Working With Us 

CHIEF OFFICER HEATHER MUNRO

2007 is the Centenary Year for the Probation Service and LRPA has been celebrating Probation's achievements.  But this year is also about preparing for future challenges.

When the Offender Management Bill is passed, we want - as a top performing area - to lead the way in a new commissioning environment. 

We intend to build on our current good practice, and manage the change process, so that high quality front line services in offender management and interventions are maintained.  The move to Trust Status needs to be carefully implemented.

One of our greatest strengths is in the work we do with partners.  We are proud of our multi-agency work in a number of arenas - prolific and priority offenders, dangerous offenders, in our Youth Offender teams, with drug services, and our work with a range of voluntary sector providers.  As the area chosen for the demonstration project on the Civic Alliance, we are leading the way in working with local authorities and other key partners to reduce re-offending.  This is undoubtedly the direction to travel as we need to access other resources if we are going to affect re-offending rates.

Improving our efficiency and providing value for money will be essential in a competitive environment.  This does not mean that we should reduce the quality of our work.  We believe that we can re-examine the way we work to cut out waste and reinvest this time to make real improvements.

LRPA is committed to innovation.  As a top performing area we should be able to stretch ourselves and find new ways of improving services.  We want to encourage our staff to learn from practice and suggest improvements.  Some of our best projects have started in this way.  We are the only Probation Area to have a Victim Charity Shop, to run a Women's Anger Management Programme and in the coming year we will be running Parenting Programmes. 

It is our staff who provide the impetus for these projects and we want to encourage this participation. I am very proud to be the Chief Officer of LRPA. Together, we have achieved so much in a difficult and challenging environment.  We will continue to support them in delivering our main aims of protecting the public and reducing re-offending.