The commissioning of a new rehabilitative service offers the opportunity for a significant change in the efforts to break the cycle of individuals reoffending, unfortunately, something that is persistent in the UK. Currently, more than four in every ten prisoners in the UK continue to be reconvicted within a year of release.
The BUSY Group’s international experience in the justice sector leads us to applaud the Government’s ambitions for this new service for men in prison and those impacted by the justice system and in the community. We support the vision of an individualised service that will deliver outcomes founded on strong and stable support in the community. We believe this is the right approach to take to realise positive change.
Building supportive relationships
At its heart, we know the new Community Support service must have a rehabilitative focus. That’s why The BUSY Group’s delivery will use the trauma-informed Transtheoretical Model of Behaviour Change, an evidence-based whole person approach which has underpinned our successful Workforce Australia Specialist Employment Services Program, providing support to over 8,000 individuals both in and beyond custody since 2022.
Our delivery will also be shaped by our experience of delivering Step Up, an internationally recognised intervention programme that uses cognitive behavioural therapy and motivational interviewing techniques, together with restorative practice to divert participants from violent and abusive behaviours and help resolve family and relationship conflicts.
Connecting in the community
Service users leaving custody need a broad menu of service options open to them to ensure their complex needs can be met. To manage this provision effectively, lead providers must themselves occupy a position of trust in the communities they serve. Our own pool of over 100 local Welsh partner organisations means, for example, that CASE UK (part of The BUSY Group) can build and sustain the support packages needed by referrals from probation and secondary mental health teams for the Out of Work Service we deliver for the Welsh Government. Effectiveness was proven by the pilot service delivered for HMP YOI Parc – providing young offenders moving through the gate with wraparound support through a seamless, one-stop shop approach. This was built on the same holistic principles that made CASE UK the Business of the Year at the 2024 St David Awards, the national awards of Wales.
Addressing complex and multiple needs
Our extensive delivery of specialist services for individuals impacted by the justice system, teaches us that three quarters of all men leaving custody are likely to have primary or secondary mental health conditions. They will need significant help from mentors, co-mentors with lived experience and health professionals if they are to progress towards recovery from complex needs including drug, alcohol use and gambling addictions.
We’re ready for that. As another part of The BUSY Group, Health2Employment is a Disability Confident (Level 3) Leader deploying a team of more than forty occupational health doctors and nurses, physiotherapists and mental health practitioners who have delivered 50,000 integrated health interventions in the UK for partners that include Shaw Trust, Ingeus, REED in Partnership, Seetec and The Growth Company.
Achieving outcomes
Support is important but outcomes are critical. If reoffending is to be curbed, the new Community Support service must routinely sustain a range of outcomes across agendas including housing, financial management and employment. Our internationally tested rehabilitation model has a laser focus on securing outcomes and Australia, for example, is achieving a 31% job outcome rate for the justice-impacted individuals we are supporting.
A focus on solutions
The new rehabilitation service, currently being commissioned, will face immense challenges, but our message at this early stage of the process is that these challenges can be overcome.
The BUSY Group has an international reputation for solving problems through innovation, partnership and investment. When we couldn’t find partners in Australia who shared our vision and zeal for a new approach to alternative education to address the alarming increase of young people disengaged with their education, we built our own schools – and used our not-for-profit approach to reinvest in the communities we set our schools in.
That same drive to change lives, build futures and support communities is informing our agenda for the new Community Support service. That’s why we’re now working hard with partners and local stakeholders in South Wales and the South West to build a community-based approach that will break the UK’s longstanding cycle of reoffending. In doing so, our ultimate goal is to help turn lives around and assist individuals to create better futures for themselves.