fully in chapter 8 of this report).

2.3 The homeless persons’ team, based in the centre of Glasgow, provides a social workservice for people who are roofless, hostel dwellers or in bed and breakfastaccommodation. Its criminal justice sub-team prepares reports for court and supervisesprobation and community service orders for all homeless offenders in the city.

2.4 The authority sets aside a nominal 5% of each criminal justice social worker’s time for noncriminal justice duties. Inspectors found differences between how teams used this time.Some teams placed no extra demands on criminal justice staff, whilst others involved themin local intake services or in co-working child protection investigations.

3 Other than those prepared by the drug court and throughcare teams

Head of Fieldwork

ManagerPrison Through

HMP BarlinnSocial Work

and2 Throughcare T

AREA SERVICES

9 Area Service Managers(including Homeless Team)

7 Team Leaders (Children &Families/Criminal Justice)

10 Senior Social Workers(Criminal Justice)

84 Social Workers andCommunity Service Officers

Director of Social Work

Depute Director(Community Care)

Depute Director (Children &Families/Criminal Justice)

care

ieUnit

eams

Head of Children &Families/Criminal Justice

Principal Officer

3 Senior Officers*

City-wide resources13 line managers

City-wide resources70 staff

Unit Manager – Court Services

Courts2.5 line managers

Courts17 staff

CITYWIDE SERVICES

Senior Officer Responsibilities:

Senior Officer 1Community Industry TeamSex Offender ProjectAccess Project

Senior Officer 2Probation Resource UnitWomen’s support projects

Senior Officer 3Drug Court/Drug treatment and supervision team

Depute Director (Resources)

Resource Worker, ResearchOfficer, Training and SVQ

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Youth justice

2.5 The authority is piloting specialist youth justice teams in two of its nine area service teams.The remit for the teams is to provide a more integrated and better focused service forserious or persistent offenders between the ages of 14 and 21. They are responsible forproviding all social enquiry reports for this age group, for supervising a small caseload ofoffenders, and for delivering a group work programme. The staffing complement of theteams has both criminal justice and children & families representation. A principal officer(youth justice), based in the business unit, is responsible for strategic planning.

Local addictions services

2.6 Glasgow has established eighteen dedicated criminal justice addictions posts in nine localcommunity addictions teams with the same geographical boundaries as local area socialwork teams. Although the criminal justice service directly funds these posts, managementresponsibility is with the social work addictions service. Addictions workers contribute toassessments and provide a service to offenders subject to statutory orders.

2.7 The authority is piloting community addictions treatment services (CATS) in three of thearea teams. The services are multi-disciplinary, comprising addictions workers, nurses,and social care support staff. They also include dedicated criminal justice staff. The pilotsaim to provide a service that integrates with local area social work teams. They also acceptdirect referrals from the public.

The business unit

2.8 The business unit manages the authority’s criminal justice citywide services. The unit hasheadquarters in the city centre but delivers some of its services from premises elsewherein the city. The principal officer (criminal justice), accountable to the head of the businessunit, has day to day responsibility for strategic planning and for managing five senior officers.These officers have a range of responsibilities that include:

• management of business unit citywide services;

• oversight of work done by agencies who have signed service level agreements withthe authority for criminal justice social work related services;

• provision of professional advice to local area service teams;

• strategic planning in collaboration with the principal officer.

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Court services

2.9 Teams cover the Sheriff, District and High Courts and report to a senior officer (courtservices). The Sheriff Court team includes sub-teams providing bail services and supervisedattendance orders.

Community service

2.10 Glasgow has a partly decentralised community service scheme. Community service officersbased in local area teams assess offenders’ suitability for community service and superviseorders. Community industry teams, managed by the business unit, provide and supportsquad and personal placements. Chapter 6 describes the work of the scheme more fully.

Prison throughcare

2.11 Two throughcare teams carry out all pre-release work and all post release supervision ofprisoners (other than sex offenders) on statutory licence. Both teams are based in the citycentre but cover different parts of the city. The teams each have a senior social workerwho reports to the senior officer (throughcare) who also manages the social work unit atHMP Barlinnie. The throughcare teams share the services of a resource worker, ahomemaker, and an Apex employment worker. The teams also have access to a housingteam located in Barlinnie Prison providing a service for prisoners who may be homelessafter release.

Groupwork resources

2.12 Glasgow has established a specialist project to assist with the assessment and supervisionof sex offenders. Chapter 5 describes the work of the team.

2.13 The business unit provides a central groupwork resource, the ‘Probation Resource Unit’, topromote and support the delivery of the core group work programme in local area teamsand to deliver specialist citywide probation groups. The team has focused primarily ondelivering a citywide programme for male perpetrators of domestic violence (also describedin chapter 5).

Mentally disordered offenders

2.15 The ‘Access Project’ provides a specialist diversion from prosecution service for offenderswith mental health difficulties. Jointly funded by criminal justice social work and the mentalillness specific grant, the project works with area team and throughcare staff to assess andsupervise offenders whose offending is related to mental health problems. The project alsoassists in the community resettlement of mentally disordered offenders discharged fromthe State Hospital to Leverndale Hospital.

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Women’s support projects

2.16 A criminal justice senior officer manages three women’s support projects. Two projectsaddress the needs of women working in the sex industry; the other focuses on the needsof women victims of sexual and violent abuse. Women attend voluntarily and are notnormally subject to any form of statutory supervision. Funding is from the mainstreamsocial work budget with assistance from social inclusion and rough sleepers’ initiativemoneys. Other sections of the social work department previously managed these services.

Addictions services & resources

2.17 Glasgow is one of two areas in Scotland piloting drug courts (the other is Fife). Drug courtsaim to bring to an end or to reduce an offender’s dependence on drugs and to reduceoffending. The drug court in Glasgow commenced in November 2001, and sits up to fourtimes every week. The pilot is subject to external evaluation. A drug court treatment andsupervision team provides a service to the court and to other courts that might impose adrug treatment and testing order or an enhanced probation order4. This is a multi-agencyteam comprising social work, addictions and medical staff.

Services provided by partner agencies

2.18 The criminal justice social work service works in partnership with a number of voluntary andstatutory sector agencies to provide services for offenders on supervision. The authorityhas service level agreements (at least in draft) with some of these organisations. Seniorofficers from the business unit oversee the agreements.

Addictions services

2.19 Partner agencies provide a range of addictions services. The work of the AddictionPartnership and the Joint Review of Purchased Services (in which criminal justice socialwork staff participated) informed the commissioning and purchasing of these services.

2.20 The 218 centre opened in January 2004. The service aims to address women’s offendingand problems associated with it, and to reduce the number of women sentenced tocustody. The voluntary sector provider Turning Point, in partnership with the localauthority and health board, manages the work of the centre. It offers counselling,groupwork, welfare services and residential detoxification/supported accommodationservices for women on statutory supervision or who request voluntary aftercare on releasefrom custody. Key performance indicators are in place and performance against theseforms part of the (draft) service level agreement between the authority and the provider.The centre is subject to external evaluation.

4 This is a probation order with a condition of drug treatment.

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2.21 The authority also contributes funding to Turning Point for the service it provides to thoseoffenders who opt to use the organisation’s drug crisis centre in Glasgow (a walk-inresource for drug users offering needle exchange, detoxification and rehabilitation services).

2.22 The Glasgow Council on Alcohol delivers the Alcohol, Crime and Education (ACE)groupwork programme to selected offenders on statutory orders who have alcohol problemsassociated with offending. The programme consists of twelve sessions aimed at assistingoffenders to control their drinking and to understand the connection between this andtheir offending.

2.23 Phoenix House drug rehabilitation service provides a day programme for those who haveachieved abstinence or who are on a low or reducing methadone dose. The programmealso provides individual counselling and groupwork as one element of a drug treatmentand testing order.

2.24 The authority also spot-purchases other residential placements at a number of drug andalcohol rehabilitation services as required, principally at Red Tower, Phoenix House(Glasgow) and Ronachan.

2.25 Local organisations provide some offender addictions services in specific areas of the city,for example the Greater Easterhouse Alcohol Awareness Project.

Services to young offenders

2.26 The Partnership Project targets serious and persistent young offenders aged between 16and 21. The project brings together criminal justice social work services and the voluntarysector providers NCH and Apex. Offenders attend as a condition of a probation orderand are required to complete modular individual and groupwork programmes to addresstheir offending behaviour. The Apex arm of the project provides advice on employmentand training.

2.27 The voluntary sector provider Includem targets the same group of young offenders. Itprovides a range of services including a 24 hour helpline, support with practical issues likeaccommodation, support for young offenders attending court, advice for family groupswhere a young person is offending, and offence focused work (using a workbook theorganisation has developed).

Employability and accommodation services

2.28 The authority contracts with the voluntary sector provider ‘Apex’ to deliver educational andlife skills programmes to offenders placed on supervised attendance orders. An Apexworker, located with the throughcare teams, provides an employability service for offenderssubject to post release supervision and liaises with local employment and training providerson their behalf.

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2.29 The authority purchases accommodation services from a number of voluntary sectorproviders. These include SACRO, the Church of Scotland, and the Talbot Association.

2.30 SACRO is the principal accommodation provider offering forty supported offenderaccommodation flats (funded through the criminal justice budget) and a further twenty forthose leaving custody (funded through the rough sleepers’ initiative). It also provides adviceand support on request to those leaving custody (funded by the rough sleepers initiative).The organisation aims to move offenders on to permanent tenancies in partnership withGlasgow Housing Association.

2.31 The Church of Scotland provides thirteen residential places for offenders through the‘Dick Stewart Project’. The project operates two hostels offering a short to medium termbase for those subject to statutory orders.

2.32 The Talbot Association offers a further eight residential places for offenders through itsGovanhill Project. The emphasis of the project is on meeting the needs of younger femaleoffenders with drug misuse problems. The project works with a GP experienced in managingdrug misuse problems.

Local partnerships

2.33 The service has built partnerships with a number of local employment initiatives. Forexample, the Energiser Programme offers a 12 week personal development course forpeople with addictions and mental health problems and Reed in Partnership provides anemployment service to ex-offenders.

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3. SOCIAL ENQUIRY REPORTS

3.1 Social enquiry reports (SERs) provide information and advice to the courts relevant tosentencing. Where relevant, a report should contain an action plan for working with theoffender to tackle offending.

Table 1: Demand for Social Enquiry Reports

2000-2001 2001-2002 2002-2003 2003-2004

Nationally 36,210 35,283 39,187 Not Available

Glasgow 6,801 7,529 7,742 6,677

Source: Scottish Executive Community Justice Services Division Annual Returns

3.2 Nationally, demand for social enquiry reports increased significantly over the period 2000to 2003. As table 1 illustrates, demand in Glasgow also rose over the period 2001-2003but fell last year to a level below that of 2000-2001. There are no available comparativenational data for 2003-2004.

3.3 Statistics for the number of SERs submitted per 10,000 people for the period 2002-2003show a rate of 160.4 for Glasgow compared to the national average of 105.6. (Source:Scottish Executive Criminal Justice Social Work Statistics, 2002-2003).

Performance indicators

3.4 Figures published by Audit Scotland for 2001-2002 showed that Glasgow City Councilsubmitted 90.7% of social enquiry reports to courts by the due date. The Council reportedsubsequently that this was an underestimate.

SER analysis

3.5 Inspectors assessed 208 reports using criteria drawn from National Standards andeffective practice principles (see appendix 1). These comprised 74 reports submitted tothe courts during a specific week in March and 134 further reports read as part of theprobation and community service file reading. The following tables set out the results ofthe analysis of the sample of reports:

Table 2: Social Enquiry Reports – Performance (1)

(Sample size: 208) Yes No N/A

Is key information verified and checked? 129 79 0

If an order involving community sentences is indicated; 134 19 55does the report contain an outline plan for supervision?

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Table 3: Social Enquiry Reports – Performance (2)

Poor Adequate Good Very good N/A

Overall, how satisfactory is the report? 33 98 70 7 0

How well is offending analysed? 52 84 63 9 0

How well are offending related needs 34 88 71 15 0analysed?

How well is risk of re-offending assessed? 62 76 60 10 0

How well is the feasibility of different 16 98 82 12 0sentencing options reviewed?

How well evidenced is any advice given 21 97 77 13 0about sentencing?

3.6 The findings show that:

• overall, between one half and two thirds of reports were of ‘poor’ or ‘adequate’ standard;

• worryingly, one quarter of reports were ‘poor’ at analysing offending and almost a thirdwere ‘poor’ at assessing the risk of re-offending;

• report writers verified relevant information from third parties (for example about healthor addictions problems) in between one half and two thirds of reports;

• outline supervision plans were usually included when probation was an identified option.

3.7 The findings as presented are citywide. There were, however, significant variationsbetween teams in the standard of reports.

Women offenders

3.8 Of the 208 reports sampled, 43 were about women offenders. The overall quality of thesereports was slightly better than the sample as a whole, with proportionately fewer ‘poor’reports and more ‘good’ reports. The main differences were in the quality of analysis ofoffending and offending related needs.

Risk assessment

3.9 The inspection questionnaire asked file readers to record whether a structured riskassessment was present. The finding here was that this had been done in 110 (53%)of the 208 reports sampled5. File reading data highlighted the variable quality of riskassessments in social enquiry reports, and it was not always clear how structured riskassessment tools had contributed to the content of reports.

5 This data may include some risk assessments completed during the initial stages of supervision.

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3.10 Undertaking a structured assessment of the risk of re-offending when preparing an SERhas been part of the formal strategy of the department for some time (see Glasgowstrategic plan 2002-2005). The authority trained its staff to use the LSI-R (Level of ServiceInventory Revised) and instructed them to refer to the results of these assessments insocial enquiry reports. Using both static and dynamic factors statistically associated withthe likelihood of reconviction (and allowing for a ‘clinical’ override), the inventory arrives ata scored prediction of the likely risk of re-conviction and a profile of areas of need thatare related to offending. The intention of the department was to use the results of theLSI-R assessment to guide the report author in advising the court as to the most suitableintensity and content of supervision if the court imposed probation. The authority issuedguidance to teams on what LSI-R scores should be considered as representing ‘low’,‘moderate’, ‘high’, and ’very high’ risk. The file reading showed that practitionersfrequently failed to follow this guidance.

3.11 Glasgow’s 2002-2003 update on their 2002-2005 strategic plan comments that the use ofLSI-R remains below 50% ‘against a target of 70% last year and 80% this year’. The 2004plan update indicates that this figure is ‘improving’, but that LSI-R remains inconsistentlyused. The inspection file reading findings confirm that there remains considerable roomfor improvement in this area.

Risk of harm to others

3.12 The LSI-R assesses the risk of reconviction but does not assess the risk of harm to others.The authority has only recently begun to train staff on an adapted format of RAGF (theRisk Assessment Guidance Framework)6. This newly adopted approach to risk of harmassessment was not yet evident in the files read for the inspection.

3.13 Chapter 5 presents data about and analyses the performance of the authority in respectof high-risk offenders.

Interviews with staff

3.14 The interviews with staff offered an opportunity to obtain information and views aboutfactors affecting the production and quality of reports.

3.15 A common message practitioners wanted to get across was that they felt they had towrite a large number of reports. They said this made it hard to achieve a high standardand more difficult to meet all their other responsibilities. They reported completing aroundthree reports each week, although they said the number could sometimes be significantlyhigher (the authority’s annual report for 2002-3 comments that ‘in the course of a year…every area team criminal justice social worker has to produce an average of 2.5 courtreports every week of the year to tight deadlines and good professional standards’).Senior social workers allocate reports and the authority does not operate any formalworkload management system.

6 This framework offers guidance on the key areas workers should consider when assessing offenders’ risk of harmto others.

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3.16 Area service managers (responsible for community care, children and families and criminaljustice services) were aware of practitioners’ views that the volume of court reports wastoo high. They said they kept an eye on the key performance indicator collected for AuditScotland (the percentage of reports delivered to the courts on time).

3.17 Practitioners were ambivalent about carrying out structured risk assessments using theLSI-R. Some said that it was an administrative chore, and not a genuine aid to practice.Another view was that ‘it only confirms what you know’. There was a feeling amongststaff that the authority had not introduced LSI-R in the right way; it was not clear to themhow it should apply to practice. Managers commented that risk assessment practicewas ‘in a state of flux’.

3.18 Social workers reported that the practical arrangements for getting requests for reportsand the associated information to them from the court did not always work efficiently.This reduced the time available to complete reports, making it more difficult to undertakesecond interviews and home visits. The information was sometimes incomplete and theSCRO record (a complete record of the offender’s criminal history including informationabout any outstanding charges) frequently did not arrive in time to be of use whenpreparing a report. In sex offender and domestic violence cases, they could often obtainadditional information about the current offence through their contacts with the localpolice. This made offence analysis easier because it was more possible to challenge theoffender about his version of events.

3.19 Workers said that although there is joint work with addictions staff in local areas, it wasproving difficult for addictions workers to contribute to social enquiry reports in the limitedtime available for the assessment.

Quality assurance

3.20 Area service managers said that discussion between practitioners and their senior socialworkers was the main vehicle for assuring quality. Team leaders (responsible for managingboth children and families services and criminal justice services) also saw supervision asimportant for quality assurance. Senior social workers did not use any standard proceduresto monitor the quality of reports. One senior ran an SER consultancy group, while othersdid some random sampling. All said they were available to discuss difficult reports.Practitioners could not identify any systematic approaches to quality assurance althoughthey said senior social workers were normally available to discuss difficult reports.

3.21 The current strategic plan for the authority sets a target for senior social workers routinelyto check the quality of ‘a minimum of 15%’ of each social worker’s reports’. The servicehas not yet achieved this target.

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The views of Sheriffs

3.22 Three sheriffs responded to a written request for views on the quality of reports. Whilst thegeneral view was that most reports met their requirements for information and advice, noneof the three Sheriffs was wholly positive about the current standard of reports. The maincriticisms were that they could be too long, include irrelevant information, and containerrors in syntax and spelling. They also said that reports did not always arrive on time.

Practice observation

3.23 Inspectors observed ten social enquiry report interviews. Amongst these, there wereexamples of good and less good practice. Positive comments included the observationsthat:

• ‘the offender’s drinking pattern was thoroughly explored’;

• ‘the complex strands of this man’s offending history were carefully investigated withsensitivity and attention to detail’; and

• ‘the social worker appropriately challenged the offender to consider his offending andthe victim’s perspective’.

3.24 Less positive examples included the observations that:

• ‘offending was not really probed or challenged’ and that there was ‘very little probingof offending’; and

• ‘a lot of extraneous information was collected’.

Conclusions & areas for Improvement

3.25 There is no doubt that Glasgow needs to raise the standard of its report writing. It isunsatisfactory that the balance of practice was towards ‘adequate’ (acceptable but withsubstantial room for improvement) and ‘poor’ (unacceptable) not least because, in manycases, reports constituted the only assessment and related action plan for the firststages of supervision if the offender was placed on probation (see next chapter). Therewas evidence that staff could write good reports. The need now is to raise the standardof the many towards the standard of the best.

3.26 Interviews with practitioners pointed up a number of factors they felt militated againstwriting better reports. They expressed some concerns that:

• the sheer volume of reports had led to practice becoming very routine;

• systems for getting report requests and related information to area teams did notalways work as well as they could, reducing the time available to prepare reports;

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• second interviews and home visits could not easily be achieved within the requiredtimescales; and

• dealing adequately with offending was not assisted by the frequent lack of moredetailed information about the current offence and previous offending;

3.27 Whilst these factors can undoubtedly make writing good reports more difficult, they donot altogether explain the poor standard of some reports. It is possible, for example, toexclude extraneous information in reports, to probe the offender’s account of the offencein more depth, and to make better use of the LSI-R to assess risk of re-offending andfactors associated with offending despite the difficulties identified above. File readers andinspectors noted that a significant number of reports contained unnecessary informationthat only served to obscure the key information and analysis in the report.

3.28 Interviews with senior social workers showed that whilst they discussed individual reportswith staff they undertook little routine monitoring of the quality of reports. Interviews withteam leaders and area managers showed that they exercised little oversight of the overallquality of reports.

3.29 The department had put considerable investment and effort into introducing the LSI-Rstructured risk assessment tool but the evidence was that it had not fully implementedthe policy at practitioner and senior social worker level.

3.30 A good starting point for achieving a better overall standard of report writing would be forall staff responsible for writing reports and assuring their quality to take a fresh look at theNational Standards for social enquiry reports. The Standards offer detailed andcomprehensive guidance on the purposes of reports, gathering information, making anassessment, and writing the report. They are clear about the need for information andadvice to be relevant, reliable, and impartial. They stress the importance of investigating theoffender’s attitudes to the current offence and to any victim, the pattern of any previousoffending, and those needs and circumstances that may have contributed to the offending.

3.31 Managers should:

• ensure that staff are familiar with National Standards and use them as a reference whenpreparing reports;

• address any delays in getting requests for reports together with the appropriatebackground information, including the SCRO, to area teams;

• improve risk assessment practice. This means ensuring that staff make proper use ofthe LSI-R to assess the likelihood of re-offending and that they assess risk of harm forcases other than sex offenders where procedures are already in place; and

• introduce and maintain systematic procedures for quality assurance.

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Home Background Reports

3.32 Home background reports provide the Parole Board with information about the homecircumstances to which a prisoner would return on release from custody and describethe level of supervision and support available on release to assist with resettlement.

Table 4: Demand for Home Background Reports

2000/2001 2001/2002 2002/2003 2002/2003

National 1,255 1,167 1,188 Not Available

Glasgow 411 323 288 312

Source: Scottish Executive Community Justice Division Annual Returns

3.33 While the national demand for home background reports has remained relatively stableover the period 2000-2003, Glasgow over the same period has seen a significantreduction in numbers, despite a modest rise between 2002-2003 and 2003-2004.National figures for 2003-2004 are not yet available as a comparison.

3.34 Inspectors and file readers read a sample of 41 home background reports. The followingtable sets out the findings:

Table 5: Home Background Reports – Performance (1)

Question (Sample size: 41) Poor Adequate Good Very Good

How well does the report indicate the level of 2 13 18 8support likely to be available to this offenderfrom his/her family/wider community?

How well does the report indicate the package 4 10 17 10of supervision to be made available on release,including access to any specialist resources?

How well does the report address any risks to 6 18 10 7the community arising if/when this offenderis released?

Overall, how satisfactory is the report? 3 14 14 10

Yes No

Does the report contain a provisional release plan? 35 6

3.35 The figures show that the balance of performance was weighted towards ‘good’ and‘very good’ and that there was comparatively little ‘poor’ practice.

3.36 35 of the 41 reports included a provisional release plan.

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3.37 The strongest aspects of practice were in the setting out of the package of supervision tobe available on release, and the assessment of the level of support that was likely to beavailable to the offender in the community. The weakest element of practice was theassessment of any risks to the community the offender might pose on release.

Staff interviews

3.38 Practitioners in the throughcare and citywide sex offender project prepare all homebackground reports, with the latter preparing the reports on sex offenders. They basereports on the framework set out in National Standards and there are no additionaldepartmental guidelines.

3.39 Staff commented that they sometimes had very short notice for carrying out a reportbecause the requesting prison sent the papers to an area service team rather thandirectly to the throughcare service. The paperwork they received from the prison couldbe incomplete, sometimes with an incorrect address. They said they would like detailedinformation from SPS about any prison-based rehabilitative work completed, and abouthow well the offender had participated in it.

3.40 Staff said there were no procedures in place to monitor the quality of reports.

Conclusions and areas for improvement

3.41 Most home background reports were of an ‘adequate’ or better standard, and there wasevidence that staff were planning for the offender’s release in a practical way with anawareness of the extent of support likely to be available to the offender in the community.The main weakness of reports was in the extent to which they included an assessmentof the risk the offender might pose to the community after release.

3.42 The following steps would improve the service further:

• all home background reports should include a risk of harm assessment;

• all home background reports should include a provisional release plan;

• all home background reports should address the risk the offender may pose to thecommunity on release;

• there should be systematic procedures in place for monitoring the quality of homebackground reports; and

• the authority should take steps to make sure that, as far as possible, requests forreports go to the right place in the first instance to maximise the time available forcompleting them.

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4. THE COMMUNITY SUPERVISION OF OFFENDERS ONPROBATION AND STATUTORY LICENCE

Probation and statutory licences

4.1 The community supervision of offenders on probation or statutory licence after release fromcustody has the main aim of preventing or reducing re-offending. Offenders must complywith requirements to attend for supervision, to be of good behaviour, and to take part inactivities intended to address their offending behaviour and the problems that cause it.

4.2 Nationally, the use of probation has increased significantly in recent years. Table 6 setsout the number of orders made in Scotland between 2000 and 2003, and shows thatthe use of probation by Glasgow courts was broadly in line with the national trend. Table7 sets out the number of parole/non-parole cases the authority managed over the sameperiod. (National figures are not included here because their reliability is questionable).7

Table 6: Probation Orders

2000/2001 2001/2002 2002/2003 2003/2004

National 5,601 6,198 7,234 Not Available

Glasgow 1,065 1,218 1,251 1,304


Table 7: Parole and Non Parole Licences: Glasgow

2000/2001 2001/2002 2002/2003 2003/2004

283 262 292 384


4.3 Published statistics for probation orders per 10,000 persons for 2002/3 show a rate of 31.4orders per 10,000 for Glasgow compared with the national average of 20.5 per 10.000.(Source: Scottish Executive Criminal Justice Social Work Statistics, 2003).

Profile of offenders on probation in Glasgow

4.4 Statistics show that in 2002-03:

• 6% of those on probation were under 18, 16% were between 18 and 20, and 21%were between 21 and 25;

• 10% were female;

• 58% were unemployed.

7 Until 2003, local authorities employed differing criteria for calculating parole/non-parole figures. The Scottish Executivehas now clarified annual return requirements.

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Performance indicators

4.5 The 2001 – 2002 Audit Scotland performance indicators show that 39% of offenders onprobation in Glasgow had an interview with their supervising officer or representativewithin one week of the making of their order. Data for 2002-2003 shows no change.

4.6 In 2001-2002, the Council submitted an application for breach of probation in respect of22% of those on supervision. This figure was unchanged in 2002-2003.

(Audit Scotland, Criminal Justice Social Work Performance Indicators, 2001-02;Glasgow City Council, Criminal Justice Social Work Annual Report, 2002- 2003).

The inspection

4.7 The inspection team reviewed two hundred and five case files. This sample comprised ofthe following:

Type of Order Overall Men Women

Community Service 40 30 10

Throughcare (parole & Non Parole) 51 47 4

Probation (no additional conditions) 43 32 11

Probation (with additional conditions) (not 229) 42 33 9

Section 229 Orders (Probation with CS) 29 21 8

4.8 Chapter 5 examines work with high-risk offenders in more detail. Chapter 6 presents theinspection data in respect of community service orders.

4.9 File readers used a structured pro-forma to analyse the quality of assessment, caseplanning, intervention to address offending, and the extent of compliance with NationalStandards (the criteria are set out in full in appendix 1). They also looked for evidencethat the authority evaluated its work as the order or licence progressed.

4.10 As well as examining a sample of case files, the inspection team interviewed staff fromeach of the eight criminal justice area service teams and the homeless team, includingsocial workers, community service officers, senior social workers, team leaders, and areamanagers. They talked with practitioners and managers working in (or supervised by) thebusiness unit including the principal officer (criminal justice). They sought the views ofstakeholders and beneficiaries, and met with other senior local authority managers. Theyevaluated practice by observing interviews and groupwork sessions (either directly or onvideo), and interviewed offenders receiving the service.

4.11 The published findings of the file reading are for the authority as a whole. There was,however, a considerable variation in the quality of supervision delivered across differentlocal area teams and business unit services.

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Case records

4.12 Inspectors found that case notes were often incomplete or missing and therefore not anadequate account of practice. Staff explained the poor quality of these in various ways.Some blamed the transition from a paper-based system to a largely electronic one. TheIT system records case notes on a specific screen, but a number of staff said they lackedthe confidence and skills to use this properly. Despite an extensive training programme,the addition of a specific criminal justice module to the electronic system two years agoappears to have added a layer of confusion for some workers. This criminal justicemodule gathers data that can be aggregated (in a way that case notes cannot be), andshould provide information useful for performance management. Data of this type is inputvia the ‘activities’ screen to identify the type of event or contact, for example, firstappointment, home visit, or probation review. Some workers had entered only basic dataand were failing to describe the content of the contact on the ‘observations’ screen. Otherswere failing to log the ‘activities’ data, effectively undermining the ability of the system toproduce accurate performance data.

Planning

4.13 The performance of the authority in planning for supervision is set out in table eight.

Table 8: Planning Performance

(Sample size: 165) Yes No

Is there a written supervision plan for the first three months of the order 104 61or licence?

(Sample size: 104 cases with a plan)

Was the plan reviewed at the intervals outlined in National Standards? 41 63

Does the planned content directly address those factors assessed as 93 11contributing to offending?

Does the plan clearly set out how the planned content will be delivered? 71 33

Was partnership working part of the plan? 48 56

4.14 For the 165 probation and throughcare cases in the sample, the table shows that:

• almost two thirds of cases had a plan for supervision covering the first three monthsof the order or licence;

• almost all plans identified relevant factors to be addressed during supervision;

• nearly one in two plans proposed work with another agency or service;

• one in three plans did not spell out clearly how the work would be delivered;

• four in ten plans were reviewed at the National Standards intervals (where plans werenot reviewed at the required intervals, the failure was judged to be the fault of theservice in just under three quarters of cases).

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4.15 Inspectors asked practitioners and senior social workers how they approached assessmentand planning. They confirmed that the outline plan contained in the social enquiry or homebackground report was the basis for most work during the first three months of supervision.There was no departmental guidance in addition to what was contained in NationalStandards about how to create a supervision plan. The ‘Carejust’ IT system had aninfrequently used section for planning.

4.16 Some staff said there was not a clear enough planning phase in supervision. Others sawthe first three months of supervision as an opportunity to carry out a more in-depthassessment to translate into a plan at the first review.

4.17 Senior social workers felt the quality of plans could suffer because of the demands of otherwork, particularly social enquiry reports. Practice varied about flagging and managingreviews of action plans. Some teams used a standard pro-forma to structure discussion;others had a more ‘ad hoc’ system.

4.18 Staff expressed a range of views about using structured risk assessment tools forassessment and planning purposes (see chapter 3 on social enquiry reports). Glasgow hadadopted a policy of using the LSI-R to match the content and level of supervision to therisk and needs profile of the offender. Because of the wide variations in practice in usingthe LSI-R and the problems in establishing the ‘core’ groupwork programme in all areateams (see below), staff acknowledged there was quite a long way to go to implementthis policy fully.

4.19 Staff commented on their experience of productive joint planning work with partner servicesand agencies, particularly with local and citywide addictions services (the most frequenttype of partnership work) and with SACRO (supported accommodation). Staff also referredto joint planning activity with Apex (employment/training services) and the police.

Supervision

4.20 The findings from the file reading regarding the implementation of supervision plans areset out in Tables 9 and 10 below.

Table 9: Supervision Performance (1)

(Sample size: 165) Poor Adequate Good Very Good N/A

Overall, how accurately do you think the level 47 65 35 11 7of supervision offered reflects the risk ofre-offending and risk of harm assessed?

Overall, how accurately do you think the 54 62 30 11 8content of supervision reflects the risk ofre-offending and risk of harm?

(Sample size: 165) Yes No N/A

Has supervision maintained a consistent 85 80 0focus on factors associated with offending?

Did supervision deliver partnership working? 64 90 11

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Table 10: Supervision Performance (2)

(Sample size: 165)

What was the primary method used to engage with the offender? Number

Non-programmed individual work 132

Non-programmed groupwork 2

Programmed groupwork 20

Programmed individual work 5

Never presented for supervision 6

4.21 The main findings about implementing supervision were as follows:

• the balance of practice in respect of both the level of supervision (frequency of contact)and the content of supervision (nature of the service delivered) was heavily weightedtowards ‘poor’ and ‘adequate’;

• in slightly more than one-half of cases file readers judged supervision to have focusedconsistently on factors to do with offending;

• in between one third and one half of cases, collaborative work with other agencies/services actually took place; and

• in the overwhelming majority of cases, ‘non-programmed individual work’ was theprimary method of intervention

4.22 This latter finding was surprising because almost sixty percent of plans referred to theprospective delivery of a structured programme. This included centrally run groupwork toaddress domestic violence (the change programme) or sex offending (the community-sexoffender groupwork programme or C-SOGP). Where plans proposed that offenders wouldreceive groupwork to address their offending in general, this was unlikely to be fulfilled asthe core groupwork programme did not run in most areas.

Women offenders

4.23 The sample included the case files of thirty-two women offenders (excluding those oncommunity service). Nineteen of these cases had a plan. Of these, the authority heldreviews at the correct intervals for only five women, with the failure being within thecontrol of the service in twelve instances. All the women in the sample were offered‘non-programmed individual work’ as the primary method of intervention, although theauthority had a centrally run groupwork programme for women offenders. Thisprogramme had not run for several months before the inspection, though the authoritysaid that it was planning two groups for the immediate future.

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4.24 Inspectors asked those practitioners and managers attending focus groups about theirapproach to supervising orders or licences. A number of area team staff commented thatthey felt that there had been a reduction in the variety of their work since the creation ofthe throughcare and specialist sex offender teams, and that much of their workload nowcentred on the preparation of social enquiry reports. Others felt that they had increasinglybecome ‘referral agents’ rather than direct providers of a service, although a numberwere involved in delivering the sex offender and domestic violence groupworkprogrammes alongside staff from the business unit.

4.25 Some throughcare staff considered their main priority to be linking offenders to otheragencies and co-ordinating resettlement in the community. Staff said that the authorityhad recruited a throughcare resource worker last year, partly to enable the delivery of the‘combined’ groupwork programme, but that the programme had not yet run. Theyreported that the teams had used the resource worker to cover operational work whensocial workers had been absent through illness. Throughcare social workers operated inmuch the same way as their colleagues in area service teams, supervising most offendersby means of individual casework. The throughcare teams had a minimum interventionclinic that offered a ‘reporting-in’ facility to offenders who had been at liberty, on licence,for at least nine months, and whom workers assessed to constitute a low risk to thepublic.

4.26 Practitioners expressed a variety of views about delivering offence-focused practice.Many said they were aware of and valued the principles and methods of this approach buthad insufficient time and resources to implement them. Others said that the challenges ofdealing with issues such as addiction and employment were often more pressing andacknowledged that they frequently did not make a clear enough connection between thiswork and offending behaviour.

4.27 Staff working in addictions teams said that they aimed to work collaboratively with criminaljustice service colleagues and that locating services together enhanced the potential forintegration. Nevertheless, addictions and criminal justice social work teams did not alwaysshare relevant information and social workers did not always invite addictions staff tocase reviews where this could have been beneficial. One addictions team was not whollyclear about how many of its staff were criminal justice funded. In another team levels ofreferral from criminal justice social workers were disappointing.

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Practice observations

4.28 The inspection team observed sixty-three supervision contacts between social workersand offenders. The box below summarises the types of contact:

What type of session was observed TOTAL

Probation supervision session 26

S.229 supervision (probation with a condition of CS) 2

Throughcare supervision session (parole and non-parole supervision) 8

Probation review 20

Interview with specialist service (intervention) 3

Other/Not recorded 4

4.29 Observations took place in each area team (including the homeless team), and in thethroughcare team and sex offenders project (reported on in the next chapter). Allobservations focused on key aspects of practice. Where possible, inspectors discussedthe case with the staff member concerned before the session to understand the contextand to establish how they intended the session to fit within any plan for supervision.Afterwards, inspectors asked offenders about whether they thought the session wouldhelp them to stop offending. During the observations inspectors evaluated:

• whether workers set appropriate aims for the session and whether they achieved them;

• whether, where relevant, workers maintained an appropriate focus on public safetyissues;

• the extent to which the session dealt with behaviours, problems and needs associatedwith offending;

• whether workers addressed victim issues properly; and

• how effectively workers dealt with any compliance issues.

Practice examples

4.30 The observations covered a range of settings and teams. In general, they found that muchsupervision was ad hoc in nature, and not part of an ongoing programme of work. Somesessions purposefully tackled issues associated with offending, and these evidenced agenuine enthusiasm and commitment from practitioners. Other sessions failed to deliverany offence-focused content and seemed to offer few likely benefits in reduced offending.

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4.31 Inspectors observed a number of interviews where a good standard of work to tackleoffending related need and risks was apparent. The vignettes below provide some examplesof these.

• Brian tended to commit offences when drunk. Inspectors observed his interview withhis supervising social worker and a member of the ‘ACE’ alcohol groupwork projectteam. Using structured assessment materials, the workers motivated Brian to begin toidentify and address his difficulties. The example shows that partnership work can addvalue to supervision, bringing fresh expertise to assessment and enabling access to awider range of resources.

• Jim’s final probation review went over his progress. With the help of his probationsupervisor, he had managed to become drug-free. Jim was now working as a volunteer,assisting other drug users and campaigning for better local drugs services. Thisexample shows how purposeful work to address crime-related problems, together withhelp to develop positive alternative behaviours, can make a real impact on offendingand future prospects.

• Alan was on probation. As well as a history of violent offending, he had long-standingaddictions and mental health problems. When his behaviour at home began todeteriorate, his supervisor took decisive action to involve colleagues in child protectionto safeguard the welfare of the children in his household. Although the main focus ofwork was on Alan, the example illustrates the importance of being aware of andactively monitoring, the possible risk of harm to children and other vulnerable persons.

• Practitioners carefully prepared and delivered a general offending group work session.It helped participants to think about how their distorted perceptions of how men shouldbehave influenced their behaviour towards others, particularly women. Participation wasvery good. The session showed that offenders could respond positively to structuredinterventions, challenging and learning from each other.

• Bill was on probation, and had a history of violent behaviour. He presented a risk ofviolence to his ex-partner. Because of Bill’s challenging behaviour and high-risk status,the team manager had allocated two social workers to jointly supervise his probationorder. During the observed session, Bill’s social workers skilfully defused his anger andhelped him make a realistic plan to stay away from his ex-partner. They then consultedtheir line manager and notified the police, passing on the information they needed toprotect his ex-partner. After the interview Bill told inspectors that being on probationwas helping him to gain more control over his violent behaviour because it allowed himto talk through the thoughts and feelings that were making him angry, enabling him toget things more into perspective. The work demonstrates the complexity of riskmanagement, encompassing direct work with the offender, information sharing, andinter-agency collaboration.

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4.32 Some offenders said they had learned new behaviours and skills while on supervision:

• Paul was near the end of a three year probation order. He remarked that it had beena ‘hard slog’ but that it had ‘opened his eyes’ and helped him think about and analysehis behaviour and stay out of trouble. Breaking away from entrenched attitudes andbehaviours is a major challenge for offenders, and Paul’s account suggests thatsupervision had helped him do this.

• John, at the end of a twelve month period on probation, described specific new skillsand behaviours he had learned to help him stop and think about his actions and avoidcrime. John said that probation had been a turning point for him. Helping offenders tolearn new ways of thinking is critical to reducing re-offending. This offender couldpinpoint what had changed for him, and linked this to the supervision he had received.

4.33 The inspection team thought the focus on offending behaviour could have been better ina number of cases. For example:

• Inspectors attended Sharon’s probation review. She had a history of drink driving. Hersupervising officer had concentrated on monitoring her alcohol use, but had not noticedfrom her record that Sharon had committed other serious road traffic offences whilstsober. Effective assessment and supervision must take full account of offendinghistories, not just the current offence. Interventions must be cognisant of these historiesand of the range of problems and behaviours underlying them. This will normally requirea variety of approaches within an overall plan for supervision.

• Colin was subject to an extended sentence8 and reported monthly for supervision.Neither the observed session with Colin, nor his case papers, suggested that hissupervision had ever focused on his offending or involved any structured work toaddress risk of harm, even though Colin had harmed a young person and served asubstantial prison sentence. An extended sentence ensures rigorous post-releasesupervision for the offender for a longer period than would have been otherwise thecase. It is therefore implicit that the court considered the offender to constitute a highrisk of harm to the public. Neither the intensity nor the content of supervision in thiscase reflected the gravity of the offence, the seriousness of the possible risk to others,or the intentions of the sentencing court.

4.34 Inspectors found a number of cases where delays or process failures led to problems indelivering effective supervision.

• Vincent’s probation action plan proposed structured work to address his offending andrelated addictions problems. After sentence, Vincent moved house and there was athree month delay in transferring his case to the new office. During this period, Vincentjust ‘reported in’ doing no work on his offending. The example shows the negativeeffect of inefficient administration. Vincent was moving to another address in the Cityof Glasgow area. There was no reason for a three month delay.

8 An extended sentence is a period of extra supervision that the court can impose when sentencing sexual or violentoffenders to custody.

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• Samuel was required by the court to attend the core groupwork programme as partof his probation order. The programme had never run in Sam’s local area and he wasunable to comply with the court’s condition that he attends the group. Staff said thiswas not an isolated case. Failures like this undermine the credibility of the service andmay lead the court to place less confidence in the capacity of the service to delivereffective community sentences.

• At Robert’s probation review, disagreements between partner agencies about the bestway forward were not resolved beforehand. Consequently, the review did not achieveits aim of agreeing the next steps to assist Robert to deal with his alcohol problem.Partnerships add value, but they need preparation, planning, and a commitment tojoint work. On this occasion, differences between agencies got in the way of achievinga purposeful outcome.

Compliance

4.35 Table 11 sets out the extent to which file readers assessed that compliance wasproblematic during the period of supervision. Table 12 shows the overall assessment thatfile readers made about the rigour of supervision, both in ensuring adequate levels ofcontact and dealing effectively with indiscipline. Table 13 provides data on key aspects ofNational Standards for compliance with supervision, and distinguishes between non-compliance that was within the control of the service and non-compliance that was not.

Table 11: Compliance – Offender Compliance (1)

(Sample size 165)9 Yes No

Were compliance a problem? 103 62

Table 12: Compliance – Service Performance (2)

(Sample size: 165)10 Poor Adequate Good Very Good N/A

How well was the case managed in 42 71 39 11 2respect of contact, compliance andenforcement?

9 All probation and throughcare – excludes community service orders.

10 All probation and throughcare – excludes community service orders.

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Table 13: Compliance – Service Performance against National Standards (3)

(Sample size: 114)11 Yes No – within service No – outside servicecontrol control

Did the first appointment take place 58 35 21within five working days of the makingof the order?

(Sample size: 51)12

Did the appointment take place 45 5 1within one working day of releasefrom custody?

(Sample size: 165)13

Did a review take place at 12 weeks? 63 73 29

Were (at least) four appointments 84 63 18arranged for the first four weeks?

4.36 The tables show that:

• offender compliance was a problem in nearly two thirds of cases;

• overall, practice in managing compliance was assessed as ‘good’ or ‘very good’ in aboutone third of cases, ‘adequate’ in less than one half, and ‘poor’ in one quarter of cases;

• in around one-half of the probation cases, interviews occurred within five working daysof the making of the order. The strategic plan for 2002-2005 sets a target of 95% forthis performance indicator. Audit Scotland data for 2001 – 2002 and 2002-3 showsthis was achieved in 39% of cases;

• twelve-week reviews did not happen in between one-half and two thirds of all probationand throughcare cases. This omission was within the control of the authority in morethan two thirds of cases.


4.37 The inspection team asked practitioners and senior social workers about their approachto compliance.

4.38 Practitioners expressed a variety of views about the status of National Standards. Somethought them an absolute standard; others felt that working with some offenders, forexample, drug misusing and chaotic offenders required considerably more flexibility thanwas offered by National Standards. Some staff said that they frequently used considerablediscretion when deciding about enforcement, and that their managers did not routinelymonitor this practice.

11 Refers to probation only; standalone community service data is given in chapter 512 All throughcare cases in sample13 All probation and throughcare – excludes community service orders.

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4.39 In the main, senior social workers supported the view stated in the authority’s currentstrategic plan that the chaotic lifestyles and difficulties of some drug-using or mentallydisordered offenders made the strict enforcement of compliance problematic. They reliedlargely on staff to consult them about enforcement issues. Some said that pressure ofwork reduced the time they could give to monitoring the service’s adherence to NationalStandards or to rigorously enforcing the offender’s compliance. One senior said that inmany cases the first three months of an order or licence was the period when thesupervisor worked with the offender to achieve compliance.

The views of Sheriffs and the Parole Board

4.40 The inspection questionnaire distributed to Sheriffs at Glasgow Sheriff Court asked themabout the extent of their confidence that social workers would properly enforce probationorders and that supervision would address offending. The questionnaire also asked ifSheriffs were satisfied with the quality of completion reports. There was a limited responsefrom Sheriffs to this request (see chapter 3).

4.41 Two Sheriffs said they were ‘reasonably’ or ‘fairly’ confident about the enforcement of theorder and that it would address offending. The third Sheriff did not feel in a position togive a view on this. Two expressed satisfaction with the quality of completion reports.The third said he found it hard to comment.

4.42 Inspectors asked the Parole Board for Scotland to comment on the quality of servicethey received from Glasgow. Commenting generally, the Board said that there had beena recent diminution in the quality of the service, which they attributed to possible staffingproblems. The Board said that the quality of supervision in Glasgow was variable and thatthey perceived considerable differences between workers in the quality of work undertaken.

Evaluation

4.43 The inspection team asked practitioners how they evaluated their work. Some said theyasked offenders to complete an evaluation form at the end of the order but that managersdid not aggregate or publish this information for teams. Others said the main form ofevaluation was the procedure for formal reviews (although file reading showed that theservice failed to hold 60% of reviews at the correct intervals). A few said that to measurechange in offender attitudes they periodically reapplied the LSI-R risk and needs assessmenttool. Staff running the Change and C-SOGP groupwork programmes administeredpsychometric tests at the beginning and end of each programme to assess, over time,change in attitudes and beliefs.

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Commentary

4.44 The above findings derive from the examination of case files, the observation of practiceand discussions with staff. The file reading findings suggest that there is considerableroom for improvement in planning and delivering supervision, both in attaining NationalStandards for contact and compliance and in shaping the content of supervision todeliver effective practice to tackle criminal behaviour. Practice observation revaluatedpractitioners who were committed, practical and sensitive but who were working in arelatively unstructured way to address and reduce offending. The following paragraphsdiscuss a number of key issues arising from the findings.

Case records

4.45 Some managers commented that there had been poor case recording before theintroduction of electronic recording and that the IT system (although not user friendly intheir opinion) was not the sole cause of the poor quality of current files. It is importantthat any action that the authority takes to train staff to make better use of the IT systemdoes not neglect the more fundamental issue of what case records are for, and whichitems of information are appropriate to include in them. A case record is not an end initself. It is a planning and management tool; it documents what services the offender hasreceived and why; it allows others to pick up the case and work with it; it enables theagency to account for its actions. For all these reasons and more, it is vitally importantthat the service improves its case recording practice.

Planning

4.46 Effective practice depends on good assessment and planning. Evidence, both from thefile reading and from discussions with staff, suggests that the authority must tighten upplanning practice. It is a matter of concern that more than one-third of probation andthroughcare case files in the sample did not contain a plan for the first three months ofsupervision and that, when there was a plan, it was usually in outline form in a socialenquiry report. During the initial phase of supervision, National Standards require workersto make more specific the action plan presented in the social enquiry report, identifyingtasks and responsibilities for delivering supervision.

4.47 Practitioners expressed varied views about how they should undertake planning andthere appeared to be no set expectations. Senior social workers did not insist on anyparticular approach to planning, and staff had not really ‘bought in’ to the risk/needassessment and planning model set out in the strategic plan 2002-2005.

4.48 Ironically perhaps, there was a ‘good plan for planning’. The authority’s policy to introducethe LSI-R, and determine from it the appropriate level and content for supervision, is inline with effective practice principles. Translating these proposals into practice hasproved difficult.

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4.49 One positive aspect was the extent to which planning activity included work with otherservices and agencies. Another was the fact that, despite the lack of planning activityrecorded in the files, observations of practice suggested that some purposeful work wasnevertheless taking place.

Supervision

4.50 Case file analysis showed that the main approach to supervision was individual non-programmed one-to-one work. This was backed up by the practice observations wherethere proved to be little opportunity to observe group work outside the specialist servicesoffered to sex offenders and offenders convicted of domestic abuse. The case file analysissuggested that a considerable amount of work failed to follow through on plans (wherethey existed) both in respect of the proposed frequency of contact and a sustained focuson offending and offending related needs.

4.51 Research into effective practice in reducing re-offending indicates that structured offence-focused work is more likely to be effective than work that is unfocused and that does notdeal with factors closely associated with offending. The research highlights the positiveimpact of structured programmes that focus on improving offenders’ capacity to thinkthrough problems and identify non-criminal solutions.

4.52 The report has already highlighted that many case records may not offer an accuratereflection of activity in a case. Direct observations suggested, as already noted, thatsome effective and purposeful work was going on. This was particularly true of work withother services and agencies to address offending-related needs, especially in the fields ofaddictions, accommodation and employment. There was less evidence of planned andstructured work that specifically addressed offending.

4.53 This was regrettable, not least because of the considerable investment made to train staffto run a core programme (suitable for group and individual delivery) that addressesgeneral offending and related behaviours and attitudes. Only one of the eight criminaljustice area teams was delivering this programme at the time of the inspection fieldwork.Staff said that they lacked the necessary time and resources and that this was the mainreason why the programme did not run in most locations.

4.54 The ‘minimum intervention’ reporting-in clinic operated by the throughcare teams buildson the sound principle that the levels and content of intervention with an offender shouldmatch the assessed levels of risk and need. Reducing risk normally requires structuredwork with an offender focusing on his/her offending behaviour alongside work on factorssuch as addiction, accommodation or employment that may be associated with thisoffending. The throughcare teams are not yet delivering such structured offence-focusedprogrammes.

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Partnerships

4.55 The file reading showed a considerable commitment to partnership work in plans, and wellover one-third of files had evidence that work with partners did happen. Observations ofpractice and interviews with practitioners confirmed that there was a genuine commitmentto inter-agency work, particularly in the area of addictions, accommodation andemployability. There was some suggestion from staff that supervising officers were notconsistent about the extent to which they invited partners to co-work a case. This meantthat a service user who required a specialist service might not get it.

Managing Offender Compliance and Meeting National Standards

4.56 As with case recording, achieving compliance is not an end in itself but a means to anend. If practice is to be effective in achieving the purpose of reducing re-offending,offenders must attend when required and participate fully in the supervision process.Equally, if community disposals and prison throughcare are to be credible to the publicand other stakeholders, the authority must vigorously enforce them.

4.57 The data from the file reading and from discussions with staff suggests that there isconsiderable room for improvement in the approach of individual practitioners andmanagers to compliance. National Standards are primarily expectations about theperformance of service providers and workers must aim to meet these targets anddeadlines. Whilst the Standards allow for the exercise of some limited discretion, thisshould be appropriately structured, managed and recorded.

Evaluation

4.58 The case file analysis and discussion with staff show that, with the exception of thespecialist projects, comparatively little work was going on routinely to evaluate serviceoutputs and outcomes.


4.59 The findings presented above show that there is substantial room for improvement in thequality of supervision of offenders in Glasgow. In order to improve this, the authority musttake the following steps:

• address the case recording problems inspectors identified during the file reading. Thiswill necessitate improved guidance, training, and oversight by managers;

• give fresh impetus to introducing a systematic approach to risk and needs assessmentand translating these assessments into specific, more detailed supervision plans thatspell out what will be done with the offender and how it will be done;

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• renew efforts to meet the strategic objective of introducing more structured, offencerelated work into local area service teams and the throughcare teams. The authoritymust demonstrate a committed approach to effective practice and reducing re-offending;

• ensure that supervising officers manage offenders’ compliance issues in a robust andpurposeful way that maintains the credibility of the service;

• make sure that systems exist to regulate, monitor and properly record the use ofpractitioner discretion in managing compliance;

• identify and correct the reasons for the frequent failure of the service to meet keyNational Standards milestones for appointments and reviews;

• find ways to introduce more routine analysis of the outputs and outcomes of workundertaken.

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5. HIGH RISK OFFENDERS

5.1 The authority has had written procedures in place for the assessment and supervision ofsex offenders since 1998. These include guidelines on the responsibilities of social workersin area service teams and of specialist workers in the authority’s sex offender project. Theprocedures include agreed protocols with the police and local housing services. Thereare no written procedures in relation to violent offenders.

5.2 The police/social work protocol sets out procedures for assessing the risk posed by sexoffenders required to register under the Sex Offenders Act 1997, and unregistered sexoffenders whose behaviour causes concern to either the police or social workers. Theprocedures require the police to notify the relevant area service manager about anyregistered sex offender in the locality. On receiving this information, area servicemanagers must take any immediate child protection steps necessary and convene asocial work case conference if required.

5.3 The conference (attended by workers from criminal justice, children and families and thecitywide sex offender project) must agree the level of risk posed by the offender andidentify any necessary additional child protection measures. The next step is a joint caseconference organised by the police, and attended by a nominated person from the localauthority. The joint conference must agree a shared level of risk for the offender and therisk management action required. It then makes recommendations to the chief constableabout the need to disclose sensitive information to any third party. If any of the agencieshave concerns about an unregistered sex offender, they must pass this informationthrough to the area service manager who then will take any necessary steps for childprotection.

5.4 The protocol with Glasgow City Housing relating to the sharing of information about risksposed by offenders is no longer relevant following the transfer of housing stock to GlasgowHousing Association (GHA) in 2003. Procedures for information sharing with GHA are nowset out in the police/social work protocol.

5.5 There is a monthly citywide meeting chaired by the senior social worker for the specialistsex offender project bringing together police, social work and housing to discuss issuesrelating to sex offenders who are, or will be, subject to social work supervision. The seniorsocial worker said that this meeting mainly focused on planning the supervision of thosesoon to be released from prison. The service holds case reviews at the intervals set outin National Standards and invites police and others to attend these when appropriate.

5.6 There does not appear to be a strategic meeting chaired at a suitably senior level to bringtogether the full range of services involved with the management of sex offenders acrossGlasgow. Such a body would support a shared and integrated approach to sex offenderrisk management as outlined in the Guidance to the Sex Offender Act 1997 (ScottishExecutive, 2000).

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Risk assessment

5.7 The authority has not systematically assessed, before now, the level of risk of causingharm to others posed by all offenders in contact with the service. It has begun the processof training all staff on a framework for risk assessment that combines LSI-R with theScottish Executive’s risk assessment guidance framework (RAGF).

5.8 The authority uses the structured risk assessment tool ‘Risk Matrix 2000’14 to assess therisk of reconviction posed by sex offenders. Strathclyde Police, along with all other policeforces in Scotland, and some local authorities, use the tool ‘Tayprep 30’15. The authorityupdated its police/social work protocol in 2003 to reflect these different practices. Theprotocol requires social workers to couch information and assessments passed to thepolice in a way that is compatible with the risk factors identified in ‘Tayprep 30’.

File reading

5.9 The file-reading questionnaire asked file readers to identify reports and cases in the samplewhere the offender was categorised as presenting a high risk of harm to the public. Atthe time of the inspection, the authority did not systematically assess risk of harm for alloffenders. File readers were consequently unable to answer this question directly frominformation in the case record. Therefore, for the purposes of the inspection, the teamdefined high-risk offenders as those with convictions for crimes of indecency or seriousviolent offences. This provided 15 sex offender cases and 42 cases of violent offences inthe case file and social enquiry report sample.

5.10 The sex offender sample included five social enquiry reports and these were of a highstandard. In each report, the author had verified key information and thoroughly assessedoffending behaviour and risk of re-offending. Three of the reports assessed the potentialrisk of harm well, although there was room for improvement in two further cases.

5.11 The sample also included eight home background reports on sex offenders. Inspectorsfound seven of these reports to be ‘good’ or ‘very good’. These reports clearly outlinedthe package of supervision available on release from custody and analysed possible riskto the community. Inspectors assessed one report as of a ‘poor’ standard.

5.12 File readers examined fifteen case files of sex offenders on probation, parole or non-parolelicence. There was a mixed quality of supervision in these cases:

• twelve cases contained a supervision plan that described the means for delivering theplanned content to the offender;

• in nine of the fifteen cases, the primary method of supervision was a structuredoffence focused programme (six participating in a groupwork and three in a one-toone programme);

14 Developed by the Home Office and validated for England and Wales.15 Tayprep 30 is a scored risk evaluation framework for sex offenders, developed by the Tay Project in Dundee.

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• six offenders did not receive a structured programme, and in two cases workers did notmaintain a consistent focus on factors associated with offending;

• supervising officers carried out home visits at appropriate intervals in ten of the cases.Of the five where this was not the case, the failure was within the control of the servicein three instances. Sex offenders normally require close monitoring and supervisionand these findings are concerning;

• in two cases, workers did not make arrangements to interview the offender at leastfour times in the first four weeks following sentence or release;

• file readers thought that workers had managed most cases well in relation to contact,compliance and enforcement.

5.13 A large proportion of the overall (randomly selected) sample of reports and case files werefor offenders convicted of serious violent offences. File readers considered thirty-twosocial enquiry reports on offenders of this type (almost one in seven of the general sample).Table 14 below sets out the findings16.

Table 14: Social Enquiry Reports: Serious Violent Offenders

(Sample size: 32 Poor Adequate Good VG N/A

Overall, how satisfactory is the report? 5 20 7 0 0

How well is offending analysed? 8 16 7 1 0

How well are offending related needs analysed? 7 17 7 1 0

How well is risk of re-offending assessed? 14 8 10 0 0

How well is risk of harm assessed? 13 13 2 0 4

Yes No

Has key information been verified and checked? 17 15

5.14 The findings indicate that:

• readers judged the overall standard of reports to be ‘good’ in one in five reports,‘adequate’ in just under two thirds and ‘poor’ in around one in seven;

• around a quarter of reports analysed offending and offending related needs ‘well’ or‘very well’. Around a half did so ‘adequately’; and a fifth did so ‘poorly’;

• slightly less than a third of reports assessed the risk of re-offending ‘well’, a quarter‘adequately’ and between one third and one half ‘poorly’;

• National Standards require report writers to assess the risk of harm to others in moreserious cases. File readers judged that report writers did this ‘well’ in only two casesand in most cases did so ‘poorly’ or only ‘adequately’;

• workers had not verified key information in almost one half of all reports.

16 These data on violent offenders are a subset of the overall supervision data presented in chapter 4.

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5.15 The sample included eight home background reports on offenders convicted of seriousviolent offences. The quality of this (albeit small) number of reports was encouraginglyhigher than that of social enquiry reports. File readers judged seven reports to be of a‘good’ or ‘very good’ standard. These reports clearly set out the package of supervisionfor the offender after release, and addressed the potential risk the offender might pose tothe community. One report failed to address these issues and was of a ‘poor’ standard.

5.16 Around a quarter of the probation and parole/non-parole cases which file readersexamined were for offenders convicted of serious crimes of violence. Readers sampledforty-two such cases, and assessed the quality of planning, supervision and adherenceto National Standards. The findings are set out in the tables below:

Table 15: Planning and Supervision: Serious Violent Offenders

(Sample size: 42) Yes No

Is there a written supervision plan for the first three months of 27 15the order or licence?

(Sample size: 27)

Does the planned content directly address those factors 24 3assessed as contributing to offending?

Does the plan clearly set out how the planned content will 17 10be delivered?

(Sample size: 42) N/A

During supervision has a focus been consistently maintained 20 21 1on those factors associated with offending?

Table 16: Methods used to Work with Serious Violent Offenders

(Sample size: 42)

What was the primary method used to engage with this offender? Number

Non programmed individual work 36

Non programmed groupwork 1

Programmed groupwork 3

Programmed individual work 1

Offender never presented 1

Table 17: Serious Violent Offenders – Performance (1)

(Sample size: 42) Yes No-fault lies with service No-fault external

Were four appointments arranged to 21 16 5take place in the first four weeks?

Were two home visits arranged in 19 19 4the first 12 weeks? (three in parole/non-parole cases)

Table 18: Serious Violent Offenders – Performance (2)

(Sample size: 42) Poor Adequate Good Very good N/A

Overall, how accurately do you think the 14 16 9 2 1level of supervision offered reflects the risk ofre-offending and risk of harm assessed?

Overall, how accurately do you think the 17 14 7 3 1content of supervision reflects the risk ofre-offending and risk of harm?

Overall, how well was the case managed in 13 17 9 2 1respect of contact, compliance andenforcement?

5.17 The tables indicate that:

• just under two thirds of cases had a supervision plan and one-third did not;

• when there was a plan, it typically addressed factors assessed as associated withoffending but over one-third of plans did not set out clearly how the work would bedelivered;

• the primary method of supervision was ‘unstructured individual work’ in most cases;

• in over half of cases workers did not maintain a consistent focus on offending duringsupervision;

• one-half of cases met the National Standard for home visits and contact frequency inthe first month of supervision, but when this did not happen it was usually within theservice’s control;

• file readers assessed the level and content of supervision to be ‘adequate’ or ‘poor’ inslightly more than two-thirds of cases;

• overall, the standard of case management of contact, compliance and enforcementwas ‘poor’ in just under one-third of cases where the offender had committed seriousviolence, and ‘adequate’ in slightly more than one-third. The balance of the remainingpractice was at a ‘good’ standard.

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Service delivery

5.18 The authority’s specialist sex offender project has been in place for some years. It worksjointly with area team social workers to prepare social enquiry reports on all those convictedof sex offences. The project undertakes all pre-release planning and post-releasesupervision for sex offenders released on licence and delivers a groupwork programme to(male) sex offenders on probation or licence. It also works individually with some of thosethought unsuitable for the programme.

5.19 The authority is one of five unitary authorities that have been piloting the 'community sexoffender groupwork programme' (C-SOGP) since March 2003. The Joint ProgrammeAccreditation Panel for England and Wales has accredited this programme and the ScottishCommunity Justice Accreditation Panel has also provisionally accredited it. The programmeis not suitable for those offenders who completely deny their sex offending, those whohave a significant learning impairment or those assessed as at minimal risk of re-offending.

5.20 Before including an offender in a programme, a worker from the specialist team assesseshis risk level using ‘Risk Matrix 2000’ and administers a psychometric test to determine atreatment pathway. Most offenders attend a 50-hour induction module, following whichhigh risk offenders attend the 190-hour core programme and a 50-hour relapse preventionmodule. Low risk offenders complete only the induction and relapse-prevention modules.Offenders released from prison who have successfully completed the SPS sex offendersprogramme (STOP 2000) can be placed directly into the core or relapse preventionmodules depending on the level of assessed risk. Workers from the specialist team deliverthe programme with practitioners from area service teams. All workers are trained andaccredited programme facilitators for C-SOGP.

5.21 Sex offenders attending the group programme while on probation have their case managedby an area team social worker responsible for matters of discipline as well as providingreinforcement and support for the work they do on the programme. The case managementof ex-prisoners on licence is different because the specialist team workers directlysupervise these offenders as well as providing the group intervention (project workerscase-managing an offender are not necessarily the facilitators of the group he attends).All case managers have completed C-SOGP case management training and use a workpack to prepare the offender to enter the group and consolidate his learning from it. Casemanagers must see sex offenders (including those attending the programme) initiallyweekly and no less than fortnightly during the first year. The expected frequency of contactis no less than monthly from the second year onwards. When offenders fail to comply withthe rules of attendance at the sex offender programme, practitioners treat this as a breachof the supervision order.

5.22 There is less definition about practice with sex offenders who are unsuitable for the groupprogramme. There are no procedures to set out who should work with these offenders orwhat the content of this work should be. As a result, practice varies across the authority.On some occasions, a worker from the specialist project undertakes work with the offenderin partnership with his supervising social worker from the area service team. In other cases,one or two area team workers or (in throughcare cases) specialist team workers supervisethe offender. Some workers elect to use the case management materials from the C-SOGPwith sex offenders not attending the group, but this is not the universal practice.

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5.23 Services for violent offenders are similarly inconsistent. The authority has no structuredprogrammes for those convicted of general crimes of violence, but has been delivering aprogramme for male perpetrators of domestic violence for some time. There is acommitment in the strategic plan (2002/2005) to continue with this work. This is a 28session group programme delivered as a condition of probation or statutory licence.Workers from the probation resource unit (see chapter 2) and the area service team deliverthese groups jointly. The authority trained forty area team staff to deliver this programme,but only ten practitioners do so regularly. During the inspection, just one programme wasrunning and almost ninety offenders were waiting for a place (some for up to six months).Inspectors were told that plans to commence a further three groups in the coming monthswould halve the waiting list.

Observations

5.24 The inspection team observed videos of two sessions of the C-SOGP. Offenders seemedengaged in the process and willing to give and accept challenges to and from each other.The group workers kept to the aims of the sessions, made clear links to issues covered inprevious sessions, and set specific tasks for offenders to carry out before the next session.Both workers used appropriate techniques to facilitate the session. When one workerperformed less well in one session, the group observer (who watches the session byvideo link) picked this up and discussed it with the worker concerned in the debriefingsession. This was a helpful exchange and the worker seemed to appreciate the feedback.

5.25 The inspection team was unable to observe any domestic violence groupwork sessionsas the authority did not video record the delivery of this programme (though had plans todo so) and offenders were reluctant to allow inspectors to observe the group directly.Inspectors were able to observe an interview with an offender (conducted jointly by aworker from the probation resource unit and the case manager) to assess his suitabilityfor the programme. The workers used an attitudinal questionnaire to structure theassessment and clearly set out conditions of attendance at the programme.

5.26 An inspector witnessed two individual interviews with offenders at the sex offender project.One offender was at the initial assessment stage of supervision and the other wasundertaking preliminary work to explore their offending background before joining theC-SOGP programme. The observed sessions were purposeful and demonstrated a closeattention to public protection issues. One offender had completed a brief sex offendingpreparatory programme while in prison, and this seemed to have equipped him well inthe observed session.

Interviews with offenders

5.27 Inspectors interviewed two offenders who were participating in the C-SOGP relapseprevention module having previously undertaken the STOP programme while in prison.Both felt the programme helpfully reinforced learning and identified instances whensomething they had not previously understood suddenly ‘clicked’ (though they wereunsure whether this was due to repetition of the material or better delivery). They wereclear about the respective roles of the group facilitators and their supervising officers.

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5.28 The team also interviewed four offenders attending the domestic violence programme.All commented that the group had helped them identify triggers to their violence and hadtaught them non-violent means of dealing with these. Each offender was able to identifyoccasions when they had used this learning outside the group setting. Most wereunhappy about waiting for months after sentence before placement in a group. The levelof contact between offenders and their supervising officers varied from fortnightly in onecase, to monthly in two others and to less than monthly in another.

Child protection

5.29 Although some criminal justice social workers have had basic child protection training,many have not and there are no written procedures setting out how criminal justiceworkers should liaise with child protection colleagues. Practice varies across the city. Insome areas, criminal justice staff work alongside child care workers on child protectioninvestigations as part of the nominal five percent of their time for non-criminal justice duties.In others, criminal justice and child protection colleagues work together when there arechild protection concerns related to an offender on supervision. In one area, staffreported that child protection and criminal justice workers did not consistently link theirwork when an offender had a significant involvement with a child protection matter. Theysaid that there was considerable room for improvement in this regard.

5.30 In 2003 (see appendix 1 – point 5), the Scottish Executive published ‘Getting Our PrioritiesRight’. This report underlines that child welfare is a primary concern for all treatmentagencies providing addiction related services to adults, and that each such agency mustbe prepared and able to take appropriate action where child protection concerns exist.Inspectors found that some managers and practitioners had little awareness of thisimportant publication, despite the authority having delivered awareness days in each ofthe area service teams.

5.31 Criminal justice social work routinely engages with sexual or violent offenders and musttherefore be mindful of potential harm to children and vulnerable persons. Home visits canoffer useful insights into the welfare of any children living in the offender’s household orotherwise in close contact with them. The file reading data shows that the service failedto meet National Standards minimums for home visits in nearly two-thirds of cases in thegeneral case file sample, and that this was within the control of the service in three-quartersof cases. In the subset of sex offenders, the authority did not meet the standard in aboutone-third of cases; in the subset of violent offenders, this increased to one-half of cases.

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5.32 Glasgow has taken significant steps towards assessing and managing the risk posed byhigh-risk offenders. There is a long established protocol in place with the police in respectof sex offenders. The authority has given its specialist sex offender project an importantrole in assessing the risk posed by sex offenders, in supervising those released fromcustody, and in contributing to the management of sex offenders. The authority has alsoendeavoured to enhance the skills of area team workers supervising sex offendersthrough case manager training. Risk assessment training is underway which should assistworkers to assess the potential risk of harm posed by offenders and the authority hasestablished some specialist provision to deal with those convicted of offences of domesticviolence. These are positive initiatives but there are matters that continue to demandsome attention:

• the authority should update the procedural document containing the sex offenderprotocol to take account of the demand C-SOGP makes of case managers; themanagement of those unsuitable for the programme; the transfer of parole/non-parolesex offender cases to the specialist sex offender team; and the transfer of housing stock;

• the service must draw up procedures to assess and manage violent offenders andprovide treatment programmes to address the risk they present to the public;

• managers must review the arrangements for delivering the domestic violence programme.They should ensure that the practitioners who are trained to run the programmeactually do so;

• the authority must deliver basic child protection awareness training to all criminal justicefront-line staff. The authority must begin to address any variations in collaborationbetween child care and criminal justice practitioners;

• workers and managers must ensure that they consistently meet National Standards forcompliance and contact.

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6. COMMUNITY SERVICE

6.1 Community service provides courts with a community-based alternative to custodyrequiring offenders to carry out unpaid work in the community. National Standards call forwork to be of value to the community, the direct beneficiary and the offender. Communityservice schemes should ensure that there is a sufficient variety of placements to meet theneeds of groups such as women and people who are disabled. Schemes should setchallenging standards of behaviour and work, rapidly follow up any instances of absenteeismor poor behaviour, and consistently apply sanctions for non-compliance.

6.2 Demand for community service orders nationally rose over the period 2000-2003. Numbersdropped in Glasgow over the period 2001-2003 but increased between 2003 and 2004 astable 19 shows. There are no national figures for 2003-2004 for comparison.

Table 19: Demand for Community Service

2000-2001 2001-2002 2002-2003 2003-2004

Nationally 6,134 6,331 7,243 Not Available

Glasgow 1,091 941 995 1,181

Source: Scottish Executive, Community Justice Division Annual Returns, 2003

Glasgow profile data

6.3 In 2002-03:

• Glasgow recorded 24.8% community service orders per 10,000 people compared witha national average of 20.4% (Source: Scottish Executive Criminal Justice Social WorkStatistics 2002-03);

• 8% of offenders on community service were under 18 years old, 20% were between18 and 20 years, and 24 % were aged between 21 and 25 years with the remainderover 25 years old;

• 10% of offenders on community service were women;

• The unemployment rate of offenders on community service was 48%.

(Source: Scottish Executive Criminal Justice Social Work Statistics 2002-03)

Head of FieldworkHead of Children and

Families and Criminal Justice

Principal Officer

Senior Officer

Community Service Organiser

Community Service Officer

Community Service Assistants(x 4)

Workplace Supervisors(x 23)

Community Industry Team(includes staff below)

Area Service Managers

Team Leaders

Senior Social Workers

Community Service Officers(x 18)

Depute Director(Chief Social Work Officer)

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Organisation of service delivery

6.4 The authority partly decentralised its community service scheme in 2002. Figure 1 belowsummarises current staffing and organisational arrangements. Management responsibilityfor the two parts of the service ultimately lies with the authority’s chief social work officer.

Figure 1

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6.5 Area team community service officers are responsible for assessing suitability for communityservice and for supervising orders. As members of the area team criminal justice sub-team,they report to the senior social worker managing the team. A central community industryteam organises and provides all squad and personal community service placements.

6.6 The community industry team is part of the business unit. It comprises a community serviceorganiser, a community service officer (a further community service officer post is currentlyvacant), four community service assistants, and twenty three workplace supervisors basedat three workshops located across the city. Offenders on community service squad dutiesmuster at the workshop nearest to their home address. Each workshop has its owndesignated community service assistant, while a fourth assistant is peripatetic and has aspecific remit for health and safety matters.

6.7 Community service assistants find work for squads to do, match offenders to placementsbased on the assessments of the (area team) community service officers, attend musterpoints daily to check offender attendance, carry out health and safety risk assessments,purchase and deliver materials to sites, and check the work of community servicesupervisors. The community industry team’s own community service officer manages theday-to-day work of the community service assistants. The community service organiser(community industry), who reports to a senior officer in the business unit, has overallmanagement responsibility for the industry team.

Types of work placement

6.8 Research highlights the benefits of community service placements that enable offendersto acquire new practical or interpersonal skills and that bring them into contact withbeneficiaries.17 The Glasgow community service scheme has invested significantly toincrease the number and range of personal placements on offer. In 2000, the authorityappointed a community service officer to the community industry team with a specific remitto develop personal placements. This was a success. The number of personal placementsincreased from ninety-six to two hundred and ten, including placements particularly suitablefor offenders from ethnic minority backgrounds. A resource manual lists and describes thefull range of available personal placements and includes apposite details about the typesof offenders who are unsuitable for the placement (for example violent or drug misusingoffenders). Finding and developing personal placements is the combined responsibility ofthe community industry team and community service officers though some staff appearedconfused about where responsibility lay. This requires clarification.

6.9 The range of squad placements offered by the scheme is more limited, mainly gardeningand landscaping work and painting and decorating, though it includes some interestingprojects. Examples are the ‘Fruit Barra’ (a healthy eating initiative selling fruit and vegetablesaround housing estates), a large scale landscaping project, and ‘light duties’ and ‘womenonly’ squads.

17 McIvor, G. (1992): Sentenced to Serve; The operation and impact of community service by offenders,Aldershot: Avebury.

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Matching offenders to placements

6.10 The authority bases assessments of suitability for community service on informationsupplied to an area team community service officer by the social worker preparing an SER.At the post-sentence interview, the community service officer outlines the conditions of theorder and the authority’s rules for community service (for example forbidding the carryingof mobile phones or the wearing of football colours). The officer gathers information onthe offender’s skills, interests and personal circumstances to help identify an appropriateplacement and issues the offender with work instructions to attend an induction group.

6.11 The personal placement resource book offers limited guidance on placement requirements.Beyond this, there is no written guidance on the kind of placements suitable for higher-risk offenders such as those convicted of stealing personal property or those who aresex offenders. Community service officers said they made their own assessments inthese cases. They placed sex offenders in squads (never in personal placements), butnot in squad projects where there might be children around. Community service officerssend a ‘diary addition’ to every workshop, providing supervisors with basic informationon each offender.

6.12 There are two ‘light duties’ squads for offenders with medical problems that limit theirphysical ability to carry out strenuous work including drug users who need to collectmethadone prescriptions before beginning work. Supervisors said that the servicesometimes placed offenders with physical health or addiction problems in regular squadsand that this made it more difficult for them to manage squads and produce work of areasonable standard. Each ‘light duties’ squad has only one supervisor allocated to it andthe service stands these squads down when these supervisors are absent. The authoritydoes not appear to deploy the remaining workforce flexibly enough to avoid this.

Women offenders

6.13 The authority has been operating a citywide ‘women only’ squad for about three years.The (female) supervisor picks up women offenders at each of the workshop musteringpoints. Inspectors interviewed seven women offenders on community service. The serviceoffered the option of personal placements or women only squad work and two womencommented that they could not have coped if they had been required to work in a squadalongside male offenders. There is only one supervisor allocated to the women onlysquad. In her absence the squad does not operate. Although it is commendable that theauthority provides a squad specifically for women offenders, inspectors learned that thesquad was often oversubscribed and that some women had to join mixed sexcommunity service squads who would have preferred not to.

6.14 All women offenders on community service attend an induction group (a mixed male/femalegroup) before beginning a placement. One female offender who was the only woman in agroup of fifteen offenders attending an induction group said that she had found itintimidating, even though a female worker had facilitated the session.

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6.15 Glasgow has made substantial progress in meeting the needs of female offenders oncommunity service. This progress may be lost unless the authority recruits more womensupervisors (as proposed in the 1999/2002 strategic plan). As it stands, the genderbalance of community service staff is markedly uneven. Most community industry teamworkers are male including twenty one of the twenty three community servicesupervisors. In contrast, fifteen of the eighteen community service officers are female.

The file reading

6.16 There were forty community service cases in the sample and a further twenty-nine S229orders:

Table 20: Community Service – Performance (1)

Sample size: 69 cases (CS only and S229) Yes No No data

Were work instructions sufficiently clear? 61 2 6

Was there evidence that an assessment of the risk an offender 11 51 7might pose in a particular placement had been undertaken?


Sample size: 40 cases (CS only) Yes No No data

Was compliance an issue at any stage of the order? 23 17


Sample size: 40 cases (CS only) Poor Adequate Good Very good N/A

How well was the case managed in respect 2 3 21 13 1of contact, compliance and enforcement?

6.17 The analysis shows that:

• work instructions were clear in most cases;

• compliance was an issue in over half of cases;

• workers dealt with compliance problems well or very well in almost nine out of ten cases;

• workers had clearly undertaken a risk assessment in only 1 in 5 cases.

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Compliance

6.18 While compliance was an issue in a significant number of cases, the file reading showedthat the authority adopted a rigorous approach to dealing with this. Community serviceassistants attended the mustering points each day and notified any absences to theoffender’s community service officer by phone or e-mail. The community service officernormally followed up the absence on the same day by telephone or by a home visit.Organisations offering personal placements posted timesheets to community serviceofficers each week, noting the hours attended by the offender and their work performance.Officers also visited these agencies periodically to check that there were no problems.

6.19 Supervisors commented that they (and other staff in the various parts of the scheme) haddifferent thresholds for defining and tolerating problematic behaviour. Whilst they appreciatedthat both the community service assistant and the community service supervising officerhad an interest in the behaviour and conduct of the offender on-site, supervisors saidthey were sometimes unclear about whom they should report to on such matters.

6.20 One area of concern was the number of offenders who did not start a work placementwithin the period set out in National Standards (normally within two weeks and not laterthan three weeks from date of sentence).

6.21 Glasgow has shown initiative in requiring offenders to attend a standard induction groupbefore commencing work but places in the group were not always immediately availableand this had led to a backlog. The community service assistant responsible for healthand safety matters and a community service officer from an area team delivered groupsjointly. A number of area team community service officers were not convinced of the needfor standardised induction, and only four of the eighteen officers participated in the rotato deliver the programme. This affected the capacity of the scheme to run enough groupsto meet the demand (and impacted on the workload of these four officers). The communityindustry team tracked all new orders through the authority’s IT system, matching thesewith referrals made to the induction programme and contacting area team staff about anywhich were missing. Nine hundred and thirty seven offenders attended the group in itsfirst year of operation.

6.22 The provision of standard induction is an objective of the authority’s 2002/2005 strategicplan. It is important that fieldwork managers ensure the full participation of all area teamcommunity service officers to support delivery of this objective.

Health and Safety

6.23 Attendance at induction constitutes the offender’s first work session. The induction groupruns from a central location and takes referrals from across the city. The community industryteam designed the group (operational since April 2003) to ensure a consistent approachto health and safety issues and to provide an explanation of the terms and conditions ofcommunity service. It runs twice weekly (Thursday and Saturday), with a maximumcapacity of fifteen offenders. The average attendance rate is just over half of those referredand a significant number of offenders need to be re-referred.

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6.24 The scheme has offered work supervisors training in health and safety, first aid, fire safety,safe use of machinery and violence and personal safety. This group of staff (with a rangeof workplace experience) was not involved in the design of the induction group and is notinvolved in its delivery.

6.25 The authority had completed formal risk assessments of all squad activities (collated inone document) though inspectors observed some instances of workers failing to followsafety procedures. A template existed for undertaking site risk assessments, but industryteam staff said that because of low staff resources staff did not use these. The inspectionteam identified clear health and safety hazards in four sites (two personal placements andtwo squad projects).

6.26 In the workshops, offenders were clear about which power tools they could use andthose that were for use by supervisors only. Inspectors noted that protective clothing wasavailable, although some offenders were not wearing overalls and others were not wearingprotective masks or gloves when they should have been. The dust extraction equipmentin the workshops did not appear sophisticated enough to cope with the dust that riseswhen working with medium density fibreboard (MDF).

6.27 Offenders on squad placements get their own set of safety boots that they retain aftercompletion of their hours. The authority does not issue new overalls, but each week theservice launders the used overalls issued to offenders.

6.28 It was striking that an assessment of the potential risk an offender might pose in and toparticular work placements was missing in the majority of cases. Community serviceofficers said that they took account of the current offence in matching the offender to asuitable placement but that they often had no access to SCRO data and had had no riskassessment training.

6.29 A number of workplace supervisors expressed concern that the risk assessment ofviolent offenders was inadequate and that the service did not consider the mix ofoffenders in a squad sufficiently. Some said they felt vulnerable and isolated, citingincidents of attacks and threats. Though all supervisors had work-issued mobile phones,they thought the level of support offered was insufficient.

Observed practice

6.30 Inspectors observed five post-sentence interviews carried out by community service officersand an additional two where officers dealt with compliance issues. In the post sentenceinterviews the officers explained the terms of the order clearly, identified skills, interests andpersonal circumstances to aid matching the offender to an appropriate placement, andissued work instructions (to attend the induction group). Following these interviews,offenders told inspectors that they were clear about their responsibilities and were confidentthat the community service officers would match them to a suitable placement. In bothcompliance interviews, the community service officers were firm with the offender andclearly outlined future consequences. Both offenders commented to inspectors that theywere treated fairly.

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6.31 Inspectors also observed the induction group and felt that it had a number of strengths.During the first part of the session, workers demonstrated the different types of projectwork carried out by squads using ‘before and after’ slides. These provided a vividillustration of the benefits of community service for recipients (though would havebenefited from some examples of personal placements) and clearly engaged the interestof most participants. Workers then explained the list of community service rules issued toparticipants at post-sentence interviews. It was evident from participants’ questions thatsome offenders had not understood these rules fully at the first interview. In the secondpart of the session workers covered health and safety issues using slide and videopresentations. This was rather repetitious (for example duplicating material on safe use ofladders) and did not adequately look at health and safety issues in personal placements.Neither did it draw on the past or present work experiences of participants.

6.32 Inspectors visited twelve squad placements (nine projects and three workshops) and tenpersonal placements. They observed the work being carried out, spoke to somebeneficiaries and interviewed work supervisors and offenders. Inspectors visited personalplacements at youth projects, charity shops, care homes, lunch clubs, and a day centrefor adults with disabilities. Some agencies had provided a succession of communityservice placements over the years. All organisations spoke highly of the work carried outby the offenders and of the level of support from community service officers. Offenderssaid they valued the experience of community service and had gained a range of skills(including catering, retail, office, and social care skills). They appreciated their similartreatment to other employees or volunteers and felt positively about the opportunities tohelp others. A number intended to remain with their agency as volunteers followingcompletion of their order.

6.33 Among the squad placements inspectors visited were the light duties and women onlysquads, the ‘Fruit Barra’, and the landscaping project. They also visited the homes ofindividual community service beneficiaries who were quite content with the standard ofwork and behaviour of offenders. Squads appeared to be working well as teams and staffsupervised them well. Work supervisors employed a balance of firmness and appropriatehumour to manage the work group. All spoke about the importance of leading by example.Offenders said that staff treated them fairly and some described gaining new skills(including painting and decorating and joinery).

6.34 Inspectors visited the three community service workshops. These produce wood, metaland glass craftwork, but have no allocated budget to purchase supplies. Supervisorssaid they depended on donations of materials from local businesses and that this limitedthe tasks they could undertake.

6.35 Inspectors noted a number of tensions between community service officers, staff at theindustry team’s business unit, and workplace supervisors. The morale of supervisorsseemed quite low, and all staff groups complained about insufficient flexibility on the partof others, communication problems between teams, a lack of support, and conflictingadvice and information from different parts of the service. Many staff commented thatthese tensions pre-dated the restructuring of the service, but had since become morepronounced. There appeared to be no obvious mechanisms for resolving these tensions.

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Staff development

6.36 In addition to health and safety training, the scheme had offered workplace supervisorstraining in anti-discriminatory practice, pro-social modelling skills and basic drugsawareness. Supervisors identified the need for further training in managing drug usersand in handling conflict. They expressed concern that the authority treated them as ahomogeneous group in relation to training, and paid insufficient attention to identifyingtheir individual training needs. Community service assistants (on a rota basis) convenedmonthly meetings of supervisors, but there was no system of individual supervision.

6.37 Community service officers reported that, since they became part of the area teamstructure, they had had access to a much wider range of training. In all other respects,they operated much as they had done before decentralisation. Most operated withrelative autonomy within area teams, allocating and managing their own workload andusing other community service officers across the city for advice and support.

6.38 The authority had appointed a full time SVQ assessor to progress SVQ training ofcommunity service staff. A few staff had begun this process but had not continued afterthe post became vacant.

The views of Sheriffs

6.39 Inspectors asked Sheriffs at Glasgow Sheriff Court whether they were confident that theauthority would strictly enforce compliance with community service and make sure thatoffenders completed work to a high standard. The questionnaire also asked for their viewson the quality of completion reports.

6.40 Of the three Sheriffs who responded, one commented that he was ‘fairly confident’ thatthe service would enforce community service, and that offenders would work to anacceptable standard of quality. Another was ‘not confident at all’ that community servicework would be rigorously enforced and of high quality. The third did not feel in a positionto have a view about this. Two were satisfied with the quality of reports. The third did notfeel able to comment.

The views of beneficiaries

6.41 Inspectors used a questionnaire to ask community service placement providers for theirviews on the standard and reliability of work. They also asked them about the informationthey received about the offending background of community service attendees and theextent to which they thought that community service staff considered risks of re-offendingor causing harm in allocating offenders to placements. Providers were also asked tocomment on the extent to which the service matched offenders’ skills to the placementprovider’s requirements, and the speed of follow up in the event of problems arisingrelating to attendance, behaviour, or work performance.

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6.42 Inspectors wrote to thirty-nine placement providers, and nineteen responded. All werecontent with the reliability of the service though three felt that the standard of work waspoor. Four said that the scheme had not provided sufficient background information onthe offender, although two of these were satisfied that the placement was appropriate.All providers expressed confidence that the service had properly considered the riskpresented by the offender. Most said that community service staff had successfully matchedthe offender’s skills to their requirements and few reported problems with attendance,behaviour, or work performance. Where there were difficulties, most recipients reportedthat the service dealt with these promptly and satisfactorily, although two commentedthat there was some room for improvement.

Evaluation

6.43 When offenders complete their community service hours, the policy of the authority is toask them to complete a feedback form. In its strategic plan (2002-2005), the authorityundertook to increase the number of feedback forms returned from 30% to 60%. Manycommunity service officers said, however, that they had ceased to ask offenders to dothis as they had understood it to be a one-off exercise.


6.44 Community service in Glasgow has a number of strengths. The authority has invested toincrease the range of personal placements including those for offenders from ethnicminorities, introduced light duties and women only squads, and developed a consistentapproach to induction. Most beneficiaries’ spoke highly of the service and many offenderssaid they had gained from the experience of serving and completing orders.

6.45 Despite this, there are areas where performance can be better. Central and local servicesare not working together as well as they should to deliver the objectives of the strategicplan and both sets of staff would benefit from firmer management. There are no obviousoperational and strategic connections between these two strands of the service. Areateam community service officers carry out most tasks well, although this appears to bedue more to their experience and to the mutual support they offer each other than to theleadership provided by their fieldwork managers. The community industry team alsodelivers an effective service but managers have yet to address a number of difficultiesincluding some inflexibility in current working practices. To tackle these issues and toimprove the overall efficiency and effectiveness of community service, the authorityshould take the following steps:

• senior managers must make sure that business unit and area service staff worktogether to deliver the objectives for community service set out in the strategic plan.They should review current service structures which do not appear to facilitateintegrated working across the organisation;

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• fieldwork managers should take steps to improve community service officers’ skills inassessing the potential risk an offender might pose in a placement, ensure that allcommunity service officers participate in the running of the induction group, andensure that all community service officers monitor and evaluate the impact of their work;

• community service duties should not place the health and safety of offenders and staffat risk. The authority must therefore always complete site risk assessments, ensurethat staff follow the safety procedures laid down, enforce the mandatory wearing ofprotective clothing (as needed), review the efficacy of the dust extraction equipment,and review the health and safety components of induction;

• community industry managers must organise the service to meet the needs of alloffenders placed on community service. This will involve using workplace supervisorsmore flexibly to provide adequate cover for light duties and women only squads andrecruiting more female supervisors. There should be a specific budget for workshopmaterials so that light duties squads can undertake more purposeful work;

• the authority should address the staff development needs of workplace supervisors bycarrying out an audit of their individual training needs. It should also consider the possiblebenefits of including supervisors in delivering the induction group.

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7. ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT

Management arrangements

7.1 City of Glasgow is the largest department providing social work and social care services inScotland. The criminal justice social work service deals with more offenders and preparesmore reports than any other unitary authority or grouping of authorities. Chapter 2outlines the organisational structure and describes how Glasgow undertakes the deliveryof the service.

7.2 Local area teams still operate a modified model of generic service delivery that has itsorigins in the reforms of the 1970s that brought previously distinct services together withthe aims of creating a single local point of entry to services and of avoiding duplication.The notional 5% of the time of area team criminal justice social workers allocated to othersocial work duties reflects this historical background.

7.3 Criminal justice social work services are a relatively small part of the work of area serviceteams and, in the main, area service managers and team leaders devote little time to theday-to-day oversight of criminal justice. The pressures of running children and familiesservices and, in particular, specific responsibilities for child protection, take up much of thetime of team leaders. This leaves senior social workers as the ‘de facto’ managers of thelocally based criminal justice service. These devolved management arrangements mayaccount for the substantial variations in practice across the city.

7.4 Even though criminal justice managers working in business unit services generally do nothave responsibility for services other than criminal justice (e.g. child protection), theinspection data showed room for improvement in the practice of the business-unitthroughcare teams, which were not yet delivering any offence focused supervision.

Strategic planning, performance review and quality assurance

7.5 The authority’s current strategic plan covers the period 2002-2005. Each year, theauthority produces an annual update setting out its progress in implementing the plan.

7.6 The annual updates for 2003 and 2004 acknowledge the variable progress withimplementing the plan. Reasons provided for this include the high volume of social enquiryreports, the introduction of new initiatives, and the slow introduction of the electronicinformation system ‘Carejust’. Business unit managers said that the authority’s approachto implementing the plan was to create working groups led by operational managers fromthe area teams. In this way, the authority aimed to ensure that planning commitmentstranslated into practice, however, inspectors were told that the workload commitments ofarea service managers and team leaders made it difficult for them to attend andparticipate.

7.7 In its 2003 and 2004 annual reports, the authority acknowledges that it has failed to meetits targets for use of risk assessments and the delivery of a core groupwork programmeto the majority of offenders. This is confirmed by the data from this inspection.

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7.8 The business unit does not collect extensive performance data about the service. Forexample, there was no centrally-held information about the number of offenders attendingand completing the domestic violence and core group work programmes. Data wereavailable about the use of the LSI-R in reports and the numbers attending and completingthe sex offender programme. A criminal justice research officer works in the businessunit. Her main duties are the collation of data for return to various national bodies.

7.9 Despite an extensive investment in staff training, the service has not derived the anticipatedbenefits from its Carejust management information system. Many staff thought that it tooktoo long to use the system, and had not yet seen evidence of useful outputs to supportpractice evaluation and planning. Some workers said they lacked confidence in the ITsystem and wanted more training. This had contributed (at least in part) to the poor qualityof case recording in many files in the case sample (see chapter 4).

Partnership working

7.10 Glasgow has service level agreements in place with a range of partners deliveringaccommodation, youth justice, employability, and drug services. It is the responsibility ofbusiness unit senior officers to manage these agreements and liaise with the agencies.Some service level agreements were up to date and reasonably comprehensive, whileothers were in draft format. In some instances, inspectors thought that the service levelagreements did not adequately detail expectations about performance or outcomes.

7.11 The effective oversight of partnerships is important to the attainment of best value; forexample, inspectors found no evidence in the strategic plan that the authority has yetthought through how to manage the overlap between the youth justice ‘PartnershipProject’ and the in-house youth justice teams that will be rolled-out citywide in late 2004.

Finance

7.12 A funding formula based on historical workload patterns and a range of needs factorsdetermines the allocation of funds to groupings/unitary authorities for delivering coreservices (appendix 1 describes this formula in more detail). The table below sets out thefunding allocations for Glasgow over the last three years.

Financial Allocations for Glasgow

Core Non-core Total

2001-2002 £6,301,162 £2,660,085 £8,961,247

2002-2003 £7,225,787 £3,196,45918 £10,422,246

2003-2004 £8,041,836 £3,608,206 £11,650,042

18 Does not include £700,000 initial capital allocation for a new project.

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7.13 Funding for core services includes social enquiry reports, probation, community serviceand throughcare as well as supervised attendance, diversion and bail services. Non-coreservices include the drug court pilot, the citywide sex offender project, the ‘Partnership’project and the ACE programme.

Staffing

7.14 Chapter 2 sets out the number of staff employed to deliver criminal justice social workservices. Glasgow’s social work service has recently experienced problems in recruitingqualified staff, particularly for the children and families’ service. These difficulties have notaffected the criminal justice service which has a comparatively stable workforce. Someteams were under capacity due to long-term staff sickness, but the workforce wasgenerally at full-strength.

Staff supervision and development

7.15 The authority introduced a revised staff supervision policy-framework in April 2004. Itunderlines the importance of staff supervision for front line workers, and sets minimumstandards for supervision frequency, content, and recording practice.

7.16 Discussion with staff revealed variation in worker’s experiences of supervision. Most saidthat they received a considerable amount of support and advice with individual cases,but that it was rare for managers to use files in supervision to discuss cases and reviewperformance.

7.17 Each year, the business unit prepares a training plan in collaboration with a steering groupdrawn from across the criminal justice service and its partners. The group identifies trainingneeds associated with implementing the strategic plan and develops and commissions thenecessary training. The authority allocates each planned training event a status of ‘core’,‘recommended’ or ‘developmental’.

7.18 The authority has made a significant investment in training staff in structured assessmentmethods and effective practice, but this investment has not impacted sufficiently onpractice. For example, though the authority trained its area team social workers to deliverthe core groupwork programme, it still does not run in most areas. The ‘change’ domesticviolence programme is another example. The authority trained a large pool of staff to runthe programme but only a fraction of those trained have volunteered to do it, even thoughthere is a considerable waiting list of suitable offenders. A further example is practitioneruse of the LSI-R risk assessment. Social workers received training to use it but considerablenumbers do not. This repeating pattern wastes resources.

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Race and Ethnicity

7.19 In its current strategic plan, the authority signals its intention not only to meet the specificneeds of offenders from ethnic minority backgrounds, but also to deal with offendersconvicted of racially motivated offences. It identifies matters requiring attention includingthe relatively small number of SERs prepared on ethnic minority offenders that proposethe option of probation, the limited number of community service placements for theseoffenders, and the lack of suitable intervention programmes for racially motivated offenders.The service has increased the number of community service placements but has still toachieve the remaining objectives.


7.20 The authority’s comprehensive strategic plan for criminal justice services and the highvolume of related staff training are a testimony to real achievements in setting the agendafor effective practice. The authority has built links with an impressive range of services,and has created a rich service infrastructure with the potential to meet a wide range ofoffender needs. Nevertheless, the following key organisational and management areasrequire improvement:

• The authority must reflect on the inspection findings with a view to building the capacityto work effectively with every offender;

• The service must replace current ad hoc approaches to evaluation with a moresystematic and consistent quality management approach for the whole service;

• The authority should ensure that up-to-date agreements are in place with all of theagencies from whom it commissions a service and establish clear key performanceindicators for the services these agencies provide;

• The authority should ensure that criminal justice funded addictions workers contribute themaximum possible benefit to the criminal justice service;

• The authority must urgently address the low standard of case recording and theinconsistent use of the IT system. It must set out unambiguous case recordingstandards and sample case files on a regular basis to ensure that the serviceconsistently meets these standards. It must ensure that staff have the confidence torecord case notes and properly enter performance data;

• The service must build on its good strategic planning by ensuring adequatearrangements for the implementation of these plans. Inspectors have noted that muchof the work that the business unit has done to train staff has failed to impact onpractice because of an absence of strategic management of the criminal justice serviceat both area and citywide levels.

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8. KEY ISSUES FROM THE INSPECTION

Introduction

8.1 Glasgow delivers criminal justice social work services against a difficult social backcloth.It is the most populous Scottish city and its rate of reported crime substantially exceedsthe Scottish average. It has the highest prevalence rate of opiate use of any town or cityin Scotland and a number of areas have high and long standing levels of social deprivation.Each day, social workers deal with the effects of these problems and circumstances.

8.2 Delivering a criminal justice service across such a large and socially diverse urban area asGlasgow is a significant challenge. This inspection found both good practice and significantareas of weakness. A number of issues emerge from the findings worth drawing together toanalyse and underline their importance for the future development of the service in Glasgow.

Assessment Practice

8.3 Good assessment is a pre-requisite for delivering an effective service. The evidence fromthis inspection showed a number of weaknesses, particularly in relation to social enquiryreports where the file reading highlighted a range of recurring difficulties. The principalissues were the limited analysis of offending behaviour and risk of reconviction and harm,and the lack of a structured risk assessment using tools designed for this purpose, despitethe stated policy that social enquiry report authors should use these for every report.

8.4 The substantial social enquiry report workload and any delays in receiving information fromthe court may well have had a negative impact on performance. The authority can not allowthese difficulties to compromise the quality of reports. Effective assessment is integral toeffective practice and needs to be of a generally higher standard than is presently the case.Closer attention to the National Standards for social enquiry reports and regular andconsistent use of assessment tools would improve the quality significantly.

Supervision Practice

8.5 Inspectors found that interventions based on effective practice principles were more or lessrestricted to work with selected sex offenders and violent offenders who attended groupwork programmes organised and delivered on a citywide basis by business unit staffworking with volunteer area team social workers. Only one area team ran the generaloffending ‘core programme’ regularly, although the 2002-2005 strategic plan committedthe department to delivering the programme all eight local area criminal justice teams.

8.6 Outside these specific groups, most offenders on supervision did not receive any kind ofstructured intervention designed to tackle their offending and to reduce their risk ofreconviction. Inspectors found positive examples of advocacy and welfare work, and staffworked with an impressive range of partner agencies and services. However althoughwork to tackle social need is vital to effective practice, unless accompanied by work onthe offending itself, it is unlikely to promote positive changes in offenders’ attitudes andbehaviours and to reduce the risk of re-offending. For example, securing addictionstreatment for an offender may not help him address those underlying thinking patternsthat also contributed to the reasons for his offending.

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8.7 These findings show a significant imbalance in the quality of service provision. Thestandard of work with sex offenders and offenders convicted of violence against theirpartners contrasts greatly with the quality of most supervision delivered by the local areateams and the central throughcare service. Most offenders are not sex offenders orcandidates for a domestic violence programme, but do require structured intervention totackle their offending behaviour, improve their thinking skills, and solve wider problemsassociated with a criminal lifestyle.

Managing Compliance and Meeting National Standards

8.8 The file reading data showed that nearly two-thirds of offenders on probation orders andprison throughcare licenses failed at least once to comply with the terms of their supervision,and that the overall performance of supervisors in dealing with the issue of compliance wasweak. Purposeful action to address non-compliance is a key requirement for achievingand maintaining the credibility of community supervision with the public and other keystakeholders. Supervisors may exercise some discretion in how they deal with non-compliance but there was no proper citywide approach to managing and recording theuse of this discretion.

8.9 National Standards set out mandatory levels of contact with offenders on supervision andrequire the review, at regular intervals, of the progress of offenders subject to orders andlicences. On too many occasions, the service failed to meet key National Standardmilestones. First probation appointments frequently happened too late and reviews wereoften missing or late. Meeting National Standards is critical to maintaining an appropriatelevel and quality of service. Managers have an important role in delivering this.

Case Recording, Quality Assurance and Evaluation

8.10 Case records are critically important. They are the official record of work undertaken andare vital to departmental accountability. Even though the authority has trained it staff to usethe IT system, case recording in Glasgow was frequently limited and there were obviousvariations in recording practice and the entry of data into the system across the city.

8.11 Quality assurance is also critical. The inspection findings pointed up the lack of a citywideapproach here. There were no standard procedures for checking the quality of assessmentreports or for monitoring other aspects of performance.

8.12 Evaluating service outcomes should provide local information about what works to reduceoffending and assist in developing best practice. Staff said that the main approach toevaluation was through the progress reviews required by National Standards. Howeverinspectors found that these did not happen on time (or at all) in nearly two-thirds of cases.

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The Business Unit and Area Services Teams

8.13 Present management arrangements are complex and bring with them a range of difficulties.Managing a set of specialist citywide services separately from the core services providedby the eight local criminal justice area teams and the homeless person’s team creates roomfor considerable divergence of practice. Added to this, local area managers and theirnext-in-charge team leaders are also responsible for a range of other services includingchildren and families and child protection work. This means they have limited capacity tomanage the work of the criminal justice teams. Although locally based arrangements mayfoster good working relationships with the community and local partner agencies, this isoften at the expense of providing an integrated and consistent service across the city. Forexample, some area teams performed almost twice as well as others in the overall qualityof their assessment reports and supervision.

8.14 The authority’s strategic plan (2002-5), produced by the business unit, is a credibleblueprint for moving the effective practice agenda forward. However, key aspects of theplan, like the delivery of local area team groupwork and the consistent use of riskassessment tools, have translated only partially into practice although the authority trainedall the staff needed to use the risk assessment tools and deliver the programme. Whilstthere was no lack of strategic planning, there did seem to be a real lack of strategicmanagement and leadership to put policy into practice.

New Arrangements

8.15 Shortly before the inspection, the authority set out plans to alter radically the managementstructure of the whole social work service. The proposed restructuring eliminates a tier ofmanagement at senior social worker level and creates the new post of practice teammanager who will both carry a caseload and manage a small group of staff. It alsoproposes greater use of para-professionals to carry out a range of supporting tasks. Theoverall aims are to increase capacity at practice level and raise the level of professionalaccountability for qualified social workers. This is an imaginative approach designed tomeet the particular requirements in Glasgow.

8.16 The evidence from this inspection suggests that the current split between the managementof strategic planning and centralised services and local services delivered by area teams,contributes to a failure to produce a consistent and reliable criminal justice service acrossthe city. The new social work management structure continues the separation betweencitywide and local area teams. In the nine local area teams, there will be more practice teamleaders than there were senior social workers, managed by one of two new operationalmanager posts created to oversee services for children and families and criminal justice.One operational manager will manage services for children under twelve while the otherwill manage services for children and young people above the age of twelve, and thecriminal justice practice teams. The inspection findings suggest that the present lack of adedicated criminal justice senior manager with overall responsibility for planning andoperational delivery of the whole service has implications for the capacity of the authorityto deliver good standards of service across the city. Under the new arrangements, theadditional first line managers will increase the supervisory oversight within individual

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practice teams but, conversely, may also increase the opportunity for divergence bothwithin and between practice teams. Managers above the level of practice teams willcontinue to have a broader remit than criminal justice. The continued lack of a seniormanager with specific overall responsibility for criminal justice services will not help theauthority to address the need to deliver improved and more consistent service standards.

Conclusion

8.17 This has been a complex inspection and has necessarily only focused on key elements ofservice delivery. We have witnessed some highly competent staff working withcommitment and enthusiasm and we have seen examples of very good practice. Webelieve nevertheless that the overall level of performance in many of the domains of theinspection is well below what the authority could achieve.

8.18 Our view is that the overall focus of the service on supporting the generally high level ofindividual need has diverted operational staff from the task of tackling offending. Thistypically demands evidence-based assessment and intervention approaches, togetherwith robust case management to co-ordinate the delivery of a supervision plan. Serviceslike this need ordered foundations, planned strategically and amenable to evaluation.Effective practice does not exclude meeting the personal and welfare needs of offenders;indeed this work may be vital to reducing re-offending, but as part of a wider service thatalso focuses on the offending itself. Establishing this approach requires effectiveleadership, strategic planning and integrated operational management from the topdown. Present arrangements are not delivering this and the planned changes to thesealso seem unlikely to do so. It is therefore vital that the authority gives urgentconsideration as to how best to proceed to deliver services that are more effective underthe new arrangements.

Next steps

8.19 This report has been submitted to Scottish Ministers, and distributed to Glasgow CityCouncil and other interested parties. The report is available on the Scottish Executivewebsite at: www.scotland.gov.uk

8.20 The report identifies a number of areas where practice needs to improve, and theauthority is asked to submit an action plan to Social Work Services Inspectorate withinthree months detailing how they will implement the report’s recommendations over thenext 12 months. At the end of that period, SWSI will require a progress update from theauthority, and will follow up any outstanding recommendations or continuing concerns.

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APPENDIX 1

1. The methodology

In carrying out their work inspectors:

• looked at the available information about service performance. They requestedmanagement information in advance to build up a picture of local procedures andpractices for establishing the direction of services, assuring their quality, and evaluatingtheir effectiveness;

• examined a sample of reports submitted to the courts during a specified period andassessed the quality of the reports held in the case sample files;

• examined a sample of probation, community service, and throughcare case files. Theseincluded women offenders and offenders considered to pose a serious risk of harm toothers;

• observed individual and group work practice either directly or through video recording;

• visited a number of community service sites selected to reflect the different ways in whichcommunity service work placements were delivered;

• interviewed offenders following their observed interviews, group work sessions, orcommunity service work;

• interviewed staff at different levels in the organisation. These interviews focused on issuesarising from the management information, file reading, and observation of practice;

• attended meetings of relevant committees;

• consulted Sheriffs and beneficiaries of community service by asking them to completea short questionnaire about the quality of the service they received.

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2. Criteria for inspection of social enquiry reports

The inspection examined the extent to which social enquiry reports met the main purposesset out in National Standards that are to:

• offer information and advice which can help the court decide between availablesentencing options;

• to assess the risk of re-offending and the offender’s attitude and motivation to change;

• to assess the feasibility of a community based disposal involving social work supervisionor the need for supervision on release from a custodial sentence;

• to assist the court to avoid the use of custody for want of a suitable community-baseddisposal;

• to assess the possible risk of harm to others in more serious cases.

The inspection also examined whether report writers made the basis of the information inreports clear and the extent to which report authors checked key data relevant to sentencing.File readers screened reports for obvious errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation thatcould undermine their credibility with the court.

3. Criteria for inspection of probation orders and statutory licences

The inspection examined the extent to which the service met National Standardsrequirements for the supervision of orders. These are to:

• focus attention on offending behaviour, including the factors which precipitate it and onways of learning the necessary skills which would help to reduce and prevent it;

• involve the offender in completing an action plan which identifies the issues to be workedon and resources to be used, and is achievable;

• set clear expectations regarding standards of behaviour and attendance in accordancewith the standards and pursue non-compliance;

• work in partnership with local agencies.

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4. Funding Formula

4.1 A formula agreed between the former Scottish Office and CoSLA in 1999 determines theallocation of Scottish Executive resources to criminal justice groupings and unitaryauthorities. The formula was reviewed again in 2000, and combines data about the workloadof each grouping or authority and a number of factors that relate to the needs of each area.The workload part of the formula calculates the average turnover of work over a three yearperiod expressed as a percentage of the national figure. The ‘need’ factors are thepercentage of persons aged between 15 and 29, the male unemployment rate, and theproportion of certain types of sheriff court business relevant to each authority or grouping.This data is used to determine the proportion of the national workload borne by eachauthority or grouping. The final step is to add in the effect of the ‘needs’ factors to arriveat the final allocation of resources.

5. Getting Our Priorities Right

5.1 This document sets out national guidance for all relevant agencies to assist them to assessthe needs of children of drug misusing parents, and provide services to safeguard theirwelfare. These agencies include drug and alcohol services, children's services and criminaljustice agencies, medical and nursing staff, teachers, housing staff, youth workers,psychologists, staff in voluntary organisations, Reporters, police, Procurators Fiscal andstaff in prisons. The document underlines the need for workers in these agencies to beaware of those families in which substance misuse is resulting in significant consequencesfor children. It emphasises the need to provide support and protection for these childrenand to provide support to parents to tackle their problems. That may mean interveningagainst their wishes.

5.2 The first part of this guidance sets out the known extent of parental substance misuse andits impact on children. Part 2 sets out what agencies need to ask of families when theypresent with drug or alcohol problems, including guidance to staff on identifying risks. Part3 offers advice about providing help, and on how to work together more effectively. Part 4tackles the complex area of confidentiality and offers advice to agencies about when andhow to share information. Part 5 gives guidance on strengthening services for families.Part 6 gives guidance about working in partnership, and discusses the creation of jointpolicies and procedures to underpin this, particularly in linking (Alcohol &) Drug ActionTeams with the local Child Protection Committees. (Source: Getting Our Priorities Right,Scottish Executive, 2003).

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