Message from Probation Board For Northern Ireland

Message of the Week 25th January 2017

Cheryl Lamont was appointed Chief Executive of the Probation Board for Northern Ireland in November 2016 and in this message outlines some of the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

“I was delighted to be appointed as Chief Executive in November 2016 and am very proud to lead on the delivery of all areas of probation service across NI.

“Staff within probation are responsible for supervising court orders, preparing reports for the courts and parole commissioners and working directly with victims of crime. Probation Officers use their unique skills and abilities to tackle the root causes of offending and change lives for safer communities. Those unique skills include the ability to make skilled judgments about how to reduce risk and influence positive change to reduce reoffending.

“The social work training which Probation Officers must have is integral in ensuring that skilled and professional assessments and judgments are made. Indeed research shows that the problem solving skills and ability to manage change that social workers have are significant in reducing rates of reoffending.

In the coming months and years we will look at how we prioritise our service delivery to those who have perpetrated crimes against vulnerable people including children, older people, minority groups, victims of domestic violence and victims of sex offences, and hate crime. We will develop our interventions and programmes to deal with those who target the most vulnerable in our society. We will also seek to build and expand on our current partnership arrangements with the police service, prison service, youth justice agency, Community and Voluntary sector; and local Health and Social Care Trusts. The majority of those subject to probation supervision have literacy and numeracy difficulties, many have poor mental health, a substantial number have a history of family or partner abuse, many have been looked-after children when they were younger, and drugs and alcohol are a problem for over 70% of those who are currently on probation. That, of course, does not excuse their behaviour or mitigate their actions but it does show that we need to tackle the reasons why people offend.

Therefore a key element of our work will be to focus on dealing with the causes of crime which are the reasons why people offend. Resettlement mentoring schemes, the development of social enterprises to support employment, restorative practices, and practice interventions to tackle the underlying causes of offending will all be key in helping tackle the causes of crime.

Importantly in the coming months and years I will be prioritising innovation, creativity and collaboration. Indeed I believe that the challenges we face across public service including austerity, and the changing nature of crime, can be best addressed through the development of imaginative and innovative practice in collaboration with our partners including social workers across the health sector, education sector, youth justice and the voluntary and community sector.

One example is the Enhanced Combination Order (ECO) which we began to pilot in October 2015. Following a request from the Lord Chief Justice to develop a more robust alternative to short prison sentences we launched ‘ECO’ in two court districts. The feedback from this pilot ,which is due to be evaluated later this year, has been extremely positive.

In developing innovative solutions over the next four years, probation will work closely with partners in Northern Ireland, on the island of Ireland and indeed internationally to ensure that we are using the most up to date research and best practice to tackle reoffending. The skills and abilities that our staff have will go a long way in helping us to reduce reoffending and reduce the number of victims of crime.