Masterclasses
MC1 Effective commissioning of community safety services: taking a client led approach

Summary: Mike Pierce of Safer Sutton Partnership explains the 'Models of Care' approach to delivering integrated services.

Safer Sutton Partnership is a merged partnership between the police and local authority community safety unit. The partnership won Beacon status in 2006 for its work on moving from partnership working to integrated service delivery. Mike Pierce, the Head of Commissioning and Services Management for the partnership, will explain the approach that has been taken in Sutton to identifying the needs of victims and offenders and the gaps in services for these groups in order to understand what services need to be commissioned to meet these needs effectively. This ‘Models of Care’ approach has enjoyed success in the health, drugs and alcohol treatment fields and Mike will explain the principles behind the approach and how the principles can be applied in a range of other community safety contexts such as the commissioning of integrated services for victims of domestic violence. Mike is a qualified addiction therapist and former manager of a drug and alcohol treatment service and was a serving police officer for 21 years.
MC2 Tackling the fear of crime

Summary: Natalie Williams, the Communications Manager for the Safer Hastings Partnership, will explain the Tilley Award winning work of the partnership to tackle the fear of crime and engage the community, especially young people.

“Hell-on sea”, “suicide black spot”, “sad symbol of decline into crime” – these headlines typify the media’s portrayal of Hastings in the late 1990s. Combine this with high crime rates and its no surprise that public confidence plummeted. Since then crime has fallen dramatically yet the fear of crime remained high – disproportionately so - leading the Safer Hastings Partnership to launch a robust, holistic and long-term plan to increase feelings of safety for residents and repair the reputation of the town to outsiders.

Natalie will explain the range of initiatives undertaken as part of the partnership’s public reassurance agenda (from an award-winning 11-screen TV network broadcasting more than 3.5 milllion messages annually to competitions in schools) and the results that this approach has brought in terms of improving public perception and reassurance and reducing fear of crime.
MC3 HM Prison Service: Employment – the key to reducing reoffending

Summary: Ian Galbraith explains how the PS Plus programme enables crime reduction by means of carefully targeted interventions to improve offenders employability.

PS Plus is a European funded employment and employability programme which has operated in 43 prisons and 15 probation areas. Ian Galbraith, the Interventions Programme Manager for PS Plus, will explain the programme and how an integrated IT case management system enables individualised and therefore non-discriminatory intervention programmes to be devised and consistently delivered despite moves between prisons, release to the community and movement in the community. It will highlight developments that support effective engagement with employers. The masterclass will also examine various aspects of PS Plus which have been subject to external evaluation and will be delivered by presenters who have specialist knowledge of the areas involved eg Women, Faith and Reducing Crime. Women will look at how PS Plus has been particularly successful at assisting women prisoners into employment on release. Faith will examine how to engage faith based organisations effectively in the provision of employment focused mentoring for offenders from the same faith and the effects this has had on offenders. Reducing crime will cover the research currently being undertaken by the Jill Dando Institute using data from PS Plus and from Probation databases to demonstrate the impact of offenders gaining employment on crime reduction.
MC4 Behavioural Simulations and the Harsh Reality of Making Things Happen

Summary: Professor Laurie McMahon explores how behavioural simulation techniques can be used to develop responses to community safety issues.

In this highly interactive session Professor Laurie McMahon will talk (briefly) about the ways in which policy makers and managers concerned with complex social issues have traditionally tried to anticipate the way systems might respond to change. He will then go on to describe (again briefly!) a more micro-political approach that accepts the realities of negotiation and bargaining between informal and formal stakeholders. He will describe how this has been developed by Loop2 into a process known as behavioural simulation and show how this has been employed in many settings including healthcare. (see Windmill 2007 on the King’s Fund website www.kingsfund.org.uk for one of the most recent examples). He would like to spend the bulk of the time available working with participants to explore how they might use these techniques to develop responses to their own community safety issues.
MC5 Youth offending and reoffending

Summary: Using case studies and findings from their own and other research, Mark Liddle and Neal Hazel will deliver an evidence-based and interactive session focusing on young offenders, custody, and resettlement.

The session will involve participants in:

• profiling young offenders who receive custody,

• identifying the risk and protective factors within individual case study examples,

• identifying interventions that could usefully address such factors, and

• identifying potential barriers or enabling factors that might be relevant to the design and implementation of effective measures.

The aim of the session is to apply a problem-solving and critical approach to some of the complexities at the "hard end" of youth offending, and also to anchor key stages of the discussion in some of the available research evidence.

Formerly Head of Nacro's Research & Evaluation Division, Mark Liddle is Managing Director of Applied Research in Community Safety (ARCS) Ltd, and has been involved in teaching and research in criminology for 25 years. Previously Senior Research Fellow at the Policy Research Bureau, Neal Hazel is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Salford University, and has undertaken a wide range of research focusing on parenting, and on youth offending and ways to address it. Mark and Neal have also worked together on a range of research and evaluation projects at both national and local level, focusing on youth offending and the resettlement of young offenders.
MC6 The economics of community safety

Summary: Dr. Chris Fox leads this Masterclass showing how the latest ideas and evidence on estimating the costs of crime can be used in business cases for assessing community safety initiatives.

Community safety managers are being asked increasingly to provide a business case for the work that they do. One of the challenges in doing this is estimating the costs of crime that might be prevented by a particular project or policy. These costs cover both the costs to criminal justice agencies, but also costs to victims and wider society. Using existing research it is possible to estimate local costs and use this information to develop business cases for particular projects and policies. Practical approaches will be suggested, useful resources highlighted, and the levels of certainty and reliability inherent in such exercises clearly explained. This session will be of particular use to delegates developing community safety strategies, submitting funding applications for funding, or commissioning evaluations of community safety interventions.

The workshop will be led by Dr. Chris Fox and will be based on material developed in collaboration with Dr.Kevin Albertson. Chris and Kevin are both Principal Lecturers at Manchester Metropolitan University, Chris in criminology and Kevin in economics. Chris has a background in crime and criminal justice consultancy and evaluation having previously held senior posts at Nacro and The Matrix Knowledge Group. He is Joint Editor of The Community Safety Journal and a Trustee at CSV. He has led a number of economic evaluations of various crime and criminal justice interventions and has worked extensively with CDRPs.
MC7 Community Justice

Summary: Dave Chambers, the National Programme Manager for Community Justice assesses current community justice work and how to keep communities engaged.

This masterclass will be led by Dave Chambers, the National Programme Manger for Community Justice. Community Justice is about engaging with the local community, making the court more responsive to local people and working in partnership with the criminal justice agencies, support services and residents to solve the problems caused by offending in the local area. The masterclass will describe where we are now with community justice and the findings of the evaluations undertaken so far (eg of the work of Liverpool Community Justice Centre) and will go on to examine where we are heading in the future. The aims of community justice are:

• Making sure the court and the criminal justice system are responsive to the community – that community needs are listened to, acted upon, and do not then recur

• Breaking cycles of re-offending by involving a range of agencies in a problem-solving approach

• Ensuring that compliance with the court’s sentences or other penalties are seen and recognised by the community
MC8 Joint Beacon Council presentation - Youth Matters: early intervention and prevention projects.

Summary: The Beacon Master class will focus on three successful local based projects, which highlight the new Youth Task Force Action Plan approach of tough enforcement, support and prevention.

Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council received Beacon status in 2007/08 for their partnership work. Within the Master Class, Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council will be discussing some of the multi-agency programmes that they run to help reduce anti-social behaviour and alcohol related anti-social behaviour within the borough.

Portsmouth's Preventing Youth Offending Project is the only project of it's kind in the country and one of two in the world. It works with young people and their families specifically to reduce the likelihood of offending or causing anti-social behaviour and works closely with the third sector and statutory agencies.

Bolton is leading the way in delivering challenge and support projects to reduce the risks associated with youth crime and anti-social behaviour. This part of the master class will describe what works in engaging with challenging young people and their families and what the essential ingredients are for any Youth Inclusion Project. The session will also cover our innovative "Weekenders" project which has virtually wiped out alcohol related youth nuisance in the pilot area.

Programme Quick Links
Day One - Wednesday 4th June | Day Two - Thursday 5th June