The Prisons and Adult Specialist Services Directorate covers a broad range of localities and delivery models. Working across the North West, North East and Yorkshire and Humber our areas of expertise include:

• Prison CARAT Services in 26 prisons across the north
• Outlook Day Programmes in Manchester, Calderdale and Newcastle
• Harm Minimisation Services in Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland
• Specialist Alcohol Services in Bradford and Rotherham

This work is delivered alongside additional, targeted services which provide community engagement and capacity building, Progress2work employability interventions, community detoxification support, service user involvement and peer interventions.

 

 

Specialist knowledge and understanding: criminal justice, harm minimisation, alcohol, community development and recovery-orientated approaches

Workforce: skilled and committed staff with diverse experience and expertise, including successful volunteering programmes

Development approach: ability to develop new ideas, models and partnerships which meet the needs of service users and localities and offer new learning opportunities

Governance: achievement of performance indicators, supported by innovative approaches to staff and user involvement in evaluation and implementation

 

 

In the last year the Directorate has made significant achievements across all delivery areas.
Examples of key accomplishments are:

• Meeting and exceeding performance, clinical governance and quality standards in our Prisons work, with over 10,000 prisoners assessed
• Joint work with Yorkshire and Humberside Health Improvement Partnership (YHIP) to support the review and development of integrated structures for alcohol misusers in the criminal justice system
• Manchester partnership approach to both harm minimisation and recovery, with new work with Manchester PCT on nursing and healthcare services; care management teams and integration between Lifeline’s local services
• Business Development: new services and pilot projects in Calderdale, Bradford, Rotherham and the North East
• Rapid response to emerging drug trends in the North East with the development of pilot projects and new delivery models for alcohol, stimulant and steroid users

 

All services have developed business plans which feed into directorate and corporate plans. These plans will be central to the development of the new directorate and to the sharing of good practice and establishment of new joint work.

 

 

Clinical Governance: development in line with Lifeline’s Clinical Governance Strategy. Implementation will support benchmarking against relevant standards within a continuous improvement cycle and will draw together existing processes: workforce, practice, risk management, service user involvement and performance.

Service User Outcomes: the directorate will continue to explore models for supporting beneficiaries to achieve sustainable individually-tailored outcomes. This will include ongoing partnership work on recovery-orientated approaches which combine support, housing and access to training and employment.

Prisons: active involvement in the development of NOMS, with participation in the review of prison drug treatment via the Prison Drug Treatment Strategy Group, in consultation with service managers and staff.

Business Development: to maintain and enhance existing services, to explore new funding opportunities and to secure new contracts which fit with directorate specialisms, localities and priorities.

Sophie Johnson

Head of Directorate Prisons and Adult Specialist