Transforming Rehabilitation may still seem to many probation staff like navigating a new universe. This can be especially so in the court environment as Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) staff have no right of audience and any single point of contact (SPoC) in court is now that of their previous agency colleagues.
Some feel this to be a system that was teleported David Coley, KSS CRC Research Unit from another planet and alien to best practice communication, with arguably the results being a significant loss of confidence in the imposition of community orders. So should a new enterprise involve placing CRC staff in the shape of a SPoC in court, so as to boldly go where few CRCs have gone before?
In the summer of 2018, Kent Surrey Sussex CRC and its equivalent area NPS colleagues engaged in a series of five joint workshops to explore the issues of inter-agency work in relation to improving court practice and attendant court disposals. This included reflecting upon the significant reduction in the number of community orders being made in recent years and an apparent lack of confidence amongst Magistrates with regard to probation services (Crest, 2017; CJI, 2017, 2018).
