Detective Sergeant, Police Scotland, Positive Outcomes Project
The Positive Outcomes Project (POP) is a unique, partnership-based outreach team supporting persistent male offenders aged 16 years and above, who reside within the Glasgow City boundary and commit crimes to sustain a dependency on alcohol and / or drugs. The aim of our service is to break the cycle between addiction and offending.
POP consists of staff from GCHSCP, Police Scotland and the criminal justice charity Aid and Abet. Some of our team have lived experience with addiction and the criminal justice system which we utilise to quickly build a rapport with service users, helping us lend an empathetic ear and gain a better understanding of their personal situations. This allows us to advocate effectively on the clients’ behalf with the most appropriate partner agencies.
We have provided information on the POP in previous editions of the Community Justice Glasgow Annual Report:
- 2019-20 – Police Scotland’s Greater Glasgow Division (an update on their work as part of the Community Justice Glasgow Partnership over the year)
- 2018-19 –Breaking Down the Cycle of Drug & Alcohol Linked Offending Costing £727m Annually in Scotland (about the re-brand and re-launch of POP and the ambitions for the service going forward)
In this article we will update you on what’s new and what difference the service is making.
In 2020-21 POP added a new dimension to our service by taking on two additional staff from Aid & Abet in November 2020. Referred to as POP +, the Custody Peer Mentors (CPMs) have lived experience of addiction and the criminal justice system. Their role is to engage with arrestees in Greater Glasgow’s police custody cells, signposting them to agencies who can help tackle a whole range of issues such as addictions, bereavement, anger management etc. Lorraine McIntosh, who works with POP on secondment from Aid & Abet, understands the value of partnership:
Aid & Abet and POP are a great partnership because it centres lived experience and expertise. That’s the extra dimension – we’re not just Health, Social Work and Police. People listen to people with lived experience before they’ll listen to anyone else.
POP by the Numbers
POP in Partnership
POP and POP Plus continue to connect with a broad range of partners to assist our clients. We have engaged with over 30 agencies and notably amongst that list is the Alcohol Drugs & Recovery Service’s (ADRS) Crisis Outreach Service (COS), a newly formed Glasgow City Health & Social Care Partnership (GCHSCP) team of social care and nursing practitioners whose job it is to provide outreach assistance and harm reduction advice to victims of recent non-fatal drug overdoses. COS works closely with POP under an information sharing agreement, allowing us to provide details of accidental illicit drug overdoses that Police Scotland have dealt with, including any suffered by our POP clients.
Lyndsey McBain, Nurse Team Leader at the ADRS Crisis Outreach Service says:
“Partnership working with the Positive Outcomes Project has been key in the development of the new ADRS Crisis Outreach Service. Joint working has proved to be invaluable in the provision of rapid response to individuals that have experienced a non-fatal overdose.”
Partnership Working During COVID
Like so many other organisations, COVID has been a challenging time for POP. However, we have continued to help clients without an interruption to service. Shutdowns with some partners have provided us with the opportunity to forge new relationships with other agencies.
One new partnership that has been of particular benefit has been our recent work with the Celtic FC Foundation’s ‘Gateway to Health and Opportunity Project’. Through our new work with the Celtic FC Foundation, we have been able to offer enhanced employability and life skills for our clients; two core POP clients are currently participating in these courses and they are seeing fast improvement in their life skills management.
We have promoted a digital approach where possible, using platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams to maintain partnership contact and encourage the use of such forums amongst our service users to attend meetings like Narcotics Anonymous.
POP in the Media
This year, our project has attracted significant attention in the media and online. We were delighted to welcome STV News to our offices for a special report featuring our staff and Custody Peer Mentors, for which the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We have also been pleased to see so much support for our project on social media, particularly when introducing the public to the more innovative and less traditional aspects of our work.
CLICK BELOW TO READ THE FULL STORY:
Case Studies – It's All About People
James* first came into contact with POP as a 23 year old homeless man who met with our Custody Peer Mentors in the police cells. James had been arrested for breaching bail conditions by sleeping rough in a common close area. Because James was homeless he was at risk of repeatedly breaching these conditions, and knowing that he was at repeated risk caused him severe anxiety. The POP team has been able to secure supported accommodation for James, which has removed one of the driving factors of his offending behaviour. They have also referred him to Breathing Space, who are helping him to manage his mental health. These interventions help him to stay away from crime, and his overall wellbeing has improved as a result. His story is representative of how interventions that target the cause of offending behaviour can, in many cases, yield much more successful results than more conventional criminal justice approaches.
*Name has been changed to protect confidentiality.
I’ve been in care since I was 7, so I’ve always had a social worker, and my big brothers before me. I’ve got five kids, and I’ve been in panels against social workers, and to an extent I do still hold a grudge. But POP gave me courage to contact social work myself with my issues. In this building I feel much more positively about them. I can relate to them, talk to them here.
If a polis is involved with POP it tells me that they care about helping and want to know more about drug use. I thought every Police officer was against drug users but there are a lot of good Police out there that actually do want to help you. It takes time building trust, but every policeman I’ve met from POP has been great.
Having staff with experience is huge. It helps you build up a better relationship, you can empathise. I’ve been a service user of various services but I’ve also worked for them as well. I’ve had better responses from service users to my own experiences, so it’s positive.
Looking Forward: POP in 2021-22
POP has significant opportunities for growth and expansion in the upcoming year. In addition to strengthening existing multi-agency bonds, we seek to receive referrals from a more diversified range of partners in order to improve our standing as an intervention-based service. We are also seeking to expand the types of skills we have in order to help our service users with a broader range of issues such as mental health illnesses.
Our linkages with Community Justice Glasgow have also grown in the past year and we are excited to add to our team a researcher from the Community Justice staff, who will spend 2021-22 evaluating our service and assisting us in making evidence-based service improvements.
POP’s work is underpinned by the Outcomes, Performance, and Improvement (OPI) framework. We measure improvements in our service users’ lives with the Justice Star tool. Our Community Justice researcher will use this data in her analysis of service improvements over the next year – WATCH THIS SPACE!
The biggest improvement we are looking forward to in the forthcoming year will be the development of a purpose-built POP space where all of our service users’ needs can be met in one central location. We are currently in the early stages of locating this premises and identifying the services required therein.
