Community Justice Scotland

Ceartas Coimhearsnachd Alba

An assessment of the current challenge of

implementing a Strategic Commissioning
approach to Community Justice Services
in Scotland

Charles Burke

January 2018
 Contents

1. Introduction and Background

2. Framework Outline

3. Section 1: The Conflation of Commissioning and

Procurement and its ramifications for the adoption of a
Strategic Commissioning approach

3.1 The conflation of Commissioning & Procurement

4. Section 2: Established procurement and commissioning

practices and cultural attitudes towards these processes in an
era of budget restrictions.

4.1 Social Return

4.2 Encouraging cultural change in established
Commissioning and Procurement processes.
4.3 Funding

5. Section 3: The provision of local & national services and

community participation

5.1 Gaps & duplication in service provision

5.2 The unique benefits of small local organisations
and the risks of processes modelling them out in the
Commissioning process.
5.3 Community Participation

6. Section 4: Building rigour into the system; Outcomes,

Monitoring & Evaluation

6.1 Pre-defined outcomes

1. Introduction and Background

The Commissioning process, as defined by the Cabinet Office, is “the cycle of

assessing the needs of people in an area, designing and then achieving appropriate
outcomes” via services that “may be delivered by the public, private or civil society
sectors”1. Strategic Commissioning (SC) sees this process undertaken in-line with
and for the support of broader organisational goals. In the context of the Community
Justice landscape in Scotland, SC will therefore be undertaken to contribute to the
achievement of commitments set out in the Scottish Government’s National Strategy
for Community Justice (NSCJ)2 and the realisation of Community Justice Scotland’s
vision of “making Scotland the safest country in the world” through innovation,
partnership working and breaking the cycle of reoffending3.

1 Cabinet Office (2010). Modernising Commissioning, p. 7

2 Scottish Government. National Strategy for Community Justice, Scottish Government (2016), p.18
3 https://communityjustice.scot/our-vision/
What is Commissioning & Strategic Commissioning?

As outlined by the Big Lottery Fund’s Realising Ambition program4, “commissioning

in this context [strategic] extends beyond the procurement of services and is
designed to support the achievement of strategic aims”5.This definition is important
as the lack of a common understanding of what strategic commissioning is, an issue
labelled a “barrier to effective relationships” by the UK Public Administration Select
Committee in 20086, remains a considerable challenge today. This barrier, most
prominently characterised by the common conflation of commissioning and
procurement paired with siloed working between practitioners of these disciplines,
has serious implications for the adoption of a shared approach to SC.

Commissioning should be “the first stage in a process, which asks what are the
user’s needs, what are needs of the families and what are the problems we need to
address?”7. Procurement incorporates “the specific aspects of the commissioning
cycle that focus on the process of buying services, from initial advertising through to
appropriate contract arrangement”8. SC should create a process that shapes
services rather than the obverse; services available shaping SC. This ensures that
commissioners are given both the mandate and, perhaps more importantly, the
freedom to be bold, innovative and aspirational in their work. This would fit squarely
within a wider movement that is necessary for the success of the Scottish
Government’s ambitious Community Justice (CJ) agenda.

CJS does not hold any of the Scottish Government’s Community Justice budget and
therefore cannot commission CJ services directly. However, the National Strategy for
Community Justice (NSCJ) requires CJS to work with stakeholders and statutory
partners to develop a strategic approach to commissioning. This report represents
CJS’ initial research on SC and will inform the development of a SC framework.
Should CJS’ remit be expanded in future to include service commissioning, more
detailed analysis of the services provided within that remit must be undertaken in
order to assess the ability of those services to achieve the aims of the National
Strategy and what, if any, additional or reconfigured services are needed.

4 “A £25m Big Lottery Fund programme supporting the replication of evidence-based and promising
services designed to improve outcomes for children and young people”
5 Realising Ambition (2017). Commissioning Possible: Meeting the challenges of evidence-based
Commissioning, p. 2
6 House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee (2008), Public Services and the Third
Sector: Rhetoric and Reality), p. 17
7 P. Hope MP, Evidence to Public Administration Select Committee, 20th November 2007
8 Cabinet Office (2006), Partnership in Public Services: An Action Plan
For Third Sector Involvement, p. 4
2. Framework Outline

As CJS’s work on SC was borne out of a commitment made in the NSCJ,9, it is

appropriate that the development of the SC Framework (and the services it will help
to shape) are based on the priorities and themes set out in the strategy. In particular
those made in the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Michael Matheson MSP’s
Foreword10, which sets out an ambitious vision for the future of CJ in Scotland.

NSCJ Principles11

Evidence-Based;
Outcomes-Focussed;
Community & Service User-informed;
Measured against Common Outcomes;
Wrap-around, tailored to the individual;
Preventative; both in terms of reducing the amount of reoffending, future victims of
crime and diverting ‘at-risk’ individuals from entering the criminal justice system in
the first instance by tackling underlying causes;
Centred on improving the life chances of both victims and perpetrators of crime,
acknowledging every individual’s status as an asset for the achievement of a more
just, equitable and inclusive society; and
Incorporate a prioritisation and facilitation of improvement

The SC framework will encourage the provision of services that are based on these
principles.

In 2010, with the aim of supporting the standardisation of better commissioning

practice, the UK Government and the National Audit Office created ‘eight principles
of good commissioning’, in order to foster greater efficiency and better outcomes for
individuals.

Principles of Good Commissioning12

Understanding the needs of users;

Consulting potential providers;
Putting service outcomes at the heart of the process;
Mapping the range of potential providers;
Considering investing in capacity building;
Ensuring Contract Processes are transparent and fair;
Ensuring long-term contracts and risk-sharing; and
Seeking feedback from service users.

9 National Strategy (2017), p. 8

10 National Strategy (2017), p. 2
11 Ibid.
12 Principles of Good Commissioning (2010), https://www.nao.org.uk/successful-
commissioning/general-principles/principles-of-good-commissioning/
The Framework will make recommendations directly informed by these principles of
best practice and framed by research specific to CJ in Scotland and the wider UK.

3. Section 1: The Conflation of Commissioning and Procurement

and its ramifications for the adoption of a Strategic Commissioning
approach
Perhaps the most obvious challenge to implementing a SC strategy (that has
adequate support from partners across the CJ spectrum), is a lack of a consistent
understanding of the concept itself and practical implications for both practitioners
and policy officials. Much has been written about the issue and this lack of
consistency pervades all sectors and, indeed, has remained a stubborn problem
since SC came into vogue in the public policy domain;

3.1 There is a clear conflation of the concepts of commissioning,

procurement and purchasing13

The conflation of commissioning and procurement masks the distinct features of

these activities and fails to reflect Commissioning as a stage in a process which
incorporates both procurement and purchasing, completing the constituent parts of
the ‘commissioning cycle’14. In an in-depth study of this issue, J. Gordon Murray
settled on the idea that “commissioning is different from procurement, that
commissioning encompasses procurement” and that “in turn encompasses
purchasing”. This is demonstrated graphically below;

15 Gordon Murray, J. (2008) p. 94

The issue with conflating the two aspects of the cycle is especially problematic when
siloed working occurs between those who design a service and those who
subsequently procure the service. When this happens, Commissioners argue16 that
their strategic objectives are ignored in favour of “specific outputs or even process,

13 Gordon Murray, J., Towards a common understanding of the differences between Purchasing,
Procurement and Commissioning in the Public Sector, 3rd International Public Procurement
Conference Proceedings (2008) p. 89
14 Ibid., p. 91
15 Murray (2008), p. 94
16 Crowe, D., Gash, T., & Kippin, H. (2014), Beyond Big Contracts, Institute for Government, p. 43.
measurements”17. Furthermore, siloed working patterns in commissioning practice
present an additional risk when providing services which span multiple policy areas.
Indeed, interviews conducted with UK Government officials have revealed this
problem in numerous departments and have demonstrated that “commissioners
struggle to work together to design services…for users across different policy
areas”18. Being wary of and taking steps to prevent this in CJ services is especially
important given that service users have multiple, complex needs that are addressed
by services which extend across a range of providers in different policy areas who
aim, in effect, to deliver interdependent outcomes i.e. reducing reoffending and drug
rehabilitation.

Recommendation 1: Community Justice Scotland, following discussions with SG,

could be resourced to provide guidance and training in relation to strategic
commissioning through its Learning, Development and Innovation function. Relevant
training is essential for all commissioning bodies and service providers involved,
especially where organisations are too small to have dedicated staff for these tasks,
as is often the case in local social enterprises, community-based or third sector
partners.

Recommendation 2: A shift in established and often siloed working practices

between commissioning and procurement practitioners is a prerequisite for a
strategic approach to commissioning. CJS could also provide training and guidance
in support of a greater shared understanding of how commissioning and
procurement practices fit together to form a strategic commissioning approach.

The results of this problem of siloed working; the fragmentation of services,

inadequate sharing of good practice and potential duplication of services, present
significant risks to a strategic commissioning approach in CJ, and will be explored in
more detail in section 2.

This links to a further barrier to the adoption of a strategic commissioning approach;

established cultural procurement practices and cultural attitudes towards
commissioning.

4. Section 2: Established Procurement and Commissioning

practices and cultural attitudes towards these processes in an era
of budget restrictions.

In the decision making process, Procurement practices often place the greatest
weighting on monetary cost or cost savings when assessing services. This can have

17 Fischer, E, Harwich, E, Hitchcock, A. (2017), Faulty by design: the state of public-service

commissioning, Reform, p. 13
18 Fischer, E, Harwich, E, Hitchcock, A. (2017)., p.13, pp. 18-27
a number of unintended consequences which are detrimental to a successful SC
approach in CJ. Given that austerity has been the defining feature of UK public
policy and finances for almost a decade, this approach is arguably an inevitability. An
outright focus on cost bears a substantial risk to fostering the desired plurality of
provision aspired to in the locally devolved model of CJ by limiting the ability of a
range of providers to participate effectively in the process. Lowering initial costs in
service provision relies heavily on the ability of providers to leverage economies of
scale or at least demonstrate the potential to do so19. This can model-out smaller,
specialist providers across all sectors (and third sector providers more generally)
who may better meet the requirements of the service(s) being procured20 in line with
the NSCJ, such as the overriding principles of meeting local need through
community engagement, local relationships and being service-user informed.

4.1 Social Return

Social Return (SR) is growing in importance within public services. This was
signalled in the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 which required “public
authorities to have regard to economic, social and environmental well-being in
connection with public service contracts”21 This is especially relevant to CJ where
value and benefit in financial terms is notoriously difficult to calculate. The leading
methodology for calculating SR, Social Return on Investment (SROI), has attracted
criticism from both the public and third sectors for being overly complicated,
expensive22, unstandardized, used inconsistently23 and having limited guidance on
how to “operationalise” its practical use in “commissioning procedures”24.

These challenges and criticisms are embodied by the vague wording of the Public
Services Act (2012) which states organisations merely have to “give regard” to social
return. The practical ramifications of this were found by an Audit Commission
Study25 and articulated by the Third Sector Research Centre, which established low
“utilisation of the methodology [SROI] amongst local authority commissioners and it
is, to date, unclear how consistently SROI… has been, or will be, adopted and
utilised in practice by public sector commissioners and Third Sector Organisations”26.
Indeed, a degree of wariness is evident from partners consulted on the subject of
their prior experience of demonstrating social value. Partners from the Criminal
Justice Voluntary Sector Forum (CJVSF), a membership intermediary organisation
representing Third Sector organisations with an interest in criminal justice, said that
while “welcoming the recommendation for wider social value to feature more
prominently in the commissioning and subsequent processes” also stressed caution
in the use of SROI methodology. Qualifying this, the CJVSF highlighted a number of

19 Fischer, E, Harwich, E, Hitchcock, A. (2017)., Section 4, pp. 30-41

20 Hutton, W., Bevan, S. (2003), Replacing the State? The Case for third sector public service
delivery, ACEVO
21 Public Services (Social Value) Act (2012)
22 Position Paper on SROI¸ New Philanthropy Capital (2010)
23The Social Value Guide, Implementing the Public Services (Social Value Act) (2012), Social
Enterprise UK (2012)
24 Harlock, J. (2014) p. 8
25 Hearts and Minds: Commissioning from the voluntary sector, Audit Commission (2007)
26 Harlock, J. (2014) p.8
problems with the methodology around attribution, the ‘costing’ of social change and
the ability to use the methodology to enable the comparison of different
approaches27.

A means of avoiding a disproportionate focus on cost is to allocate balanced

weightings to service cost, future cost savings and the avoidance of social costs.
These should be based upon calculations made in the initial service design process.
This would offer procurement practitioners a means of assessing service cost and
benefit outside the narrow paradigm of financial running costs to also include the
anticipated benefits. This is a challenging task both practically and culturally. Future
savings are both difficult to estimate and carry risk in terms of the absence of
certainty as to their value. The prevalence of annual rather than multi-year funding
arrangements particularly in the context of resource constraints (this will be explored
in more detail on page 14) makes the ability to plan for future savings especially
difficult and potentially creates a risk averse culture.

An inclusive process that utilises the expertise of practitioners and service providers
across all sectors, where partners meet and develop a mutually beneficial and
actionable methodology for measuring SR, should be an ambition for the provision of
CJ services in Scotland. While the challenges are significant, and the provision of
person-focussed services complex, the shared needs of this population are
substantial and the outcomes desired for their future similar. The fact that “social
value remains somewhat elusive and complex to measure”28 should not negate the
need for doing so. Indeed, this attitude, which has been lamented by the think tank
Reform and referred to as the tendency for organisations to adopt the “diktat of what
can easily be measured” has led, in part, to the “poor on-the ground expansion” of
outcomes-focussed approaches to commissioning (of the type necessitated by the
NSCJ)29.

In the absence of SR measures being integrated into the commissioning and

procurement process it has been demonstrated30, that commissioners often focus on
inputs (paying for services) and outputs (activities)31. The difference between outputs
and outcomes is more significant than it would first appear with the former, related to
the operational provision of the service, service users processed and activities
undertaken, being materially very different from the latter, the overarching strategic
goals sought by respective organisations, in this case by CJS, SG and citizens. An
approach that judges a service on its ability to carry out processes and activities
without measuring the outcomes for individuals is entirely inappropriate for CJ and
will not achieve the strategic aims of the national strategy. Process and activity focus
is appropriate for services in which there is a binary output such as inoculation
against disease, but it will not address the multi-faceted needs of an individual

27 Research Conducted for the production of this paper at a meeting between representatives from
Community Justice Scotland & partners from the Criminal Justice Voluntary Sector Forum (August
2017)
28 Harlock, J. (2014) p. 8
29 Ibid., p. 9
30 Ibid., pp. 6-15
31 Ibid., p. 9
(however common they are within a particular cohort) in a holistic way that
addresses the challenges that contribute to offending and reoffending. To establish
the use of evidence and outcome based commissioning, considerable cultural
change is absolutely necessary32 33.

Recommendation 3: SR to be built into the commissioning process to contribute

to an outcomes focus with the outcomes themselves co-designed prior to
procurement.

Due to its relevance to measuring the outcomes of CJ services, SR should, in the

commissioning process be considered at a level of importance/significance equal to
measures that are purely financial. CJ partners should actively engage with input
from practitioners and service providers across all sectors, to create a methodology
for measuring SR in the provision of Community Justice services in Scotland.

Outcomes, with input from both commissioners and service providers, be co-
designed prior to the procurement phase and the ability to achieve these given
greater weighting in the commissioning process than merely the volume of
processes and activities to be carried out.

4.2 Encouraging cultural change in established Commissioning and

Procurement processes.

This cultural change must be extended beyond merely how the success of a service
is measured into the service design phase. CJ is itself an innovative solution with the
aim of offering those who have committed crime a better opportunity to recover and
function as part of society. Community-based provisions are intended to replace
short-term custodial sentences which have failed, by any measure, to achieve the
strategic aims around reducing reoffending set out in the NSCJ. It follows that the
culture for commissioning services in this space must reflect this, and Services and
the commissioning process used to identify and procure them must, for instance,
reflect evidence-based practice. It would be unfair to ignore the effect austerity
measures have had on the concept of innovation generally in the public sector and
more specifically in local authorities. Innovation is held by some to be analogous to
greater expense and is seen as difficult to justify in an era of tight budgets and a
relentless search for efficiency and cost-effectiveness. CJS is aware of the
significant shift in approach that would need to take place within budget-holding
organisations to achieve more innovation in the design and implementation of
services. This is a shift that requires commissioners and procurement practitioners to
be comfortable with taking risks as part of their decision-making processes and
incorporates an increased comfort with the management of risk as a means of
enabling the increased commissioning of innovative services with ambitious goals.
This is a bold shift that is absolutely necessary to achieve the wide-ranging agenda
set out in the Government’s strategy.

32 Harwich., Hitchcock., Fisher (2017) pp. 6-15

33 Harlock, J. (2014) p. 8
Prioritising cost over SR outcomes is (as the Realising Ambition program articulates
in their study of challenges facing an evidence-based approach to commissioning)
the undesirable situation in which commissioners often find themselves when
operating in an austerity culture. The study found that “there is a real dilemma for
commissioners…do they procure a service that is cheaper but has a weaker
evidence base if evidence at all” and moreover, culturally, is the “imperative to
consistently choose the cheaper option cemented?”34. While the program
acknowledged a move amongst practitioners towards a more outcomes and
evidence-based approach, they noted that, crucially, the adoption of this practice
“varied tremendously”35. There is little evidence to suggest that the landscape for the
commissioning of community justice services in Scotland is dramatically different
from this assessment. Indeed, as has been found by CJS’ Improvement Team, the
Community Justice Outcome Improvement Plans (CJOIPs) across the 32 local
authorities do not articulate in any great detail36 an outcomes and evidence based
approach to commissioning.

However, representatives from the local partnerships have consistently expressed

an interest in doing so and have welcomed CJS’ focus on the development of this
approach. There are opportunities to do so within the current approach. CJ Strategic
Needs Assessments (undertaken as part of local improvement methodology) can be
used in the strategic commissioning process, reducing potential duplication. These
assessments highlight local priorities and thus suitability for either the local and
national commissioning of a service. They reveal issues that are unique to local
areas and, when compared alongside one another, can be used to identify areas for
joined-up approaches across areas of close geographical proximity.

Practitioners have expressed a sense of ‘only just managing’ to maintain services

currently provided. Employing the current budget to adequately fund innovative new
approaches is felt by many to simply not be an option. This reaction is eminently
understandable, however it fails to take into account the possibility of de-
commissioning services which are currently provided but are ineffective and
presupposes that innovation is always of equal or greater cost to existing services.
De-commissioning is appropriate for services that cannot demonstrate a sound
evidence-base.

Recommendation 4: The Scottish Government should consider resourcing a

Community Justice Procurement Framework to support its ambitions for a SC
framework.

34 Realising Ambition (2017), p. 4

35 Ibid.
36 Please note that during formatting for this paper, Glasgow Community Planning Partnership
published a ‘Collaborative Commissioning Plan for Glasgow’ which articulates the most advanced
approach to CJ commissioning in Scotland to date. However, the document can only be considered
‘strategic’ in a local context, not national.
The production a CJ SC framework as a standalone project, independent of an
equivalent CJ Procurement framework poses a significant risk to the potential
success of a SC approach as procurement practices may work contrary to strategic
aims. For a SC approach to be successful, these processes must work
synergistically.

In light of this, the Scottish Government should consider whether the requirement for
CJS creating a SC framework should also incorporate a Procurement Framework to
ensure a consistent approach, working to the same overarching strategic goals. As
this carries significant resourcing and legislative implications, it is for Government to
decide whether or not it is comfortable with this risk or, alternatively, whether it will
resource research into the production of a bespoke Procurement Framework for CJ
services.

4.3 Funding

Cultural change will be impossible with the current standard arrangement of annual
funding cycles. Annual funding cycles make it extremely difficult for budget-holding
organisations and the services they fund to plan for longer-term outcomes, fund
evidence-based services and achieve the subsequent cost savings over the longer
term. Partners at the CJVSF highlighted a number of substantial issues with this
approach, including its direct impact on service users as short-term funding reduces
the sustainability and availability of support users rely on, impacts on staff by
creating uncertainty around employment year-to-year, and affecting morale and staff
turnover as longer funding periods better enable investment in staff and training and
development opportunities. The CJVSF also outlined the effect short-term funding
has on developing and delivering services by making it harder for organisations to
invest in a service, develop the relevant organisations and embed delivery with
“huge amounts of resources wasted on re-tendering, recruiting and retraining staff”37.

The benefits of multi-year funding cycles were recently highlighted as an ambition in

the Programme for Scotland 2017-18 in relation to a focus on prevention and early
intervention for the early years agenda38. CJ partnership working, as is specified in
the national strategy, “needs strong and trust-based relationships to be cultivated”,
which require longer time periods to be truly effective 39. This ambition is equally
applicable to the Programme’s aims for justice in the focus on “diverting people from
crime, reducing offending and supporting communities”. As for early years, the
relationship between these goals and the establishment of multi-year funding is
clear. The Programme for Government argues these multi-year cycles help “deliver
the expansion” of services and “provide certainty to…councils and providers”40,
desirable outcomes important for all groups (irrespective of age) in society including
those who are at risk of offending or reoffending, and would also benefit from ‘early’
intervention.

37 CJS & CJVSF (August 2017)

38 Programme for Scotland 2017-18, Scottish Government (2017), p. 12
39 CJS & CJVSF (August 2017)
40Programme for Scotland 2017-18, Scottish Government (2017), p. 12
Recommendation 5: Funding Cycles need to be extended from annual to multi-year
arrangements.

In order for services to be commissioned strategically and achieve the aims set out
in the National Strategy funding cycles must be extended from the current annual
approach to a multi-year model.

As the evidence base for the efficacy of a particular service grows so too should the
willingness to fund it over the longer term; if a service is producing strong outcomes
with one or two-year funding arrangements, outcomes can be improved upon by
extending funding for longer periods of time to help for the kind of ‘expansion’ and
‘certainty’ outlined as ambitions in the Program for Government.

Innovative new services, when underpinned by a sound evidence base and focussed
on outcomes over outputs, can be cheaper to run, make savings in the longer term,
and offer considerably greater SR. Even in the event such services are more costly
to run, the longer term savings and SR mean that a cheaper service is not
necessarily less expensive.

This cultural shift in understanding the approach to service provision enables what
Health Scotland recently articulated as the “treatment of individuals and communities
as ‘assets’ [that]…boosts their value to society”41 . Moreover, with a focus on
outcomes and evidence, partners are better placed to achieve an agenda of
“prevention, mitigation and resilience” which have been proven “central to keeping
people away from the criminal justice system or achieve their removal over the long
term”42.

5. Section 3: The provision of local & national services and

community participation

When discussing commissioning with partners one of the most common

considerations is the framing of a debate between local and national provision of
services. This discussion should not be characterised as a binary choice; the
provision of community justice services has proven both successful and
unsuccessful in both a local and national setting. The real questions are about the
need and suitability for a particular service to be provided locally or nationally and
where budgets for these services should be held when commissioning either locally
or nationally.

5.1 Gaps & duplication in service provision

A key tenet of service provision in community justice, in line with the directions of the
National Strategy, is that the most appropriate service for the individual must be
available in a location that is accessible to that individual. Commissioners must also
be mindful of the so-called ‘postcode lottery’ of fragmented service provision and

41 Inequality Summary, Health Scotland 2017 p. 1

42 Ibid, p. 2
gaps in service which is defined by the priorities of individual funders. This leads to
the first major issue; gaps in service provision.

Priorities in service provision are often defined by a utilitarian approach, where the
conditions that present most often in a population are catered for. The vast majority
of the CJ cohort fall into what Glen Bramley and Suzanne Fitzpatrick define as the
group of “severe and multiple disadvantages” (SMD)43. This group is often
characterised by a presentation of homelessness, substance misuse and crime 44
and with “poverty and mental-health problems being nearly universally present”45.
Despite the fact that many of the cohort share the same needs “the design of
services by different commissioning bodies can lead to…poor information sharing,
differing priorities and a lack of clarity as to who is responsible for interventions and
outcomes”46. Too often this means that gaps in service provision appear
immediately. There is also an argument that there is not the budget to provide what
are perceived to be niche services for those out with the majority of the service user
cohort. Frustratingly, there can also be simultaneous duplication of services across
geographical areas of close proximity, with different organisations offering service
provision that cuts across multiple policy areas (i.e. health and justice). As Harwich
et al summarise, in this landscape, “with so many bodies funding services for similar
needs, responsibility for commissioning services can become unclear”, the major
consequence of which being “services not being delivered at all”47.

Those in the criminal justice system, who are often homeless or have substance
abuse issues, were estimated by HM Treasury in 2015 to represent a cost of
£23,000 a year48 individually across all services when adjusted for 2016-17 prices49.
If needs continue to go unaddressed, as is the case when services are not provided
or when they are provided inefficiently (for example, when organisations fail to share
information across providers to ensure an individual is treated holistically) costs to
the taxpayer continue to accumulate. Moreover, this does not take into account the
opportunity cost of a rehabilitated individual living a fulfilling, prosperous life,
contributing to the economy by working, spending income and paying taxes, versus
the extensive social costs of service failure in relation to individuals, families and
communities. This, as is argued in Faulty by Design “creates a clear and compelling
case for the integration of services for people who require assistance from numerous
service providers”50, a definition which encompasses the vast majority of those who
come within the remit of community justice.

This assertion is supported by research from the Economic & Social Research
Council which, in 2010 estimated that there is a “25 to 35 per cent overlap in one or

43 Bramley, G., Fitzpatrick, Z., Hard Edges: Mapping Severe and Multiple Disadvantages, England¸
Lankelly Chase Foundation, p. 6
44 Ibid
45 Harwich et al (2017) p. 21
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Hard Edges, p. 79
49 Harwich et al (2017) p. 21
50 Harwich et al (2017) p. 21
more local service streams doing the same things”51. With the extensive overlap of
needs within the CJ cohort, the risk associated with this duplication is substantial and
within an austerity climate there is clear impetus to address this issue. Moreover, a
study by HM Treasury identified significant duplication in services directly related to
the community justice agenda with, for example, the police, A&E, GPs, Community-
based organisations and voluntary organisations all providing similar services for the
treatment of drug addiction and alcohol rehabilitation. The use of devolved spending
arrangements with strategic oversight in the case of “devolution to Manchester, West
Cheshire, Essex and three west London boroughs in 2013 is forecast to save £800
million over five years, mainly by reducing duplication in related public services”. The
major challenge, then, is for services to be available ‘nationwide’ but not
commissioned ‘nationally’ unless there is a clear need, structure of responsibility and
budgetary reasons and methods for doing so. This would involve leveraging
economies of scale to offer a better quality service with better outcomes for service
users at a lower price, freeing up resources to address gaps in service provision by
diverting funding previously allocated to a duplicated service.

Recommendation 6: Establishment of a national CJ commissioners network and an

online database (if resources are constrained, a starting point could merely be an
excel spread sheet hosted at CJS’ website or LD&I Hub) self-populated which
shares information, best-practice and exploit opportunities for join-up of services and
eliminates duplication.

This Network’s on-going task would be the population of current services to reveal
any service gaps and duplication. When an area or organisation is planning on
establishing a particular service, proposals can be shared on the database and offer
interested parties an opportunity to collaborate effectively.

Contributions would also be sought from domains on the periphery but out with direct
Community Justice budgets such as health and the police.

It must be noted that a similar database, that sat with the Scottish Government was
attempted in the past but was not maintained. It is hoped that the establishment of a
voluntary network and a compelling narrative for joining will lead to greater success
at this attempt.

5.2 The unique benefits of small local organisations and the risks of
processes modelling them out in the Commissioning process.

The need for an intimate understanding of local communities is underpinned by the

What Works to Reduce Reoffending study’s emphatic conclusion “Desistance is a
highly individualised process and one-size-fits-all interventions do not work”. The
“distinctive organisational characteristics” of Third Sector Organisations including
“role flexibility, voluntarism and informality”52 have been referenced as key in the

51 Dunleavy, P., The Future of Joined-up Public Services, The Economic & Social Research Council,
p. 21
52 Harlock, J. (2014), From Social Value to Evidence based Commissioning?, Third Sector Research
Centre, p. 7
ability of the Third Sector to meet local needs 5354. These are of particular benefit
when working with a cohort of service users who in many cases have lived out with
social norms for an extensive period of their life and may show an endemic mistrust
for the kinds of formal and statutory organisations and relationships which they
perceive to have failed them in the past.

Smaller local organisations (and indeed local organisations more generally) often
have stronger links to the community, relationships with those who inhabit it, and a
more intimate understanding of the specific problems they face. This approach has
been identified as crucial in achieving the aims of the NSCJ.

Recommendation 7: Retention of local supervision of budgets with the continuation

of established local relationships and evidence-based, efficacy-demonstrated
services.

Budgets should continue to be distributed at a local level wherever possible. Local

commissioners are best placed to understand the nuances of the “increasingly
diverse communities” in which they work and the “complex range of needs” 55 these
communities and, by definition, the individuals which comprise them, demonstrate.

However, budgets must allocate sufficient resource to the task of implementing an

‘evidence based and outcomes focussed commissioning process’ that will be
outlined in CJS’ strategic commissioning framework.

In practice, evidence indicates that outcomes-focussed commissioning processes

are not standard at a local or national level. As the Big Lottery Fund’s Realising
Ambition program demonstrated with evidence from a number of service providers,
“delivery organisations tell us that outcome and evidence based commissioning
“varied tremendously…although some commissioners were interested and leading
the debate locally, others still did not prioritise outcome-based commissioning at
all”56. There is a risk that, without support and guidance to do otherwise, local
commissioning with local budgets will continue this trend.

Realising Ambition further noted that “delivery organisations [highlighted] that they
often perceive local commissioners as being too stretched to have the time to
appropriately implement an evidence-based commissioning process’ and “other
factors, such as pressure to support existing local service providers make this even
more difficult”57.

5.3 Community Participation

53 Ibid.
54 Billis, D., and Glennerster, H. (1998), Human services and the voluntary: towards a theory of
comparative advantage, Journal of Social Policy, 27 (1), pp. 79-88
55 Commissioning Possible: Meeting the challenges of evidence-based Commissioning, Realising
Ambition (2017) p. 2
56 Realising Ambition (2017), p.2
57 Ibid.
While it must be noted that there is an opportunity to better assist individuals who
have already received custodial sentences to prepare them for the challenges of life
post-release (i.e. in-prison services), it is also important to be mindful of the nature of
the ‘community’ in which an individual will access CJ services and have their
community disposal aligned. Indeed, as the all-parliamentary Local Government
Group on Justice in Communities highlighted in 2009 “it is true that more could be
done in prisons but the reality is that the problems offenders have which increase
their chances of offending started while they were in their local community. Solutions
must therefore be rooted in their community. Creating the illusion that problems are
dealt with by removing offenders only moves the problem to another day”58. The
major threat to addressing individual and less commons needs or those that are
localised or differ from the norm is homogenous national service provision and the
‘one size fits all’ approach.

Recommendation 8: The local community must be consulted on service provision

during the design phase.

The local community must be consulted on the provision of a particular service and
contribute to the service design phase of the commissioning process. This
consultation, ensuring communities are involved in shaping services locally, fits
squarely with the national strategy59 and embodies the viewpoint that communities
represent ‘experts in their own needs’ as the 2015 Scottish Parliamentary report on
the Community Empowerment Bill articulates60.

58 All Party Parliamentary Local Government Group, Primary Justice: An Inquiry into Justice in
Communities, 2009.
59 National Strategy, p. 4, 12
60 2nd Report, 2015 (Session 4): Stage 1 Report on the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill,
The Scottish Parliament (2015)
6. Section 4: Building rigour into the system; Outcomes,
Monitoring & Evaluation

A focus on outcomes is dependent on a robust system of monitoring to ensure

quality of service provision and outcomes are being met; and evaluation, to ensure
lessons learned from operational delivery are captured and fed into the next iteration
of provision. Outcomes must be created at the beginning of service design and be
evidence-based. Monitoring must be less focussed on typical performance
management such as specifying activities undertaken and volume of service-users,
and more on what outcomes were achieved for these service-users. To encourage
thorough end-to-end reporting and to avoid protectionism amidst sector-wide anxiety
around funding, monitoring must be robust. This is both to ensure service quality but
also to be supportive; as service providers are generally best placed to learn and
report outcomes achieved, challenges encountered and, with requisite support, are
enabled by this learning process to either provide better services or, at least, inform
the design of future iterations or alternatives.

6.1 Pre-defined evaluation

For monitoring to be effective, it must be translated into robust evaluation and be

used to inform service development. This evaluation should be multi-faceted, not
simply an assessment of a service’s ability to meet outcomes but also seek to
understand whether or not these outcomes translate into something that is
meaningful beyond isolated service delivery by assessing service user’s lives
holistically. This evaluation must have the ability to uncover not only whether
outcomes are being met but also whether or not these outcomes are in fact
appropriate, whether there are any unintended (both positive and negative)
outcomes and how could these either be mitigated against or incorporated by design
in future iterations. It could be argued that organisations will, in an act of self-
preservation, perform evaluation that supports the continued funding of a service
rather than a transparent review that may prejudice themselves. However, this is
based on a pre-supposition that the service or the provider itself will be replaced if
the evaluation is not favourable.
On the contrary, robust evaluation offers the opportunity for service providers to both
assess the service itself, celebrate and structure the replication of achievements,
posit solutions to identified issues and gives organisations an opportunity to
demonstrate how they would overcome these and run the service differently in
future. If funding bodies are satisfied with this evaluation, the extensive resources
involved in re-commissioning or at least re-tendering a service could be avoided.
Evaluation can be used as a tool for future service design; achievements
acknowledged and replication planned, in addition to problems being identified and
satisfactory solutions for future iterations proposed. This focus on learning to
facilitate improvement - treating service provision as an iterative process and that is
troubleshooting rather than punitive - creates both the need and incentive for a
transparent approach at the evaluation stage. Thorough, pre-defined evaluation
methods, will build a level of flexibility into the commissioning system that allows
priorities to be shifted to meet the emerging need identified in the evaluation
process.

The key features of the design of a robust monitoring and evaluation process are the
indicators of success and outcomes criteria. A collaborative approach to designing
outcomes will rely on collaboration between prospective service providers, those with
lived experience of the respective services or issues and, where appropriate, the
local community. The involvement of these groups will help decide a on a set of
outcomes that work for budget holders, providers and those who will actually rely on
the achievement of these outcomes to improve their day-to-day life. Crucially, a
collaborative approach shares the burden of service design evenly while making
sure it is meaningful to all parties. Indeed, it is designed to avoid the “absence of a
clear steer” to service providers which interviewees from local authorities in England
reported in the Third Sector Research Centre’s study into outcomes-based
commissioning61.

Evidence gathered for this paper corroborate with this view in Scotland today, with
respondents from the CJVSF reporting that “there can often be a lack of
understanding among commissioners…around what outcomes are and the area of
influence over an initiative”62 or, alternatively, “some commissioners are asking
services to design their own outcomes” after the service has been in operation
“rather than commissioning on an outcomes basis [pre-defined]”63. A collaborative
process will benefit both commissioners and practitioners by offering an expert CJ
opinion on the appropriateness of outcomes, improving the shared understanding of
practice specialists and aims relevant to a specific policy area. Moreover, this
process helps to ensure greater accountability and buy-in for service providers as
they will have had a direct hand in the formulation of the outcomes they are
attempting to achieve. Funding bodies must however be wary of what has been
described as the ‘burden of evaluation’ being shared unevenly; agreed outcomes
should be considered in relation to the feasibility and proportionality in terms of
recording and analysis, and any resulting resource implications.

61 Harlock, J. (2014), p. 14
62 CJS & CJVSF, (2017) p. 3
63 Ibid.
Successful service provision relies on robust evaluation and monitoring of outcomes,
robust monitoring and evaluation relies on all sides of the commissioning process
both buying into an outcomes focus and also taking responsibility for their
contributions whether it be an equitable involvement in the outcome design process
or a transparent approach to monitoring that admits failings as readily as successes
and interrogates these failings to improve in the future.

Recommendation 9: There must be a robust Monitoring and Evaluation process for

services commissioned in CJ.

This Monitoring should be;

Regular and scheduled to contribute to a timeline of prospective improvement;

Focus on outcomes and not activities or volume of service users; and

See the overall outcomes and indicators for these designed collaboratively; ensuring
representation and accountability of all relevant parties, benefitting from a range of
expertise to define suitable outcomes to genuinely benefit the lives of service users.
This will also share the administrative burden of this process fairly, offer
commissioners expert input to the unique aspects of CJ service provision and give a
clear steer to service providers from the date of inception.

This monitoring must be translated into evaluation at a regular and previously agreed
interval that is not disproportionately burdensome on funders or providers. This
evaluation should;

Be highly transparent, reporting successes as readily as failures to allow for learning

and better service provision in future;

Look deeper than simply whether outcomes are being met to ask are they having a
genuine affect for service users, are they the right outcomes? Is this the right
service?;

Report unintended outcomes both positive and negative; and

Be Non-punitive, it should first lead to a discussion about solutions and how a

service provider would meet the challenges going forward.
First published January 2018

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