Spotlight on the Strategy, Planning & Performance Directorate (SPP)

This month’s spotlight illuminates the work of the Strategy, Planning and Performance Directorate.

Here’s what the team had to say…

Led by Executive Director Ian Blakeman, we are a diverse group with a wide range of practice experience and expertise. We support HMPPS in delivering its most important priorities as set out in the HMPPS Business Strategy, we support operational colleagues to improve services, and deliver meaningful and effective change across prison, probation and youth custody services. Advancing equality and fostering diversity and inclusion is central to everything we do.

This month marked the two-year anniversary of the HMPPS Business Strategy – the principles and priorities set out in the strategy still hold firm, and whilst the last two years have not been what we’d expected, they have been central in guiding both our response to and recovery from COVID. Several useful products have been produced to mark the anniversary including personalised team strategy posters, guidance for interactive team workshops and business planning guidance.

Supporting HMPPS COVID-19 Response

We work in partnership with all aspects of the organisation to coordinate an organisational response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s unchartered territory and has demanded new ways of working which have been developed, tested and implemented at pace.

We have facilitated COVID-19 Tests for staff and residents of Approved Premises and promoted and supported the roll out of the vaccination programme, as well as providing weekly probation service winter plan delivery assessments and monthly forecasts of organisational resilience over the year ahead.

Supporting your development

We work to build and embed an organisational culture of engagement which promotes learning, development and wellbeing – enabling everyone to be their best.

We work collaboratively across HMPPS and MoJ to ensure staff wellbeing support meets the changing needs of the people who work for us.

We deliver a programme of online events, blogs and information via the HMPPS Insights website focussed on bringing evidence in to practice and supporting an open learning culture. This includes the annual Insights Festival (coming May 2022), bringing HMPPS and partners together to learn, share, connect and celebrate.

Supporting Continuous Improvement

We identify priorities for improvement across the whole system and provide practical support, guidance, tools and services which are responsive to the needs of HMPPS.

We have developed a place-based approach to support quality and performance improvement in identified and agreed Probation Service areas, including support for effective change management and buddying support for Senior Probation Officers. We are also supporting Regional Probation Directors to enable Regions to make informed choices about what they buy, based on needs and effective practice evidence.

Some of the recent products include:

• A new version of EQUIP Compliance & Engagement on Licence to help practitioners who are managing individuals on licence
• 7 Minute Briefings on topics such as Gambling and Staff Supervision

Assuring Quality

Through assurance and scrutiny, we identify and promote the organisation’s most important priorities and design ways to measure our progress toward them. We are currently assessing the quality of sentence management inherited by the new Probation Service Regions. Over recent months we have looked at the sharing of risk information between the Probation Service and the Electronic Monitoring contractor, and how perpetrators of domestic abuse were managed during the pandemic.

Supporting Change

We keep Probation colleagues informed via the monthly Change Update for Prison and Probation Senior Leaders publication and bi-monthly Trade Union meetings. These platforms help raise awareness of change both in development and approaching implementation stage.  They also represent an invaluable opportunity for Probation colleagues to provide their feedback on how effectively change is being embedded across Probation.

Applying evidence to inform decisions and practice

We support HMPPS to understand and use the best available evidence in operations and key decision-making processes. We provide practical support and guidance and share good practice through conversations, evidence briefings, infographics, podcasts and videos.

We provide Regional Probation Directors with data on the needs and characteristics of people on probation and ‘what works’ evidence to support (co)commissioning and partnership decisions. We have also been working with colleagues in the Probation Workforce Programme to develop evidence-informed learning products.