Circles of support and accountability: Cabinet office - Social Action Fund evaluation

McCartan, Kieran

Abstract

At the heart of Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) is an ethos and approach that society as a whole shares with statutory criminal agencies a responsibility for creating safer communities. When someone with a known risk of committing sexual offences is released from prison, there are both ethical and practically sound reasons as to why resources should be provided in ensuring they do not reoffend. Most sex offenders are released into back the community. The nature of their offences raises particularly hostile reactions from the public, which are entirely understandable but potentially counter-productive. Those with such convictions are then likely to ‘ go to ground’ and once of the police and public ‘radar’, isolated and disconnected from usual social contact they are much more likely to reoffend. Circles have proved, with their volunteer ‘ workforce’ that local people offering to spend time with someone so alienated and art risk of reoffending, but monitoring their behaviour too and liaising with Police and Probation services make a real community contribution to reducing such reoffending. The potential therefore through the Rehabilitation Social Action Fund to secure funds to extend the service, recruit more local volunteers and work with more sex offenders trying to lead offence-free –lives was a invaluable opportunity for us. The programme has developed as planned and the following interim report provides a study as to the progress to date.

METHOD

The main objective of this review is to evaluate the outcomes of the Circles of Support and Accountability work funded by the Cabinet Office through the Social Action fund. This will be achieved through the adoption of mixed methods, qualitative and quantitative (Robson & McCartan, 2016), combining Core Member case studies, Core Member socio-demographic databases, post circle data, an online questionnaire with Volunteers and a series of in-depth follow up qualitative interviews (Stakeholders; Volunteers; Core Members).

It is important to note, given the small (completed Circles, n = 29; Complete DRR, n = 27; Complete adapted DRR, n = 9; Complete DRR and adapted DRR for the same Core Member, n = 3) and medium sized quantitative databases (volunteer online surveys, n = 62), as well as the nature of qualitative data, we cannot make generalisations to all circles, Core Members and volunteers from this research (Robson & McCartan, 2016). The current research gives us insights into the reality CoSA and the impact of individual circles; therefore the evaluation raises points of interest, poses questions and allows us to discuss CoSA in regard to past research.

FINDINGS

- The findings reinforce past research showing that CoSA deals with, in the main, male , heterosexual sex offenders (who traverse a range of contact and online offences with adult females and children) who are low (n = 57) to medium (n = 12) MAPPA cases and medium (n = 21), high (n = 28) and ver high (n = 12) on the Risk Matrix.

- CoSA provides social and emotional support to the Core Members across the life of the circle with the majority of the Core Members, who completed their circle, being in a stronger position to live offence free in the community than at the beginning of their circle. The research shows that 29 of the 75 Core Members who started their circle during the research period completed, with 19 having planned completions and 10 having non-planned competitions; it is important to note that the staggered start of the 75 circles and the issues involved in, sometimes, starting circles meant that all 75 Core Members did not complete in the research period.

- CoSA parallels and supports statutory working in sex offender community management.

- Core Members and Volunteers agreed that the Core Members risk had reduced by the end of the circle; but, interestingly, they have different perceptions of what level of risk the Core Member is poses at different points during the circle, what are the different issues is that the Core Member face and how the Core Members actions should be understood.

- While volunteers , through the online surveys and semi-structured interviews, are happy to work with Core Members, they are cautious in telling other people that they work support sex offenders or introduce the Core Member to people in their lives. Which is important as it suggests that the volunteers separate out their work with CoSA and compartmentalise it as a protective mechanism; but it does raise the question if they are getting the informal social support that they need to be able to work with Core Members and effectively build relisence.

- The findings stress the central role of volunteers in the circles process, suggesting that volunteers act as a bridge between Core Members and statutory agencies.

- Clear roles, responsibilities and training are essential to the work done by CoSA. It is important to recognise that CoSA works with statutory agencies in a productive and collaborative way, it is a form of partnership working and that this needs to be realised as well as enforced by all parties.

- These findings suggest that the different groups of participants have different views on the role, function and viability of “support and accountability” within the circle. The balance between support and accountability does have significance as the Circle is integrated into the Criminal justice System in the UK.

Recommendations

- A clearer more defined role for the “service user” [Ii.e. the Core Member] voice within the Circle process, epically in respect to defining and evaluating success factors.

- Work needs to be done on streamlining and improving the roll out of new data collection tools and their implementation.

- More reflection, planning and development focused on how CoSA conducts research; ongoing action research and evaluation needs to be more central to CoSA. Circles UK, as well as each individual project, needs to consider how they collect, collate and analysis information on Core Member (especially their social, emotional, psychological and physical well-being) before as well as post the circle.

- There needs to be consideration of how volunteers receive informal support regarding their work with circles, that they have a healthy outlet if they are not all sharing their experiences with significant others in their lives.

- CoSA needs to consider how best to reconcile the roles and responsibilities of the circle and with those of statutory agencies so that everyone knows what the role and responsibilities of the circle is.

- That CoSA needs to consider what “support and accountability” means to all participants (Volunteers, Core Members and Stakeholders) and how best to measure if this is happening; this is important in the UK version of CoSA as it is tied to the Criminal Justice System in a way that other international variants are not.

Citation

McCartan, K. (2016). Circles of support and accountability: Cabinet office - Social Action Fund evaluation

• Report Type: Project Report
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Feb 24, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 25, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: social action fund, accountability, cabinet office
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/921373