1. NOMS Early Adopter Grant Programme 2016/17
Bettina Crossick
Commissioning Strategies Group, NOMS
July 2016
UNCLASSIFIED

2. Today’s agenda NOMS E A Grant Programme 2016/17 Key themes Evaluation
Procurement Process
Establishment presentations
Q & A
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3. Prison Reform
The new Secretary of State for Justice, supports Prison Reform. Responding to the HMIP Annual Report she said;
“I want to see radical reform and I am under no illusions about the scale of the challenge we face or how long reform takes … I will set out the next steps for this agenda in coming weeks, but I am clear that the vital work of prison reform will continue at pace”

4. Prison Reform
The reform of the prison system has commenced with six ‘early adopter’ prisons.
These prisons are led by governors who have increased autonomy to be creative in the way they deliver safe environments that promote wellbeing, provide better rehabilitation, reduce self harm and violence and make it more likely that resettlement services will reduce re-offending.
HMP Wandsworth – Ian Bickers
HMP Coldingley and HMP High Down - Nick Pascoe
HMP Ranby – Neil Richards
HMP Holme House & HMP Kirklevington Grange – Ian Blakeman
Over 5000 offenders are held in these Reform Prisons
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5. Prison Reform
6 early adopters identified as Reform Prisons managed by 4 Executive Governors went live 1st July
HMP Wandsworth – London
HMP Coldingley - Surrey
HMP High Down – Surrey
HMP Ranby – East Midlands
HMP Holme House - Teesside
HMP Kirklevington Grange – Teesside

6. Prison Reform Freedoms
To encourage and enable innovation Reform Prisons have unprecedented freedoms including;
Financial and legal freedoms, such as how the prison budget is spent and whether to opt-out of national contracts
Operational freedoms, including education, the prison regime, family visits, partnerships to provide prison work and rehabilitation services, etc.
Further info;
Freedoms
Reform prisons are free to develop their own strategy to achieve the strategic outcomes of rehabilitation and reintegration; fair, just and decent; safety and security.
They can design and deliver the services to best meet the needs of the population in their prison, provided that they are lawful, and there is no clear evidence that they will be actively harmful or will have a significant impact on statutory services delivered by other providers.
Holding to account
The executive governors of reform prisons will be held to account at formal meetings with the commissioner.
Evaluation
It is really important that we learn from the reforms, and in particular from the experiences of the reform prisons.
We will evaluate the reform prisons over the next two years. The evaluation will also help us to understand, among other things, what changes the prisons made and what they did differently; what their priorities were and how they put them into effect; what impact their actions had on prison performance and offender outcomes; and what impact the prisons had on, and how they worked with, the rest of the estate, and vice versa.
Legislation
The government plans to use legislation to extend these freedoms much further – enabling prisons to be established as independent legal entities with the power to enter into contracts; generate and retain income; and establish their own boards with external expertise. This will amount to the biggest structural reform of the prisons system for more than a century.

7. Prison Reform Freedoms
Reform prisons will be held to account for their performance in reducing reoffending and providing a safe and secure prison
To understand the impact of Reform Prisons they will be evaluated over the next 2 years
Government intends to use legislation to extend their freedoms further

8. Purpose of NOMS E A Grant Funding
Themes
To provide financial support to voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations to develop an area of their work which is in line with Early Adopter key priorities
Improve outcomes for service users.
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9. Purpose of NOMS E A Grant Funding
To enable VCS organisations to develop and test out new approaches which complement public sector core provision and enhance outcomes for service users.
To increase understanding of effective approaches with the potential to improve

10. Key Themes
Through consultation with establishments 12 key themes have been identified:
Listening and responding to people with lived experience
Improving the prison environment
Addressing multiple and complex needs
Addressing the needs of young adults
Support for children and families
Support for priority groups and those with protected characteristics in the prison system
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11. Key Themes Improving health and wellbeing
Inspiring creativity through the arts
Helping people back to work
Education
Valuing volunteers
Involving the voluntary sector

12. Impact Evaluation Evidence of impact
An impact evaluation tries to identify whether or not a policy achieved the outcome it set out to achieve.
This requires identifying firstly whether the outcome was actually achieved, and secondly whether the policy in question, rather than one or more other factors, was responsible.

13. For this project we want to see
Systems put in place to gather relevant data systematically
Randomised control trials would be great, but unlikely. You would need to fund them going beyond the life of the project. (for a 1 year reconviction rate you would need at least 18 months of data after the intervention)
Other methods for collecting impact data, such as using the Ministry of Justice Data Lab
Predicted vs actual reconviction rate designs may also be possible
Impact on intermediate outcomes related to reoffending.

14. Get some advice
You might want to have experts in evaluation involved in your project when bidding to design and carry out an evaluation
Look at the MoJ data Lab
Advice on evaluations can be found on the MoJ website and gov.uk, and includes - the Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team’s publication “Test, Learn, Adapt”, the HM Treasury Magenta Book, the New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) and Clinks joint project ‘Improving Your Evidence’, Project Oracle website
Plan your evaluation before you start the project so you know you are collecting the right data from the start
Make sure you have a well thought through theory of change

15. Contact details Bettina Crossick Commissioning Strategies Group, NOMS
UNCLASSIFIED