Service Manager, Justice Services, Glasgow City Health & Social Care partnership
It has been a busy year for the Community Payback providers with Glasgow City Council’s Neighbourhoods Regeneration and Sustainability (NRS), as the largest provider, continuing to deliver Unpaid Work placements across the city, with local communities recently benefitting from tasks including gardening and other environmental enhancement work such as painting and decorating and enhancing open spaces. Nurseries, schools, community centres and various faith groups have benefited from wood product donations as well as having items refurbished through unpaid work wood workshops. You can read more about some of that fantastic community benefit in the article ‘Unpaid Work Delivery – Responding to Glasgow’s Neighbourhood’s Needs’ by NRS’s Service Manager (Community Payback & Training Resources). Only recently Friends of Queens Park posted a thank you on their Facebook page, showing their appreciation for the work carried out.
Over the year (between 1st April 23 and 31st March 24) 204,475 hours of Unpaid Work benefitted the city, carried out by 2,180 individuals – 69,967 of those hours were delivered by Neighbourhoods, Regeneration and Sustainability.
Evaluation following a Health & Wellbeing taster/early engagement event for service users in September 2023, helped define health and wellbeing priorities for 2024. Areas identified by service users undertaking CPOs, combined with local public health priorities, shaped the development of the Glasgow City Health and Wellbeing Programme for the year ahead. Working in collaboration with Glasgow City Health & Social Care Partnerships (GHSCPs) Health Improvement Lead for Community Justice and the Community Justice Glasgow Team, for each identified priority, the programme combines an Unpaid Work supervisor or Social Care staff training offer with an action intended to directly address the health needs of individuals serving a CPO. The work aims to improve health, reduce inequalities, improve understanding of community services, and therefore contribute to reducing reoffending. You can read more about this work in the article ‘Choosing Health – CPO UPW Health & Wellbeing Programme’ by Scott Bissell the Health Improvement Lead at GHSCP. Locally we are looking to using a similar approach for other priority areas such as learning, skills and employability.
Service users have therefore benefitted beyond the reparative nature of unpaid work and manual labour, by taking part in an ongoing Health Improvement Project, both physical and financial, covering sessions such as alcohol awareness, mental health, budgeting and numeracy skills. So far, for example 120 CPO clients have attended awareness sessions and 100% of UPW staff are on course to be ABI trained.
Unpaid Work staff across placement and within the area teams continue to be offered training in areas such as naloxone use, Suicide Prevention and the National Unpaid Work Training which focuses on areas such as: values, trauma awareness, pro-social modelling, coaching & mentoring and motivational interviewing.
The Glasgow Community Justice Payback Unpaid Work (UPW) service have also been able to drive forward exciting and innovative arrangements in setting up placement providers in each locality via direct award contracts to: Greater Easterhouse Supporting Hands (GESH), Open Gates and Crookston Community Group – all of which are community charitable organisations. Maximising the justice budget in this way has ensured best value arrangements for the justice service while ensuring significant benefits to the wider community. Unpaid Work service users are also supported in each placement through a trauma informed approach and staff with lived experience. The more innovative approach to these community-based placements was recognised earlier in the year with a visit from representative of Scottish Government and Community Justice Scotland with a more recent follow up visit to GESH by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs, Angela Constance and Ivan McKee MSP. Support for Unpaid Work service users have also been enhanced by a collaborative approach/action plan that allows for a sharing of resources across all providers in meeting the more individualised and specific needs of men, women and young people within the justice service.
Examples of work undertaken across all 3 providers include: cleaning local pathways, grass cutting, community café, food bank provision, charity shops, furniture restoration, painting and graffiti removal for local community services. Across all Unpaid Work provision, service users are also given opportunities to undertake ‘other activity’ hours as part of their Unpaid Work order. This includes for example, driving lessons, further education, open university, CSCS card, recovery networks, engagement with addiction services, workplace training. Placements providers also offer opportunities to attend further online courses, for example, in health and safety and computing.
The following is feedback from a service user at Crookston Community Group:
‘I have been doing community service for the last few months as personal placement in Crookston Community Group – CCG, mainly in TIFFIN, my hours consist of helping others within the CCG like cleaning, setup of the hall for functions, gardening and sometimes the team in other premises such as sorting food items at the stock, clothes and toys at the charity shop and cleaning.
CCG staff are great and very helpful, I always have fun and enjoy working with them there, they care about everyone, provide good meals, drinks, always hot coffee and even extra food that we can take home sometimes.
Myself – this placement has been a great help as I am single father and my placement has been much appreciated as this fits around my fathering overall, everything here seems to be running smoothly, and CCG are taking care of every single worker.”
A number of service users have gone on to secure paid employment opportunities. In these cases, the individuals were well supported by their UPW care managers and supervising social workers to directly address their underlying criminogenic needs and make crucial links in the community around employability, addiction support and mental health.
Below illustrates some of the feedback gathered through the use of ‘Your Voice’ – which is an anonymous survey completed by service users which demonstrates the benefits that they have achieved through supervision and UPW, you can read more about ‘Your Voice’ in the article ‘Focussing Your Voice on Performance, Quality and Outcomes’
“I believe the supervision was so helpful during the most difficult time of my life. I was treated with respect and dignity and problems were completely understood.”
“The order gives offenders a chance to remind them of the changes they have to adapt to which in my case brought me to terms with the changes I would have to make. I needed a reminder of that change.”
“Would like to thank my social worker for all her help getting me through all the trauma I had experienced during my situation.”
“I found it very useful, helpful and rewarding carrying out unpaid work as helping the community is a great incentive for rehabilitation regarding the Criminal Justice System. The staff at the centre were brilliant; they treated me with dignity and respect. They recognised my individual strengths and needs and accommodated me in every way. I have learnt a lot during this time and will utilise my new skills to looks for a similar job role so I can be a productive, hardworking citizen. Thank you.”
“My placement was excellent, as such I have chosen to continue to volunteer in this space with the view of continuing to do so for the months/years ahead.”
As highlighted above, areas around supporting employability and skills development form ongoing and key areas of action planning in relation to UPW. This has also been supported by feedback as follows through ‘Your Voice’:
“When attending unpaid work some form of qualification system should be in place so while attending you could be learning skills such as bricklaying or slabbing etc.”
“Could train people for gaps in job markets.”
The UPW service continues to build on the recruitment of personal placements with continued links with voluntary and social enterprise networks. The Unpaid Work service will be in attendance and hosting 2 visibility events in 2024 in Sept (Court Open Doors Day) and October (UPW visibility event for personal & provided placements.) I look forward to updating you on those next year.