Clinks’ report on non-profit organisations’ experience of probation reform and Richard Oldfield’s review of the Dynamic Framework both made recommendations that the Probation Service should increase the use of grants to support charities and other not-for-profit organisations who already are, or could be, supporting people on probation on their journey of desistance from offending. HMPPS Director-General for Probation, Amy Rees, committed last year that we would increase the use of grants, so we have been developing a draft process for awarding grants.

We have tried to make the process as simple as possible to allow smaller organisations to apply, whilst ensuring fairness and value-for-money in awarding public funding to provide support for people on probation on their journey towards rehabilitation and desistance from offending. However we would really like to hear feedback from organisations that would be interested in applying for funding, or other interested stakeholders, to help us get the process right before we launch the first competitions for grant funding.

Your thoughts on this are vital to us getting it right, so, please do take the time to read our proposed process, attend our engagement sessions or watch the video afterwards (link will follow shortly) and then submit your feedback through the survey link below.

Subject to your feedback, we hope to launch the first applications for grants this summer. Closer to the time, we will publish further information via Clinks and via our Probation Jaggaer portal about the upcoming competitions and how to apply.

We hope that we have made the grants process as simple as possible but we look forward to hearing your thoughts for improvements. We will of course in the future continue to listen to your experiences of what worked well and what could be improved.

Please take a look at our proposed grants process

Please let us know your feedback about the proposed grants process through this survey link. Survey is open until 23:55 on Sunday 22 May.

We will be holding a webinar where we will explain the key points of the proposed process for grants, or answer any questions you may have on it, on 9 May 12:30-14:00. If you would like to attend please register here.

If you are interested in joining an online focus group on 12 May at 13:00-14:30 to talk through your views on the proposed grant process, please fill in this form.