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Table of Contents Foreword ......................................................................................................................................................... 3

Key facts ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 4

1 Welcome from Director .......................................................................................................................... 5

2 Our Strategy, Values and Behaviours ..................................................................................................... 6

3 CRC Context ............................................................................................................................................ 7

3.1 Our locality ................................................................................................................................... …7

3.2 Our caseload……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 8

3.3 Our staff .......................................................................................................................................... 9

Strategic Priority – Reducing Reoffending and Protecting the Public .................................................. 11

4.1 Key areas of work .......................................................................................................................... 11

4.2 Actions …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….13

5 Strategic Priority - An Excellent Workforce………………………………………………………………………………………14

5.1 Key areas of work……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..14

5.2 Actions……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..15

6 Strategic Priority - Achieving Growth and Enhanced Performance……………………………………………………15

6.1 Key areas of work…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….15

6.2 Actions……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..17

7 Strategic Priority - Organisational Development and Efficiency………………………………………………………..17

7.1 Key areas of work……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..17

7.2 Actions…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 18

Health and Safety .................................................................................................................................. 19

8.1 Actions .......................................................................................................................................... 20

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Foreword

Janine McDowell Chief Executive Officer Sodexo Justice Services UK & Ireland

Jacob Tas Chief Executive Officer Nacro

Sodexo and Nacro are pleased to be continuing the partnership into our fourth year of operation across six Community Rehabilitation Companies. The quality of our work on public protection and reducing reoffending remains the overriding priority of the organisation. The new HMIP standards set the benchmark the delivery of quality services to the communities we serve and we have attempted to structure our delivery and audit arrangements in line with these standards. This will be an area of continued focus in the forthcoming year, together with introducing changes to Through the Gate services which will improve service provision for those leaving custody. Whether service users are accessing our services after a custodial sentence or as a direct result of a community order, we are committed to supporting them to move beyond a life of crime and address the root causes of their offending behaviour. In delivering this, we are fortunate to have skilled, experienced and committed people in our organisations who we will continue to invest in as our most valuable asset. We look forward to another year ahead and working in partnership to achieve our ambitions.

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Key facts

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1 Welcome from Director

I am pleased to publish our Annual Service Plan which details our objectives for 2019-20.

Since 2014 Norfolk and Suffolk CRC has specialised in managing and delivering services to offenders assessed as low and medium risk of serious harm. We have also focused on developing and facilitating programmes to reduce reoffending, providing unpaid work services and delivering work with prisoners in custody and on release, to support successful and sustained resettlement.

We have strengthened our rehabilitation activities and outlined these in the body of this report. Our performance has increased against our contractual requirements, which is a testament to the hard work and commitment of the staff group. We have decreased our workload for individual practitioners and through this are able to increase the face to face time that service users have with their responsible officers. We are focusing in the coming year on increasing the quality of individual case work. We have assessed the needs of individuals and identified gaps in mental health support and employed a mental health practitioner to facilitate greater access to mainstream services.

In April 2019 we are introducing new ways of working which will enhance the through the gate service. We will be using a tiered model to provide a more personalised approach tailored to each individual’s need. New resettlement pathways - Personal, Relationships and Community and TTG Supporting Activity, will complement existing pathways. We are increasing resources and realigning work alongside reviewing and refreshing our operational partner involvement to strengthen community integration work. We are excited to bring about these changes which will support a seamless service between prison and the community.

This Annual Service plan provides us with a clear direction of travel and ensures we focus on the quality of our service delivery, emphasising the importance of learning and development as I recognise that it is our people and partnerships that will produce our business results. I am grateful to be supported in achieving our aims by a talented team of colleagues who are committed to performance improvement and offering the best opportunities to the service users and communities we serve.

Pete Mangan CRC Director

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2 Our Strategy, Values and Behaviours

Our Strategic Priorities for 2019-2020

Delivering Operational Excellence by

1. Reducing Reoffending & Protecting the Public

2. An excellent workforce

3. Achieving Growth and Enhanced Performance

4. Organisational Development & Efficiency

a. Case Management b. Public Protection c. Interventions d. Our Priority Cohorts e. TTG f. Employing Service

Users g. Service User

Engagement

a. Recruitment & Retention

b. Training and Development

c. Engagement d. Empowerment and

Accountability

a. Contract performance

b. Inspections, Audits and Stakeholder Input

c. Services to the NPS d. New Business

a. Public Sector Pledge and CSR

b. Continuous Business Improvement

c. ICT Systems and Digital d. Estates e. Transition Planning f. Financial

underpinning all domains Equality and Diversity, Innovation, Health and Safety

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3 CRC Context

3.1 Our locality Norfolk and Suffolk CRC operates across fourteen district authority areas and has the same boundaries as both Norfolk and Suffolk Police and the two local authority areas. We contribute to the safeguarding children and adults boards in the local authority areas, as well as the Reducing Reoffending boards, Community Safety Partnerships and Domestic Abuse partnership arrangements. Our resettlement and ‘Through the Gate’ teams work within HMPs Norwich, Hollesley Bay, Wayland and HMP Peterborough women’s prison and provide support two non-resettlement prisons in our area, HMP Bure and Warren Hill.

The Hub is the central point for all our administration, performance and corporate services activity. The Hub carries out offender management and monitoring functions, using our operational partners to undertaken interventions on our behalf. Staff in the Hub handle all key processes involved in managing a community order, including case allocation, reporting, dealing with breaches and the purchase of interventions.

Local Management Centres (LMCs) are our primary offices within our areas of operation where services users report in person. Staff will deliver a wide range of interventions alongside our operational partners supporting the approach to mobile working.

Neighbourhood Centres (NCs) are smaller offices and have a limited reception facility, but staff can meet service users there and deliver some interventions.

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3.2 Our caseload

NSCRC Workload Snapshot 12 February 2018 12 February 2019

Allocated Service Users – Community

Order/Suspended Sentence Order

1939 1873

Allocated Service Users –

Custody/Licence/Post Sentence

Supervision

1218 1187

Allocated Service Users – total 3097 2977

Active Unpaid Work requirements 796 800

Rehabilitation Activity Requirements

(RAR)

1351 1311

Accredited Programme Requirements 334 277

Other requirements:

Drug Rehabilitation Requirements

(DRRs), Alcohol Treatment

Requirements (ATRs), Mental Health

Treatment Requirements (MHTRs) and

Curfews

71 DRRs

44 ATRs

11 MHTRs

17 Curfew requirements

11 HDC on licence

66 DRRs

63 ATRs

8 MHTRs

59 Curfew requirements

9 HDC on licence

Average number of case

commencements a month

2085 CO/SSO allocations

(accepted transfers from NPS)

in 2017

1150 Custody allocations

(accepted transfers from NPS)

in 2017

Total 3235 new allocations in

2017

270 case commencements

per month during 2017

1941 CO/SSO allocations

(accepted transfers from NPS)

in 2018

1036 Custody allocations

(accepted transfers from NPS)

in 2018

Total 2977 new allocations in

2018

248 case commencements per

month during 2018

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Analysis of our sentencing (and case allocation) trends during calendar year 2018 indicates a decrease of

8.0% in total cases allocated to the CRC compared with the previous 12 month period. The split between

community and suspended sentence orders, and short (less than 12 months) and longer term custody

orders has not changed significantly across the two periods.

2017 2018

Community and Suspended Sentence Orders 521/quarter 64% 485/quarter 65%

Short term custody (less than 12 months) 223/quarter 28% 196/quarter 26%

Longer term custody (12 months and over) 64/quarter 8% 64/quarter 9%

Community Payback volumes have not changed significantly, averaging 378 in 2018 (380 in 2017) requirements per quarter amounting to approximately 41,567 in 2018 (41,812 in 2017) hours of Community Payback sentenced each quarter.

Sentencing of Accredited Programmes has decreased by 11%, with an average of 64 in 2018 (72 in 2017) programmes allocated per quarter.

3.3 Our staff Norfolk & Suffolk CRC currently employs 140 FTE staff. Our operational delivery is supported further by the

staff and volunteers employed by our operational partners. In addition we are supported by Sodexo UK and

Ireland for the delivery of business support and central services.

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Our organisational structure is outlined below:

Regional CEO

Emma Osborne

CRC Director

Pete Mangan

Deputy Director

Paul Reeve

Norfolk LMCs & Prisons

Team Managers

Matt Coman

Norwich LMC

Vacancy

Kings Lynn

Prisons

Katie Ludman

Deputy Director

Gary Smallman

Suffolk LMCs & Interventions

Team Managers

Karen Galloway

Ipswich LMC

Adele Mcnamara

Bury LMC

Tracey Orme-Murphy

Lowestoft

Community Payback

Richard Hunter

Interventions

Stacey Dobell

Deputy Director

Jo Rusby

Hub &Central Case Management

Team Managers

Wayne Shuter

Admin Manager

Paul Laflin

Head of Contracts and Partnerships

Steve Baker

Head of Performance

Andy Pickering

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Strategic Priority – Reducing Reoffending and Protecting the Public

4.1 Key areas of work

Contractual Performance For Q1-3 of this contract year we have secured successful completion rates for community orders of 78.3%; licences of 70.62 %; programmes of 95.19% and Community Payback of 95.19%. During 2018-19 NSCRC delivered 122,340 of unpaid work to our local communities and received positive feedback from a number of beneficiaries regarding the quality of our work. Where enforcement action is required for non-compliance we take timely action in 95.8 % of cases. We intend to build on this strong performance for the remainder of the year.

Case Management and Case Supervision Good case supervision starts with an accurate assessment of risk of harm, need and vulnerability and takes into account diversity and individual circumstances, so that our interventions have the best chance of reducing re-offending. This year we will continue to improve the quality of our assessment work through the greater use of the Offender Assessment System (OASys), and will deliver services, internally or in partnership with others, to reduce the risk of reoffending and harm. We will focus on the continuity of assessments, in particular ensuring that risk and needs assessments in custody (Basic Custody Screening Tool) inform community assessments and subsequent interventions and that criminogenic needs are reflected in both sentence and risk management plans. We will also ensure that other needs which may impact on an individual’s ability to engage in criminogenic interventions are captured and used to inform sentence plan delivery. Our responsible officers will ensure that they broker effective interventions from both operational partners and internal delivery staff to ensure the steady progress of the service user through the plan for their sentence. Strategically we will introduce regular analysis of the workload management tool to ensure that staff are working within prescribed limits, have sufficient time to complete their core tasks and are able to see all service users face to face weekly for 12 weeks and then at least once a month thereafter for the first year of their court order or licence. Public Protection Our work to safeguard others and protect the public is both strategic and operational. We are engaged with our safeguarding children’s and adult’s board, affirming our buy-in to these multi-agency arrangements and procedures, as well domestic abuse and MARAC and MASH partnerships and PREVENT. This includes engagement with Case Reviews, Domestic Homicide Reviews and Serious Further Offence processes. At an operational level, our teams engage with police, social care and partners to ensure plans to safeguard others are delivered. We are strengthening our own risk management practice through enhanced training for staff on risk and domestic abuse; and through improved quality assurance and observed practice. We will build on the good relationships we have with the NPS to ensure that where risk escalates we transfer cases at the relevant time.

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Our Priority Cohorts This year we will continue to work closely with other agencies to identify and respond to priority cohorts of those who re-offend. This will include ensuring our focused IOM work continues, as well as developing our approach to those that re-offend most frequently. This latter group is now a distinct ‘red pathway’ within our operating model, which evolved during 2018-19. We will continue to develop information sharing arrangements with the police and others, to enable us to respond quickly when people re-offend, which will include working closely with organisations that provide services to those with complex needs. We will be working in partnership across the system to improve the use of mental health, drug treatment and alcohol treatment requirements. In Norfolk and Suffolk our focus will be on mental health and dual diagnosis. We are working strategically with the Norfolk PCCs office, Public Health and HM Courts to support the roll out of the Community Sentence Treatment Requirement which will provide a comprehensive multi agency approach to effective assessment and treatment for drug, alcohol and mental health treatment requirements. Those service users without stable accommodation feature highly in our re-offending cohort and we will build on the homeless breakfast clubs which we introduced last year in order to get better engagement and impact on the low level, but prolific, offences they commit.

Interventions We are proud of the range of services and interventions that we have on offer which cover all criminogenic pathways. This year, we will continue to strive for optimal commencements of accredited programmes and rehabilitation activities, both for NPS and CRC service users. We will develop our interventions to meet the commissioning intentions of the NPS and other commissioners, whilst ensuring that the quality of delivery is within the parameters of the Integrity framework and monitored by Treatment Management. We will develop interventions for in custody work both in conjunction with CRC and operational partner staff. We will ensure that every contact matters and staff will model pro- social behaviours. In Norfolk and Suffolk our focus will be on embedding two new RARS namely a masculinity RAR and a low level drug use RAR incorporating New Psychoactive Substances. We will also strengthen the visibility of the schedules for both RARS and Accredited Programmes ensuring that service users are automatically allocated to forthcoming sessions. Working closely with Shaw Trust we will also focus on increasing the proportion of learning that service users receive whilst undertaking Community Payback, establishing ETE programmes early by May 2019.

Through The Gate In April 2019, we will implement an enhanced Through the Gate (TTG) service. The new specification strengthens the in-custody offer, creating three levels of service, so that service users with more complex needs can receive more intensive interventions. As well as the current pathways linked to housing; finance, benefit and debt; education, training, employment; domestic abuse and those exploited by the sex industry, there will be an additional pathway called personal, relationships and community designed to address physical and mental health needs and build relationships and social capital. We will also be responding to the specific needs of particular groups – young men, women, Foreign Nationals, Lifers/IPPs, Sex offenders, Learning Difficulty/Disability. Importantly, we will ensure that assessments and interventions completed in custody are followed up in the community on release, and that we work closely with other teams and initiatives in the prison such as Offender Management in Custody (OMiC).

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Partnerships We know that it is critical to work in strategic partnership to develop alliances that improve the whole system, and operationally to deliver the services that make a difference. As well as maintaining our current commitment to working in partnership, this year we will be working with: our operational partners to ensure that the specifications for this work have sufficient local variation to meet service user need; the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge and Evidence Works to evaluate our newer services; and enhancing our regional approach to performance management, communication, and learning and development to harness best practice in these areas. We will ensure that OP partners play an active part in Enhanced Through The Gate and the future arrangements following the strengthening probation re-tender exercise.

Employing Service Users Securing and maintaining employment is fundamental in reducing reoffending, and there are two aspects to this for us. Firstly, we will continue to lead by example, embracing the Sodexo’s Public Service Pledge to the employment of ex-offenders within our own company through the active promotion of peer mentoring, which can later lead to other roles. Secondly, we will further develop links with local employers to provide a range of job opportunities, aligning with their social responsibility, including a partnership with the organisation Only a Pavement Away, who specialises in being a conduit between organisations such as the CRC and jobs in the hospitality industry. In Norfolk and Suffolk our focus will be on converting the additional money from the Open Road mentoring scheme into part time mentor roles available to service users immediately on leaving the case load. This will be co-ordinated by the volunteer co-ordinator who has transferred into the CRC from Open Road.

Service User Engagement We proactively welcome service user feedback in a number of ways including our annual service user survey, exit questionnaires in unpaid work, feedback at the end of courses and programmes, and our service user council, which is led by User Voice. This feedback is then utilised to improve service delivery. This year we will engage our service user council as we implement the Enhanced Through The Gate specification and we will also track all proposals brought by the council and the subsequent actions taken by the CRC. In Norfolk and Suffolk our focus will be on establishing and consolidating a new women’s service user council in Suffolk and seek input from current prisoners in HMP Peterborough, HMP Norwich, HMP Hollesley Bay and HMP Wayland on what has worked well for them and what has hindered their re-settlement. We will be feeding this information into the training we provide for Enhanced Through The Gate delivery. Equality and Diversity Our Equality and Diversity plan outlines in full the CRC’s commitments in this area. However, as a headline, ensuring that we have taken individual service user’s protected characteristics into account when making our assessments and delivering our interventions is foundational to our work. Therefore, this year, as well as ensuring that we have full E&I data set, we will be utilising a learning disability screening tool which will be incorporated into the current induction process.

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In Norfolk and Suffolk our focus will be on ensuring that we have a diversity council and that we capture learning from those with protected characteristics from within the staff and service user group(s). Due to the small number of NSCRC staff identifying a specific protected characteristic we will be providing the opportunity for staff to join the Protected Characteristic fora of larger local organisations to enable staff to get a more meaningful support network from colleagues who have similar lived experiences. We will be working with Opening Doors a local learning disability charity to ensure our learning difficulty screenings have a conduit to a full assessment. Innovation Our innovation budget has now been fully committed. This year we will continue to support the Peterborough Housing Project and aim for this to be self financed going forward. In Norfolk and Suffolk our focus will be on adding a further mental health practitioner to cover the Norfolk area to build on the good work that has been started by the existing one in Suffolk. We will also be developing improved women’s services in King’s Lynn Bury and Waveney following our needs assessment in these areas. Health and Safety The duty of keeping others safe is a priority for the CRC, and ensuring the health and safety of those we

work with forms part of this duty. The seven safety nets underpin our safety culture, which aims to prevent

accidents. Where incidents or accidents do occur, we will continue to report on these, and investigate

where appropriate. This year we will continue to ensure that our local, regional and national Health and

Safety arrangements, which include safety walks and audit, drive a safe environment for all. We will ensure

increased usage of Solo Protect by all staff who work in remote or solitary working environments.

4.2 Actions

No Objective/Action By when Who

1 Deliver risk assessment and risk management practice to a good standard and integrate our assessments with our interventions.

June 2019 All RO staff

2 Implement the Enhanced Through the Gate specification. April 2019 All TTG staff

3 Track actions taken as a result of service user feedback to influence policy and procedure.

Ongoing User Voice

4 Develop a BAME intervention. September 2019 SLT

5 Deliver improved access to mental health treatment and learning disability services.

June 2019 Mental Health Practitioner

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5. Strategic Priority – An Excellent Workforce

5.1 Key areas of work

Recruitment & Retention Our workforce is our most valuable asset, and the recruitment and retention of skilled staff is a priority for the CRC. We aim to broaden and speed up our recruitment mechanisms to ensure that we attract a staffing group that reflects our service user profile, and enables new recruits to take up their job offer promptly. This year we will complete quarterly workload reviews to inform future workforce planning. We will monitor the stakeholder landscape to ensure that pay in aligned sectors is congruent where affordable. Training and Development Each role within the CRC requires both core and specialist training. Our training and development plan outlines in full how the learning and development needs of all staff will be met, including the delivery of our core training offer, our Practice Enhancement Programme for VQ4 staff, our accredited programmes training, and our Community Payback supervisor training. In addition, this year, the CRC will train four staff in PQUiP (the Probation Officer qualification) and develop Practice Development Assessors to support this, and we will be devising a management development programme to improve succession planning.

Engagement (empowerment and accountability) Our staff charter sets out the CRC’s management pledges and has staff engagement at its heart. This is facilitated by a strong middle management group, a regional staff engagement group, engagement ambassadors, local listening events, leadership forums, and our communication arrangements which includes our intranet, website and staff publications. The consistent application of policy provides the framework for empowerment and accountability, as it provides clarity of expectation as well as guidance for our day to day work. Staff recognition is a key to staff engagement and empowerment, and this year, we will continue to celebrate our staff achievement through our ‘recognising you’ scheme and award nominations. Equality and Diversity Our Equality and Diversity plan, which is underpinned by our duties under the Equality Act and our drive for an inclusive culture, outlines the NSCRC’s commitments in this area. In addition to improving recruitment arrangements to create a workforce that reflects the diversity of our local area, we commit to proactively enabling staff to participate in training, national and local staff network groups, mentoring schemes, and succession planning. We will ensure our offices are compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act, and will make reasonable adjustments as appropriate. We will reach out further to challenge ourselves with differing perspectives and use these inputs to influence our policies and procedures. In Norfolk and Suffolk our focus will be on establishing and consolidating a new service user council in Suffolk. We will also be encouraging staff to join staff networks strategically aligned organisations where there are wider opportunities to meet up with those sharing specific social characteristics. Innovation

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Through our core values and behaviours, we ask all staff to ‘dare to think innovatively’, particularly as we seek to deliver the best services possible, within the resources we have. As well as a range of strategic and operational groups that staff participate in, such as staff engagement, RAR development, women’s services, equality and inclusion, health and safety, our ‘bright ideas scheme’ is a vehicle for any member of staff to promote an idea they have directly for the senior leadership team to consider. This year we will continue to actively encourage cross functional working, so that experience, skills and ideas can develop. Health, Safety and Wellbeing The South Region CRCs Health, Safety and Wellbeing Strategy outlines how we will deliver a safe and

supportive work environment. Our staff take personal responsibility for using the personal protective

equipment that is issued to them This includes protective clothing for unpaid work, as well as lone worker

devices. Staff are required to work within the boundaries of professional conduct which will ensure they

do not impact detrimentally on their colleagues health and wellbeing.

5.2 Actions

No Objective/Action By when Who

1 Refer to management development programme to improve succession planning.

September 2019 Regional Training lead

2 Celebrate staff success through the recognising you scheme and award nominations.

Ongoing All managers

3 Proactively enable staff to participate in national and local network groups, mentoring schemes, succession programmes or training courses.

Ongoing Managers

6. Strategic Priority – Achieving Growth and Enhanced Performance

6.1. Key areas of work

Contract performance NSCRC has a track record of meeting service level performance, and strives for continuous improvement. Our performance is underpinned by our Quality Assurance Framework and Quality Plan which directs activity to deliver on-going performance improvements, including the quality of recording. A priority area of work this year is to enhance performance on the assurance metrics, notably the newly introduced measure for minimum levels of face-to-face contact. Inspections, Audits Under the National Quality Assurance Group, the Sodexo CRCs work together on internal auditing

arrangements. This year we will implement a consistent and revised audit tool, which is more closely

aligned to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) framework. This will underpin our inspection

programme, and will support our internal thematic audits.

The terms of reference for this group are:

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To agree, develop and maintain a consistent approach for Quality Assurance across the Sodexo 6 CRCs

To agree, develop and maintain a framework for sharing good practice & learning across the 6 CRCs from HMIP Inspections, HMPPS OSAG Audits, SFO/DHRs/SCRs/DUS and Local QA activity

Develop & maintain a communication strategy for National Quality Assurance Activity which includes learning and practice development.

During 2019-20, the group will retain oversight of the development of the Sodexo CRC practice standards,

which have been updated to reflect minimum levels of face-to-face contact, and will have a Through the

Gate section added this year. We will also support our six CRCs with the implementation of the standard

audit tool for routine audits, and will complete together thematic audits on community payback, risk

management, assessment quality (OASys), Through the Gate, interventions, SFO/SHR/SCR/DUS learning,

and Operational Partners.

Stakeholder Input Working closely with stakeholders is important for two important reasons. Firstly, stakeholder feedback continues to be highly valuable as we hear from key partners about the positive impact of our work as well as our areas for improvement. It will be important that stakeholders and sentencers are able to engage with the Strengthening Probation arrangements as these develop and this year we will refresh our communication bulletins to facilitate this. Secondly, working closely together enables us all to deliver better services – particularly when working with people with complex needs, higher levels of presenting risk, or those that frequently reoffend. This year we will continue to explore way of developing services in partnership and ensure that our priorities align to stakeholders strategic plans. Services to the National Probation Service (NPS) Norfolk and Suffolk CRC is proud to deliver services to the NPS through the rate card, and on receipt of NPS intentions for minimum levels of purchase we will make arrangements to ensure the relevant programmes, unpaid work and RAR activity can be delivered. We will continue to use our operational interface and strategic service integration arrangements to build joined up, effective probation services in our area. New Business & Innovation NSCRC recognises that our services, interventions, areas of expertise and staff training opportunities are not only applicable to the criminal justice setting. We already deliver Building Better Relationships to the Families Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) we facilitate the purchase of our existing services though our rate card, or develop new services together. In Norfolk and Suffolk our focus will be on developing greater opportunities for co- funding with the PCCs office and will be discussing potential alignment of priorities early in the New Year of 2019. Equality and Diversity Our Equality and Diversity plan outlines in full the CRC’s commitments in this area. However, as a headline, ensuring that we have taken individual service user’s protected characteristics into account when making our assessments and delivering our interventions is foundational to our work. Therefore, this year, as well as ensuring that we have full Equality & Diversity data sets, we will be utilising a learning disability screening tool which will be incorporated into the current induction process.

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In NSCRC we will also focus on consolidating the newly formed diversity panel and use its recommendations to improve impact assessments and policy change.

6.2 Actions

No Objective/Action By when Who

1 Meet the performance level for assurance metric K – minimum levels of face to face contact.

April 2019 SLT

2 Achieve a HMIP score of 10 points or more August 2019 SLT

3 Implement an updated and consistent internal audit tool within the Sodexo CRCs.

April 2019 SLT

4 Refresh our stakeholder and sentencer bulletins to ensure relevant information is shared about CRC delivery and the Strengthening Probation arrangements as they develop.

Ongoing SLT

5 Grow and develop services in partnership with others. Ongoing SLT

7. Strategic Priority - Organisational Development and Efficiency

7.1 Key areas of work

Public Sector Pledge and Corporate and Social Responsibility Sodexo’s Public Service Pledge and Corporate Responsibility Statement outline how our values, ethical principles and subsequent commitments demonstrate that we are a company that intends to provide additional benefit to our communities. We seek to reduce the impact on the environment, through the services we offer and the way in which we work. As well as our equalities commitments, our passion for working in partnership, our staff engagement initiatives, and our track record for employing ex-offenders and service personnel, this year we will develop and formalise relationships between our local homeless charities and Sodexo’s Stop Hunger Charity. This will open up grant funding opportunities for our homeless charities. Continuous Business Improvement This annual service plan has already stated many of our intentions and objectives for business improvement over the next year. These include improved assessment and risk management, the implementation of the enhanced TTG specification improved information from in custody to in the community, the development of a BAME intervention, workforce planning activity, and the implementation of a workload measurement tool. Underpinning many of these improvements is the need for better recording of our work. This year we will develop a culture of compliance with recording instructions, focusing on accurate recording that is right first time. We will also developing the hub model to facilitate increased levels of face-to-face contact. ICT Systems and Digital

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We expect ICT developments to be minimal over the coming year, as staff have access to either static or mobile IT equipment relevant to their role, and we have taken the decision to remain on HMPPS IT systems for assessment, case management and accredited programme recording. However, we continually seek to improve the engagement and compliance of service users with their Court orders, and developing communication methods that assist this is an objective for us. As such, we will explore the use of mobile phone application technology to improve the exchange of messages between staff and service users. Estates We keep our estates in review on a regular basis. We will develop a strategy for the future that harnesses what has worked well in our current arrangements, and where we could improve leasing arrangements to provide the optimal space for operational delivery. We have experienced some excellent co-location arrangements and very much see working closely with partners and stakeholders in this way in the future. Transition Planning The Strengthening Probation consultation indicates that the area operated by X CRC will form part of the Eastern Region CRC. We are fortunate that BeNCH, Essex and Norfolk and Suffolk CRCs, which currently comprise this area, already work closely together, with governance arrangements in place through the regional leadership team. This year we will continue to ensure our regional approach is fit for purpose as the new arrangements emerge, and we will review lessons learnt from the Transforming Rehabilitation mobilisation. We will also ensure that we have robust exit and transitions plans in place ready for the next contract award. Financial NSCRC will continue to manage our financial resources effectively. Our priority is to keep staffing vacancies to a minimum, and therefore we will recruit to the maximum levels that our budget allows.

7.2 Actions

No Objective/Action By when Who

1 Increase and formalise the links between our local homeless charities and Sodexo’s Stop Hunger initiative to enable grant funding.

September 2019 SLT

2 Create a culture of compliance to improve the quality of recording practice across whole CRC service delivery.

June 2019 SLT

3 Explore the use of mobile phone application technology to improve the exchange of messages between staff and service users.

September 2019 Central IT Services

4 Complete a review of our current estates as we develop an estates strategy for the future competition.

September 2019 SLT & Central Estates

5 Develop robust exit and transition plans ready for the new contract award.

Ongoing SLT and Central Team

Health and Safety The health, safety and well being of our staff and service users is of paramount importance to us. We are all accountable for, and have responsibility for, ensuring our employees and service users are safe at work, and return home safe and well each day.

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The South Region CRCs Health, Safety and Wellbeing Strategy outlines how we will deliver a safe and supportive work environment. Our staff take personal responsibility for using the personal protective equipment that is issued to them. This includes protective clothing for unpaid work, as well as lone worker devices. Our staff are required to work within the boundaries of professional conduct which will ensure they do not impact detrimentally on their colleagues health and wellbeing. We believe that the safest organisations are typified by a sustainable positive safety culture. Safety culture is about people and the way they behave and impacts on all of our Strategic Objectives. Our overarching objective this year is to improve our positive safety culture & safety compliance.

8.1 Actions

No Objective/Action By when Who

1 Anchor safety behaviours and reduce staff absence through lost time injury

Ongoing SLT

2 Improve health and wellbeing, through the implementation of our strategy and campaigns

Ongoing SLT