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.
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