Improving collaborative working between correctional and mental health services

Project Information

CO-LAB

Grant agreement ID: 734536

DOI

10.3030/734536

Project closed

EC signature date 5 December 2016

Start date 1 February 2017

End date 31 July 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 445 500,00

EU contribution

€ 445 500,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITETET I STAVANGER
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CO-LAB (Improving collaborative working between correctional and mental health services)

Reporting period: 2019-02-01 to 2022-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Effective collaboration between health/welfare and criminal justice services impacts prisoner wellbeing and reduces reoffending rates. The Change Laboratory Model (CLM), a model of workplace transformation, was identified as a potential tool promoting interagency collaborative working and innovation. However, the CLM, highly successful internationally and in other practice contexts, is new to service development in criminal justice context and required validation in this setting before implementation.

COLAB aimed to explore the adaptations that would be needed to maximise the likelihood of CLM success, if implemented in this new environment in the future.

The specific objectives for the project were to:

• Objective 1: Validate the Change Laboratory Model, ready for implementation

• Objective 2: Run interactive knowledge exchange events between CLM researchers and experts in other models of collaboration and innovation.

• Objective 3: Develop resources to increase awareness and competence in collaboration and innovation in the criminal justice context

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Researchers, expert in the Change Laboratory Method (CLM) and other methods of organisational change, learning, collaboration and innovation, were seconded to practice partners in criminal justice related organisations in the UK and Norway. Secondments allowed COLAB to describe interagency collaborative practices in several criminal justice settings and identify dimensions in which the CLM could be adapted to this context. By being embedded ethnographically in work environments, conducting tours of the host sites and shadowing host staff, researchers experienced the everyday working lives of their partners and learnt experientially about their work realities.

Discrete projects developed, mostly in the English and Norwegian criminal justice context but also in Finland and Switzerland. Projects described collaborative practices from a front line professional and offender perspective in diversion/ liaison services, police custody suites, prisoner mentoring services, half-way houses, low security prisons and probation. Three projects explored the possibility of implementation of a CLM in their respective environments. A particular emphasis was placed on including the voice of the prisoner as a vulnerable service user within the CLM model.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

COLAB activity has created understanding of the challenges facing interagency collaborative practice in the criminal justice system, capturing the front line professional and offender perspective previously poorly understood. A CLM based model has been developed that includes dimensions of boundary crossing laboratories, cross self-confrontation and co-design inspired approaches. The prisoners´ voice has been emphasised in the model. The model has utility in other marginalised groups, and has been shown to be useful in management of cocreation within research consortia such as COLAB. COLAB projects have also provided insight into the pragmatic challenges of implementing a CLM in practice sites

COLAB has shown that a tool box approach is also useful when enhancing collaboration/innovation. Hence other interventions and assessment tools were developed in parallel, including the prison application of the early recognition method of risk assessment (ERM) tool and multiagency use of PINCOM and the HCR20 risk assessment tools.

All of these results are detailed further and openly accessible here https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-70661-6


A range of modules were developed incorporating COLAB materials on innovation/collaboration and delivered to Criminology students in the UK, Social work students in Norway, Managers in Denmark, Probation officers in Switzerland and mentors in UK.The Better Together podcast series was published and directed primarily at managers and practice leaders, introducing them to the COLAB model of social innovation as well as other collaboration and innovation and organisational learning topics. It promotes the need for innovation in this sector and offers ways in which these interventions may be run with minimum disruption to services. This podcast series is an important online resource for raising awareness and competence in collaboration and innovation in the criminal justice context.

https://nettop.guru/wordpress/category/better-together/

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