Paul Biddle

Prison Health Discharge Planning – Evidence of an Integrated Care Pathway or the End of the Road?

This article is based on research conducted in several prisons in North East England. It explores the effectiveness of prisons, and the wider criminal justice system, at meeting the healthcare needs of inmates as they leave prison, or transfer between prisons. In doing so, the article details policy context, areas of good practice and issues that still need to be addressed in relation to the creation of an integrated care pathway.

‘If this wasn’t here I probably wouldn’t be’: disabled workers’ views of employment support

UK governments since 1997 have introduced significant changes to move disabled people off benefits and into employment. Commentators have criticised the adoption of the ‘medical model’ of disability implicit in many of these policies, with its focus on individual rather than institutional change. This paper reports empirical data about participants’ experiences of one national supported employment programme. Participants of WORKSTEP were overwhelmingly positive about their experiences both of work and the support to find work. The rare reports of negative experiences reflect the focus on intervening at the level of individual workers, rather than the workplace or organisation of work. Analysis of their views is valuable in the light of ongoing welfare reform as well as recessionary pressures on labour markets and employment services, which, in emphasising individual solutions to employment problems, may overlook the need for more broad-based, social interventions.

Implementing a perpetrator-focused partnership approach to tackling domestic abuse: The opportunities and challenges of criminal justice localism:

This article reports on a perpetrator-focused partnership approach to tackling domestic abuse. The package of interventions includes an identification tool and a unique multi-agency partnership approach to violence prevention and tackling abuse through perpetrator-focused early interventions. An overview of the key outcomes and issues emerging from this innovative package and partnership approach in one policing area in England is offered. Our discussion focuses on issues relating to the development of the co-ordination of the multi-agency tasking and co-ordination (MATAC) approach to addressing domestic abuse, particularly within the context of the opportunities and challenges of the localism agenda in criminal justice. Perceived concerns within the MATAC partnership, about victim safety alongside a heightened ‘focus on perpetrators’, caused us to critically reflect on the convergence of the politics of multi-agency working at very local levels. Our conclusion is that partnership working remains important in the shifting economic and political context in which local agenda setting and commissioning is occurring. The local still matters, and is as challenging as it ever was, in ensuring victim safety.

‘Enhanced Support for High Intensity Users of the Criminal Justice System’: An Evaluation of Mental Health Nurse Input into Integrated Offender Management Services in the North East of England

The current UK Government’s focus on the development of services to manage and support offenders with mental health problems has resulted in a number of innovative project developments. This research examines a service development in the North East of England which co-located Mental Health nurses with two Integrated Offender Management teams. While not solving all problems, the benefits of co-location were clear – although such innovations are now at risk from government changes which will make Integrated Offender Management the responsibility of new providers without compelling them to co-operate with health services.