A partnership between health and justice services in Glasgow is improving people’s wellbeing
Scott Bissell, Health Improvement Lead, Community Justice, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, explains how a health and wellbeing programme is supporting people carrying out community sentences
Improving people’s health seems a straight forward task but can be challenging and complex. Health improvement work involves assessing and tracking the health of a particular group then devising and applying strategies to help people live healthier lives. That includes addressing the inequalities that impact people’s health such as poverty and reduced educational opportunities. It’s about enabling and encouraging people to have more control over improving their own health.
We know people in touch with the justice system can experience multiple and complex health issues – often complicated by lack of access to community health and social care services. But there is a lack of evidence around the specific health needs and the causes of stress for people carrying out community sentences in Scotland, although we know they often have poorer health than the general population.
Supporting people to improve their health and wellbeing can contribute to helping to reduce reoffending.
In September 2023 Community Justice Glasgow, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde and Neighbourhoods, Regeneration & Sustainability (NRS) – the largest of the organisations providing unpaid work for people carrying out Community Payback Orders – held a health and wellbeing event. It was aimed at people serving a Community Payback Order (CPO) in the city of Glasgow. Working collaboratively with statutory community justice partners and community services the event brought together 16 different organisations with the aim of supporting people to engage more fully with services that might interest them and address potential health needs.
One person serving a CPO told us: “The engagement workshop was very beneficial to me. I feel like I walked away with good professional advice both to help me mentally and physically and general life lessons.”
We used evaluation from the event to help define the health and wellbeing priorities identified by people serving CPOs. We then compared what people told us was important to their health with local public health priorities and the result is the Glasgow City CPO Unpaid Work Health and Wellbeing Programme.
We offered training for unpaid work supervisors and social care staff to be able to support the health needs of individuals serving CPOs. For each priority identified, the programme offers training geared to directly address people’s health needs.
Supporting individuals with their health and complex life circumstances, the work aims to improve health, reduce inequalities, improve understanding of community services and therefore contribute to reducing reoffending.
For our work tackling alcohol use for example, we utilised an existing local contract, managed via NHS Health Improvement, with Glasgow Council on Alcohol. They developed and delivered a community justice specific alcohol awareness session, scheduled at regular intervals throughout the year. Alcohol Brief Intervention (ABI) training was also offered to unpaid work staff.
So far 120 people carrying out CPOs have attended awareness sessions and 100% of unpaid work staff are on course to be ABI trained. We have also developed a recording system, measuring the impact of ABIs in community justice settings as part of our work at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) evaluating the structures of the systems we’re putting in place and we report our findings to the Scottish Government.
So far in year one the NHS, Glasgow local authority and third sector partners have worked to deliver a rolling programme of sessions on topics including alcohol, drug use, sexual health and blood borne viruses, mental health, suicide prevention awareness, women’s health, financial health and physical health actions that have hopefully benefited beyond the reparative nature of unpaid work.
That’s a lot of work. So we’re collecting client and staff feedback whenever we can and using a ‘Plan Do Study Act’ approach we’re testing how the Health & Wellbeing Programme works in practice in a busy unpaid work service that also deals with other duties.
A CPO with an unpaid work requirement ensures an individual gives back through work benefitting their local community. In some cases a proportion of the hours in the community sentence can involve carrying out other activities – and the wellbeing sessions qualify for this.
This work has already helped to strengthen local partnerships and collaborative strategic planning across health and justice. Hopefully it also helps people serving CPOs to have better control over improving their health.