Group work to address offending behaviour
From 1 January 2012, West Yorkshire Probation, in agreement with Senior Judges and HMCS in West Yorkshire introduced a new approach to Community Sentences.
Instead of agreeing the rehabilitative elements of a Community Sentence at sentence, the courts sentence the offender to a generic ACTIVITY REQUIREMENT at low, medium or high level. The exact components of that Activity Requirement are determined after a thorough post sentence assessment by the Probation Officer in collaboration with the offender.
The Activity Requirement can include both one-to-one supervision and group work. The group work elements include nationally approved courses designed to tackle the root causes of offending.
West Yorkshire Probation has a range of group work interventions reflecting the needs of different offenders and is developing new groups to address identified needs. They each use methods designed to reduce the risk of re-offending, based on research into what actually works best to help stop offending.
The post sentence assessment will take time to ensure that offenders are correctly assigned to group work interventions. They will identify each offender's need and ensure that each offender would benefit from a group intervention before it is included in their sentence plan.
If an offender doesn't attend the sessions agreed in the sentence plan or does not participate as agreed, they can be sent back to court for breaching their Order.
