Head of Community Justice
Commissioning for Better Outcomes: A Route Map (2015) found that:
“Good Commissioning convenes and leads a whole system approach to ensure the best use of all resources in a local area through joint approaches between the public, voluntary and private sectors.”
(pg. 8).
The 2015 work was updated in 2018 (Integrated Commissioning for Better Outcomes: A Framework (2018)) to:
“….to support continuous improvement in integrated commissioning and service re-design. [Building on its predecessor], whilst widening its reach to address commissioners from both councils and the NHS at a time when closer collaborative working between the two is becoming the norm.”
(pg. 6).
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Resources will always be limited, particularly in the current economy. It is fundamental that services work jointly in partnership and share resources as a means to overcome limitations and achieve maximum efficiencies. You will see this re-iterated and demonstrated as you dip in and out of articles across this and previous annual report(ers).
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It is essential that Community Justice Partners in Glasgow share information, knowledge and resources in order to provide a fully collaborative approach and ensure services where they will have significant advantage and influence.
In 2015, Glasgow Community Planning Partnership and the Community Justice Authority in Glasgow (now Community Justice Glasgow) collaborated on a Community Justice Activity Mapping Exercise. This mapping exercise was created to understand existing Community Justice activity across Glasgow, pending the transition from Community Justice Authority to Glasgow Community Planning Partnership. It focused on definitions of Community Justice, The Community Justice Expenditure Provision, and Community Justice staffing complement Project activity, Target groups and Performance markers.
This mapping exercise, while partially limited by levels of partner response, provided a useful overview from community justice partners in Glasgow, the services they provide, their client groups, their focus and aims. The mapping exercise also found data on Community Justice Expenditure in Glasgow in 2014/15 (Graph 1) and compared this to 2015/16 (Graph2). This comparison shows potential reductions implemented to Community Justice Services (though again, the data should be read with caution due to gaps in responses).
Joint Commissioning and partnerships are essential to allow our organisations to provide the best services and sustain the practices which they have in place. It is needed for our organisations to share intelligence and to work together to plan services which will be in high demand in the future. By using this joint approach it can save expenditure on expensive elements of the justice system. Aligning services and using joint resources will also help achieve a preventative approach which is a key aim of Community Justice Glasgow, as set out in our Community Justice Outcome Improvement Plan 2018-2023.
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Audit Scotland has promoted the model (Figure 1) based on joint commissioning. The stages in this model involve all of our stakeholders, in particular those who are directly impacted on by services that work with service users, their families and communities. All stages of this model are critical to show best value from partners and emphasises the importance of commissioning beyond simple ‘procurement’, evolving to the critical role of analysis, planning and reviewing.
Figure 1 – Example of Commissioning Process
As Scottish expenditure on justice continues to focus on ‘reactive’ spend on restorative justice (custody) (Figure 2), our local partners needed to consider their role in shifting that focus to community justice responses to offending.
Figure 2 – Criminal Justice Expenditure 2010-11
In the past few years in the Annual Reports I have outlined the Community Justice Glasgow Partnership’s progress in agreeing and delivering a Collaborative Commissioning Strategy and Action Plan. Previous articles can be read by clicking the links below:
2017-18: INVESTING IN JUSTICE – COMMISSIONING PLANNING FOR BETTER OUTCOMES
2018-19: INVESTING IN JUSTICE – AN UPDATE
2019-20: RESPOND OR REACT? – A QUESTION OF TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR PUBLUC RESOUCES
