July 2009
IN THIS BULLETIN:
1. NEWS and updates
5. Useful resources
Hello and goodbye
Welcome to the July edition of Lowdown. This month we say hello to Mandy Saxon at North Yorkshire CJB and Nicholas Jennings at Dorset CJB. We also say goodbye to Sowmya Pulle from Northumbria CJB. We wish her the best of luck for the future.
Community Cashback
By now, you will have hopefully received some nominations from members of the public for local projects that could benefit from Community Cashback. LCJBs have been issued with a number of guidance documents to assist your promotion of the scheme and the online administration of the nomination process via your microsites. If you haven’t received these, then let Charlotte Jackson know.
Communications will play a key role in achieving success for your LCJB, as the main thrust of this project is about harnessing the views of your local communities. Should you need anymore advice about promoting Community Cashback, then please contact Charlotte.
Engaging Communities in Criminal Justice Green Paper
Earlier this week we sent an email highlighting some extra resources for further promotion of the Green Paper with the public To make it even easier for people to feed back we have developed a really simple, three question poll looking at the key topics –available in English and Welsh at http://haveyoursay.cjsonline.gov.uk This will give us a very high-level flavour of the public’s views and hopefully will whet their appetite to take a look at the consultation webpage to give even more comprehensive feedback on the questions that matter to them. The poll launched on 7 July and will run till the end of the full consultation period on 31 July. We’ve also arranged for it to be advertised on the homepage of Directgov.
2
Justice Awards update
The hard work is paying off!
Watch out for the weekly campaign updates coming to you from the campaign team, but here's a special mention for some great results in the last week alone:
Merseyside - added 7 nominations and retain top spot with 19
Cambridgeshire -added 10 nominations to put them into second place
Leicestershire & Rutland - added 10 nominations
Suffolk - added9 nominations
West Yorkshire - added 6 complete nominationswith a further 9 new onesin the pipeline
West Mercia and Kent -are catching upby adding 6 nominations each
London - wins the prize for the most nominations in the pipeline (24!)
It looks like there's a lot of energy behind getting those nominations in. We'll help byperiodically emailing the incomplete ones to nudge them in the right direction.
If you need any help, or want to feed backideas that are working for you, please let the campaign team knowat justiceawards.cjs.gsi.gov.uk
Inside Justice Week update
On Thursday you will have received by email the national campaign brief for Inside Justice Week. It outlines all you need to know about what is happening nationally, alongside what LCJBs can do locally to link in with the national push and encourage momentum for the campaign. It also outlines what additional support is available such as merchandise.
Some initiatives are already underway, such as the Inside Justice Facebook and Twitter pages and videos uploaded on the Inside Justice YouTube page.
If you haven’t done so already, do please become a fan of the Facebook page and let all your stakeholders and local audiences know that it exists. Just type inside justice in the search box on Facebook.
We really want to get people talking and interacting about Inside Justice and the CJS. Some excellent work has already been done by Carol Davenport in Merseyside, who has been linking with her Neighbourhood Crime and Justice Co-ordinator to promote the page, and Emily Macaulay in Devon and Cornwall, who has been encouraging both her internal CJS and external contacts to join. As such, we have had a slew of about 80 people join from those areas, as well as in neighbouring LCJB areas, so carry on the good work!
If you have any photos or local events you would like to put up on the Facebook page, then do forward them to the national Facebook administrator, Laurie Garlington, who will upload them for you.
Can we also encourage you to Twitter. Twitter is a popular tool with Government as a way to engage with the public and encourage transparency and dialogue. Take a look at TweetMinster to see how it works. The log in details can be found in the campaign brief.
Getting involved in IJW – Independent Monitoring Boards
Regional representatives from the Independent Monitoring Boards are willing to attend LCJB events during Inside Justice Week to promote opportunities and raise awareness of their work amongst local communities.
Inside every prison and immigration removal centre in England and Wales there is an Independent Monitoring Board, a group of unpaid volunteers who perform a
vital watchdog role on behalf of the government and the general public.
Over 1800 people within more than 150 establishments across the country monitor the day to day life of those in custody and ensure they are treated with decency and humanity.
They visit establishments on a regular basis unannounced to monitor conditions and talk to both prisoners/detainees and staff and their findings are reported annually to Ministers.
The role requires no special qualifications, as training is provided, however candidates must demonstrate that they have the personal qualities, enthusiasm, and commitment to make a full contribution to the work of a board. As a Board member there is an opportunity to develop a wide range of personal skills such as team working, leadership and communication, whilst making a positive contribution to the people who are detained.
Although individual Boards vary, the duties of an IMB Board member typically take up to a minimum of four half days per month. As a voluntary role there is no formal payment however travel expenses are paid and in certain circumstances some loss of earnings.
To best understand and respond to the needs of those held in custody, it is essential that IMB members are made up of the cross section of the local community, with members coming from all walks of life, backgrounds and experience. For this reason, the Boards are currently embarking on an initiative to diversify their membership – nearly 70% of which are currently over 60 and only 6.5% from BAME backgrounds.
If you are interested in involving the Independent Monitoring Boards in your event during Inside Justice Week or require further information about IMBs please contact Danielle Thomas - IMB Secretariat - Ministry of Justice on 020 7035 2268 or email .
Tackling Drugs Week – how did they do?
This years National Tackling Drugs Week (NTDW) has been deemed a huge success.
The week launched at the Swanswell treatment centre in Birmingham, which delivers successful community-based programmes for drug users. In addition, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister visited a school in Tower Hamlets to take part in a drugs education programme with pupils.
Hundreds of local activities took place across the country. Here is just a flavour of what happened locally during National Tackling Drugs Week.
· Nottinghamshire Drug Action Team recruited sixth form students to spend a
week observing and taking part in different sessions that are intrinsically linked to the
National Drugs Strategy, i.e. observing a drugs dog search at Nottingham Forest Football Club and reporting on what they see and interviewing staff members; spending a day with outreach drugs worker who work with under 18s; designing a youth byte banner on drugs to go on education web-sites.
· Essex ran a five aside football match at Colchester United with service users, service providers, local school children and businesses. A Photo exhibition with work from service users of drugs support group ‘Open Road’ was opened at Essex County Hall.
· A Stockport Police pod was placed in the town centre providing information for the public as well as a Drugs Burn, with all proceeds going to Victim Support.
· Wigan re-launched their Rat on a Rat campaign.
· East Sussex organised for a local Women's Institute group to visit a drug treatment centre in Hastings and also to Lewes Prison.
A grand reception in Eastbourne took place where photographs taken by current service users were exhibited which represent 'a day in the life of'.
· Suffolk Constabulary arranged to provide all police officers with custody packs for detainees, providing signposting to services within the three main custody suites (Ipswich, Lowestoft, Bury) with a view to offering help and advice leading to reduction in drug use and re-offending and delivering the key messages of NTDW.
The Home Office would like to thank everyone who took part in and supported National Tackling Drugs Week. Well done to everyone involved in making the week a huge success.
Tackling Drugs Changing Lives awards 2009
This years Tackling Drugs Changing Lives Awards has launched. The awards recognise, reward and celebrate people who have made an outstanding contribution to tackling drugs and have gone the extra mile to transform lives and local communities through their work. Anyone is free to nominate a team or individual for an award. This year the awards are made up of six categories. The categories are;
·Young people: A team or an individual who work in the young people sector to either divert young people away from drugs or support them if they become drug users.
·Drugs and the Criminal Justice System: recognising that there are a huge amount of people who work in Criminal Justice Integrated Teams as part of the Drug Interventions Programme to help and support drug using offenders in the Criminal Justice System.
·Community Engagement: A team or an individual who works hard to encourage local partnerships to engage with their communities and address local concerns about drugs
· National Tackling Drugs Week: Every year a staggering number of local agencies and police forces take part in National Tackling Drugs Week and this category recognises this work.
·Drug Team of the Year: Working in partnership, demonstrating commitment to their work, evidence of improving the lives of residents in the local community.
·Drug Worker of the Year: has the individual demonstrated how they have worked closely with clients and the local community?
Anyone can nominate a team or an individual by completing the nomination form at www.drugs.homeoffice.gov.uk/awards2009.
The closing date for nominations is Monday 31 August.
Following the closing date a national judging panel will choose five winners from each of the six categories to be invited to an awards ceremony in December. The finalist will then be in with a chance of receiving one of the two national awards.The two national winners will each receive £10,000 to expand their organisation’s work.
Anyone can make a nomination and nominees can come from any sector of the drugs field – drug treatment providers, police teams, prison officers, social workers, housing workers, or drug action teams. You can learn more about last year’s winners and find out about the judging criteria at www.drugs.homeoffice.gov.uk/awards2009.
Digital dialogue
In light of the recent launch of the Community Cashback tool, we thought you might be interested in some advice on how to best make use of online channels for public engagement.
The Ministry of Justice and the Hansard Society have been running a project
called Digital Dialogues since December 2005, which aims to develop guidance on ‘the use of online technologies to enhance engagement between central government and the public’.
Although its focus is on deliberative tools, most of the recommendations apply to the Community Cashback tool. Of particular note, the following observations underline the need for feedback:
· “Simply explaining how user comments are being processed … engenders high levels of user satisfaction.”
· “Distrust was overcome when moderators facilitated open discussion and provided information to website users.”
We know that you are busy at the moment but we would strongly recommend you take the time to feed back to participants about why the projects that were shortlisted were chosen ahead of those that weren’t, and why the final successful project was chosen. In particular:
· be specific about the projects rather than just referring them to the criteria;
· give examples where appropriate; and, perhaps most importantly,
· explain how the vote affected the final decision.
But also consider digital exclusion!
In this day and age where digital media seems to be at the forefront of communications activity, it can be easy to ignore those people that are ‘digitally disenfranchised’, i.e. do not use or have access to the internet.
The Central Office of Information’s (COI) quarterly publication, the mix, explores the best way to reach those people that might be digitally excluded. Read the article here on pages 6-9.
Publications corner
We are pleased to introduce a new section, publications corner, which highlights new CJS publications that are available to LCJBs and can be ordered through Prolog.
Our new leaflet, ‘The unusual suspects?There’s a place for everyone as as CJS volunteer ’ is designed to encourage more people, from all backgrounds and walks of life, to volunteer in the CJS. It explains the range of opportunities available and provides useful information on how people can get involved. A bilingual Welsh/English version is also available.
To order copies of this, or other publications, email Prolog at . Remember, you can also see what is currently available by visiting the Publications and Periodicals Page on Frontline Matters.
Following on from the policing Green Paper, A new Home Office publication summarises the changes to crime and policing performance management. It reflects the Government’s commitment to the Local Performance Framework and is in line with the cross-government commitment to improve local services.