Ex-prisoners should be given more personalised support

Personal budgets such as those used in the social care sector could give ex-offenders the independence they need to create a life beyond prison, by Alex Fox

The social care sector has been championing a new approach – small scale and more personalised – that offender management and resettlement could benefit from. A high proportion of prisoners have a psychosis, neurosis, personality disorder, or substance-misuse problem, while 32% fit a broad definition of having a learning disability. Rates of reconviction are 37% for community orders and 47% for custodial sentences (57% for sentences under one year). But by adopting the model used in social care we could improve these outcomes.

Shared Lives, a programme in which individuals can become a permanent part of a supportive family, offers this kind of more personalised approach. Darren, who has a mild learning disability, moved in with Shared Lives carers June and Rob at the age of 18, having committed serious sexual offences. The other option for him was to move into a conventional secure service – at a cost of £5,000 a week.

June says: “We felt this lad wasn’t being given any chance. I had worked with people who had been sexually abused, so I was aware of the issues. Darren has had lots of therapeutic work, which we have reinforced, and there has been no reoffending in six years.”

Darren now works in a charity shop, and semi-independent accommodation is a real possibility. The savings generated by Shared Lives run into millions.

Social care reform has been driven by “localism” and the development of tailored, holistic responses that put individuals in control of services and look for ways in which people can share the responsibility of “co-producing” a better life. The sector has learned that individual control of budget allocations (through cash direct payments or, more often, through a notional personal budget) is only part of helping to change the marketplace of services and relationships within the sector.

Where specialist enterprise development support is available, frontline professionals can establish personal-budget-funded micro-enterprises, such as the dance activities enterprise started by a woman with Down’s syndrome and her supporters. These are targeted at small groups, and service users can establish their own enterprises as a route towards paid employment. Budget holders, sometimes working with community groups, can pool resources to ensure not only that service users’ needs are met but that they can assume a new sense of responsibility in their communities.

Achieving this shift requires trust and a willingness by professionals to share risks with individuals, families and communities. But ex-offenders must be helped to live in and contribute to their communities. Bringing the lessons of personalisation from social care to the criminal justice system will require many leaps of faith but could bring long-term “desistance” outcomes into reach for the first time.

• Alex Fox is chief executive of Shared Lives Plus