Commissioned Rehabilitative Services Grant Scheme

HMPPS has now established a scheme called the Probation Service General Grant Scheme whereby grant-funded activities will be delivered by specialist VCSE organisations. The first round of regional competitions opened to applications on 21 September and are targeting additional support for people from minority ethnicities. Applications will close on 02 November 2022. It is expected that the first awards will be made in early 2023.

Under the scheme, Probation Regions can allocate funds from their Regional Outcomes and Innovation Fund to commission grant-funded rehabilitative activities. This provides flexibility for Probation Regions to fund different services according to their local needs and for a wide range of providers of local and specialised services to bid for funding. Activities in custody or the community can be funded, according to the specific needs that the funding seeks to meet.

Applications will be welcomed for funding for up to 36 consecutive months. There will be no minimum funding period, so a project can be as short as required. No award will be less than £8,000 and the maximum award value will be £250,000 per year (£750,000 over 3 years).  Appropriate governance, evaluation and performance measures will be used to assess the impact of all the funded services and activities.

The approved grant scheme is designed to support people with shared protected characteristics or shared experiences or to promote rehabilitation and desistance.  The scheme has three key aims that contribute to the overarching HMPPS aims of protecting the public and reducing reoffending, namely:

1. to improve people’s engagement in, and experience of, probation and other rehabilitation activities,
2. to support an individual’s rehabilitation and desistance journey, and
3. to improve our knowledge about which activities work to support people while encouraging rehabilitation and desistance.

Once the grants are awarded, probation or prison staff, as relevant, will be able to make referrals to organisations that can provide the necessary and specific activity to support an individual’s rehabilitation and desistance journey, but where these activities are not enforceable under orders of the court.

More details will continue to appear in Probation News as the scheme progresses and will soon be detailed in various Briefings.

Background

In 2021, then Prisons Minister, Lucy Frazer commissioned Richard Oldfield to independently review the Dynamic Framework of the Probation Service. His report recommended that the use of grants should be encouraged.  In a published letter to Clinks, the infrastructure organisation supporting voluntary organisations in the criminal justice system in England and Wales, Amy Rees, then Director General of Probation and Wales, and now CEO of HMPPS, said that HMPPS shares the ambition to further promote the use of grants.