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Staffordshire & West Midlands Probation Trust

Community Payback Annual Report 2012

Foreword

I am pleased to introduce this report describing the work done by Staffordshire and West Midlands Probation Trust in delivering the Community Payback service. Community Payback is the name for operational delivery of Unpaid Work, a sentence imposed by the Courts to provide a demanding punishment for convicted offenders. The Unpaid Work requirement can be delivered either singly or in combination with one or more other requirements of a community order. Typical crimes committed by offenders sentenced to Community Payback include motoring, public order, theft and other dishonesty offences.

An Unpaid Work requirement can be between 40 and 300 hours depending upon the seriousness of the crime and the offender’s previous record. Offenders must work at least six hours a day for one day each week, though many will work much more often than this. We run Community Payback seven days a week and sometimes during the evening. Offenders are carefully assessed before being allocated to work projects to ensure the safety of the public. Groups of offenders are supervised directly by trained Probation staff or by beneficiaries with the close involvement and support of our staff. The type of work that offenders do is very wide-ranging, and an ever-growing proportion of the projects we work on are identified and nominated by members of the public or representative community organisations. Uniquely amongst sentencing options, due to its focus on practical work schemes which benefit the community, Community Payback can be used as a creative resource for improving local environments, and for building public confidence in community sentences. It is also an important pathway into employment for many offenders. Offenders who have been assessed as having employment-related needs can spend a small part of their sentence on basic literacy and other work in order to obtain qualifications and enhance their employability. This in turn significantly reduces the risk of them committing further offences. 2012 marked the 40th anniversary of Community Payback. Community service (as it was called to start with) was introduced across England and Wales by the 1970 Wootton Report on alternatives to prison. As a former manager of Community Payback schemes, I know how valuable this work is, not just to the community but also to the offenders, who can be proud to be seen making amends and putting something back.

Mike Maiden

Chief Executive Staffordshire and West Midlands Probation Trust

Minister for Prisons and Rehabilitation, Jeremy Wright, visits offenders sentenced to Community Payback who are clearing rubbish and cutting back bushes to make a nature

park for schools in Tipton.

Contents

Page

OVERVIEW ‐ Probation Trust and geographic area 1 ‐ Unpaid offender hours 2012 3 ‐ Projects completed 4 ‐ Successful completion of Community Payback sentences 4 ‐ Beneficiaries 5

DEVELOPMENTS - New initiatives 6

‐ Working with Criminal Justice partners 7 ‐ Work with other organisations 8 ‐ Joint work with Education, Training and Employment 9

CASE STUDIES

‐ Community Payback is a tough punishment:

St Giles Church, Rowley Regis 9

‐ Community Payback benefits local neighbourhoods: Sandwell Valley Country Park Project 10

‐ Community Payback rehabilitates offenders:

Fircroft College 11

SWM Probation Community Payback Annual Report 2012 1

Probation Trust and geographic area Staffordshire and West Midlands (SWM) Probation Trust provides probation services to the counties of Staffordshire and the West Midlands, an area covering 1300 square miles.


The area served by SWM Probation Trust is administered by nine local authorities:

Birmingham Coventry Dudley Sandwell Solihull Staffordshire (further sub-divided into 8 borough/district councils) Stoke-on-Trent Walsall Wolverhampton The probation caseload is made up of men and women aged over 18. Of these, 72% are on Community Orders imposed by the courts and 28% are on licence from prison. At any one time, SWM Probation Trust is supervising over 14,500 adult offenders in the community. It employs over 1,900 staff. SWM Probation Trust operates a policy of equal opportunities and promotes equality and diversity throughout every aspect of activity for which it is responsible or engaged with, and is committed to eradicating all forms of discrimination at every level. Since August 2011, SWM Probation has been implementing a review of Community Payback which streamlined the local management structure and delivery. Community Payback is now delivered within three sub areas: Stoke & Staffordshire; Black Country and Birmingham. Since April 2011, Community Payback in Coventry has been delivered by a joint unit with Warwickshire Probation Trust. Head of Community Payback (based at Stafford) John Mason 01785 223416 Deputy Head (based at Birmingham) Marj Rogers 0121 248 2702 Stoke and Staffordshire Unit Manager (based at Lichfield) Yvonne Kennedy 01543 263299 Deputy Manager (Lichfield) Yan Pearson 01543 263299 Deputy Manager (Hanley) Neil Keeling 01782 213324 Deputy Manager (Cannock) Peter Roberts 01785 228608 Black Country Unit Manager (based at Sandwell) Martin Walton 0121 533 4480 Wolverhampton and Dudley Deputy Manager Trevor Coley Dudley 01384 456482

Wolverhampton 01902 351518

Walsall and Sandwell Deputy Manager Craig Hawkins Sandwell


0121 533 4480 Walsall 01922 618611

Birmingham Unit Manager (based at Perry Barr) Sheku Choudhury 0121 248 6392 Deputy Manager Lynne Barlow 0121 248 6391 Central and South Birmingham Deputy Manager Les Loft 0121 248 6334 Coventry Unit Manager Penny Smith 024 76 838 329 Deputy Manager Chris McKinnell 024 76 838 329

Unpaid offender hours 2012

Offender hours in individual placements 184,147

Community Payback hours spent on Education, Training and Employment activities

996

2010 2011 2012

Unpaid work hours 68466.50 667820 612,512

Value to community at minimum wage

£4,060,072.35 £3,973,529 £3,791,449


Projects completed

Offenders sentenced to Community Payback and managed by SWM Probation Trust completed over 474 projects in 2012.This figure represents a mix of small, medium and large projects - some completed within a single day, others lasting several weeks. The kinds of work offenders did included graffiti removal, litter picking/ground clearance, landscaping/gardening, fencing, painting & decorating (internal & external), leaflet distribution, recycling and, in the winter, snow clearance and pathway gritting. In addition, SWM Probation has offenders working on a large number of ongoing projects. These are not counted as completed projects, but the hours worked on them contribute to the overall hours total. For more details and pictures of individual projects, see our website www.SWMprobation.gov.uk or follow SWM Community Payback on Twitter @SWM_CPayback

Successful completion of Community Payback sentences

4649 offenders successfully completed the Community Payback requirement of their Community Order in Staffordshire and the West Midlands in 2012.


Beneficiaries

Organisations who benefited from Community Payback in Staffordshire and the West Midlands during 2012 included schools, churches, temples, community associations, day-care centres, lunch clubs and care homes. The public benefited from litter-picking, ground clearance and snow clearing in parks, communal open spaces, allotments, streets and bus stops in their neighbourhoods. Beneficiary feedback is vital in ensuring we deliver a good service. We have robust systems in place to monitor the beneficiaries’ experience. Regular communication takes place throughout the life of a project/placement. When the work is completed and the beneficiary is satisfied, every beneficiary receives a completion certificate. SWM Probation carried out a bi-annual survey of beneficiaries.

I am the Business Manager at Damson Wood School in Solihull and we recently had a team from Probation help trim hedges along a side road to garages in Wharton Avenue, Solihull. A neighbour had complained about the overgrown hedge, and Annie Masters at Solihull Council arranged for the team to help us out. The team did a magnificent job and I would like to extend our grateful thanks from all at Damson Wood School. We could have paid a contractor to do the job, but instead, we can now spend the funds on resources for the children.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, Best wishes

Pam Atkinson School Business Manager

Damson Wood School


I have been very impressed with the Walsall Community Payback Team. Over the past year they have tackled the community centres garden, which is a massive job. The hard work has improved the appearance of the centre and has had positive comments from the public and users of the centre. We greatly appreciate the work of the team and from the dedication of the probation supervisor. Carry on the good work!

Manager, Blakenall Community Centre

New initiatives

Community Payback app

In June 2012, Staffordshire and West Midlands Probation Trust won first prize in a national competition to use Ordnance Survey data to improve neighbourhoods. The SWM Probation team won £40,000 of development funding in the GeoVation Challenge.

The SWM team’s award-winning idea is a smartphone app that makes it much easier for members of the public to nominate and track projects they want offenders sentenced to Community Payback to work on. The feedback they receive via the app makes them feel they can have a say over the effectiveness of sentences.

Members of the public can use their smartphone to take a photo of a local ‘grotspot’ that needs cleaning up. The app lets them send the photo to the relevant Probation Trust at the click of a button. The geographical reference, or geo-tag, attached to


the photo means the Probation Trust can identify the location and assess the nomination for its suitability for Community Payback.

If the site is appropriate, the Probation Trust will arrange for the work to be done and send comments and photos - via the app – for the original nominator and others to see. The app will display an Ordnance Survey map with Community Payback icons that can be tapped to reveal photos and other information, including comments from offenders who worked on the project.

West Midlands Police, Sandwell Council and Coventry City Council are all keen to use the app and promote it with the public in their area. In October 2012, Jason won an award for best idea at City Camp Coventry, an event aimed at improving Coventry through digital technology. Coventry Police Commander Andrew Nicholson tweeted that it was “a fantastic idea”. Wolverhampton Superintendent Mark Payne sent one of his PCs to appear in the explanatory video and tweeted to his eight thousand followers about the app.

Crispin Blunt, who was Probation Minister at the time, said about the Geovation award:

"It is unsurprising that Staffordshire and West Midlands Probation Trust have won the top prize. They are particularly well led and have proved themselves to be a thoughtful and entrepreneurial organisation and natural leaders in the public sector. Innovation is key to delivering a more effective and efficient probation service and technology can play a key role in this. The public want to see offenders giving something back to their communities; this phone app will help and this prize rewards the Trust’s pioneering spirit."

The team are developing the app in close consultation with the public and have been testing early plans on people in a West Bromwich shopping centre. They are workshopping it at every stage with Community Payback staff from various SWM units, to make sure the back end works as smoothly as possible.

They are writing it using ‘opensource’ code, so when the final version is ready, the code will be available for all Probation Trusts to adapt for themselves if they wish.

Working with Criminal Justice partners

Restorative Justice SWM Probation has reached an arrangement with West Midlands Police to offer offenders – who admit to their offence and agree to the arrangement – access to restorative work, overseen by Community Payback. This is part of structured diversion from prosecution. This will enable appropriate reparation to be made to the community while reducing the overall cost and pressure on the criminal justice system.


Drug searches As part of the Criminal Justice System joint working, West Midlands Police attended Perry Barr Community payback unit with a drug sniffer dog as offenders signed in before heading out to Community Payback projects across North Birmingham. The dog – Beau - roamed round the offenders and Community Payback unit indicating the smell of drugs to its handler. The police officer then requested that the person would be searched by other police officers. Women offenders SWM Probation works with ANAWIM in Birmingham to ensure that women sentenced to Community Payback who have complex needs are supported to complete their hours. This project ensures that women are given help with issues such as carer responsibilities or homelessness. Community Payback staff are working to develop similar arrangements in other parts of the Trust. Community Payback public sector bid (Lot 4) The Trusts who were part of the public sector bid for Lot 4 have continued to collaborate positively despite the move away from the original bid structure and timescale. The Coventry Joint Unit came out of this process, as did a successful staff conference e in Derbyshire in autumn 2012, where performance data and innovations in practice were shared.

Work with other organisations

Funded partnerships SWM Probation sub-contracts some of the supervision of offenders doing Community Payback to several other organisations. The companies working with us are Age UK in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Back 2 Bikes in Stafford, CSV, Stoke Aldermoor Community Association, St Paul’s Community Development Trust in Birmingham, Woodgate Valley Urban Farm Ltd, Jericho in Birmingham and Cultivations in Dudley.


Education, Training and Employment

Offenders sentenced to Community Payback have access to SWM Probation‘s Education, Training and Employment (ETE) provisions. They can be referred individually by their offender manager according to what provision is available as part of structured induction and/ or as part of their placement. For example, placements provided by the Boys’ Brigade &Girls’ Association offer Level 1 training in telesales to offenders who successfully complete their placements.

Nominations

All SWM Probation’s Community Payback work comes from the public either directly or indirectly. The public can nominate projects via www.SWMprobation.gov.uk or by phoning 0121 248 2688.

Case studies

Community Payback is a tough punishment: St Giles Church, Rowley Regis Walsall Community Payback has been working on an ad hoc basis at St Giles for a number of years. Offenders work in the churchyard, keeping grass levels down and clearing up. The nice thing about this project is how the congregation and local people have engaged with the supervisors and offenders. We have received a number of letters of thanks, not just from the vicar, but also from other members of the public who emphasise that without the work done by Community Payback, they would not be able to visit relatives’ graves. In winter 2012, the vicar requested Community Payback’s help after heavy snow. He called the unit at 4pm to ask if offenders could shift snow at 9am the next day so a funeral could go ahead at 11:30. The work was completed just in time and the letter of thanks from the vicar was heartwarming.

One of winter’s sad realities is the larger numbers of deaths, and consequent funerals; so may I write to express our gratitude and thanks for the wonderful help of the Probation Service’s Community Payback team here at St Giles, clearing snow to allow a church funeral to take place. The family had lost a loved one nearly three weeks before, and it would have been adding to distress if the service had to be postponed. You helped out at very short notice.


We were amazed at how brilliant the team were; all of them, clearing paths to the road, putting down salt, and doing it to help others. It was a brilliant effort, in difficult conditions, and many besides the bereaved family now have cause to be grateful to you. Thank you so much,

The vicar of St Giles, Rowley Regis

There is now a formal partnership in place with St Giles and they contribute £2500 per year to supervision costs. Community Payback benefits local neighbourhoods: Sandwell Valley Country Park Project Sandwell Community Payback has been involved in this project for several years. It was developed via the Parks and Open Spaces department of Sandwell Council. Staff at Sandwell Valley allocate tasks directly to the supervisor who works on the project. The varied environmental tasks include cutting back overgrown areas, path maintenance, litter picking and fencing.


The working relationship between Community Payback and Sandwell Valley staff has developed extremely well and trust levels in the competence of CP work teams and staff has increased greatly. Income has been generated through Parks and Open Spaces for much larger projects. As a result, individual placement opportunities have been developed for offenders to work alongside members of the Warden's teams, including weekend placements. The feedback from those staff about the quality of individuals placed has been exceptional. The project and placements at the Valley offer employment-related skills to offenders. Community Payback rehabilitates offenders: Fircroft College Unemployed offenders working in the grounds of Fircroft College of Adult Education are paying back the community while also gaining qualifications to get them back into work. Offenders sentenced to Community Payback are working in at the college – which was once the home of the famous Cadbury family. The offenders work hard clearing overgrowth, mowing lawns, growing flowers and food for the college kitchens, laying hedges, dredging ponds as well as slabbing, bricklaying and building fences.


The work they do is assessed by a Solihull College tutor and counts towards qualifications in Horticulture. Probation Service Officer Lionel Walker, who set the project up, says:

“Four years ago, Fircroft College contacted Birmingham Community Payback unit to ask whether offenders could clear two acres of overgrown ground. “The college was delighted with the work so we carried on working with them. Since then, the Community Payback teams have laid a walkway so visitors can stroll round the beautiful six-acre grounds. “And now, through SWM’s Education, Training and Employment department, we have a full-time assessor working with the offenders on site. Mark teaches them all aspects of gardening and groundkeeping. The things they learn count towards a City and Guilds level 1 certificate or diploma in Horticulture. That qualifies them to work in garden centres, nurseries and parks departments.”

Fircroft College put up a shed for Mark to use as a classroom for theory lessons. And they paid for a polytunnel, which was put up by offenders, for growing plants. Lionel, who’s been working in Community Payback for many years, is convinced that offenders who work at Fircroft are better behaved and more likely to successfully complete their order. He’s seen many offenders come back as volunteers. Many enrol at Solihull College to carry on their studies. And one former offender is talking to him about applying to be a Community Payback supervisor for the Probation Trust. Tutor Mark thinks the offenders enjoy the course because:

“They’re working with the elements, working in the soil. They’re city people and it’s good to work outside in the weather, alongside the wildlife. One woman who started working here was frightened of the robin that hops about when we’re digging. But now she loves it and feeds it worms.”

Mark also thinks it’s important for offenders to see that the vegetables they grow are eaten by the college students. “It teaches them that work can be rewarding and benefits others too.”


Many offenders have bypassed the education system until now. Mark says:

“One guy was 40 when he came here. I sent him his certificate and he phoned me straight away to tell me it was the first certificate he’d ever got. He was so proud – he was going round to his nan’s to show it off to her. And he was digging some beds in his nan’s garden to grow veg for her. Getting people into gardening shows them that there are other ways to spend your spare time that won’t get you into trouble.”

Brendan, who is working his Community Payback hours at Fircroft, says:

“When I got sentenced, I thought I would be just picking up chewing gum all day. But here, I’m not just serving the community; I’m also gaining a certificate. I’m putting something back, but gaining something too. It breeds confidence in people for future employment.”

Michael, who has worked in the building trade, agrees:

“It’s gone really quickly for me cos I’ve been practising my skills. I’ve built walls for the terraced beds in a style that fits the period of the house. Those walls will be here for years and years, long after I’ve finished my sentence.”


If you would like this Annual Report in another format, please contact us:

SWM Probation Trust Communications unit

0121 634 1355/6/7

[email protected]

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