I am the CEO of the above charity and have been with them for two years. Previously I served with Thame Valley Police for 35 years, retiring as an Assistant Chief Constable. Like many officers I wanted to continue to work in public service and continue to help and support people. The charity sector, and particularly the Criminal Justice part of that seemed to make sense.
Thames Valley Partnership is a charity that operates mainly in Thames Valley but also beyond. We focus on those impacted by the Justice Sector and have been operating for 28 years. Our main focus is the delivery of frontline services to vulnerable members of society and we are variously funded to provide those different services. Victim support services are commissioned via the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner – we provide emotional support to victims and for more complex needs we provide specialist support. The service includes provision of sexual violence advocacy, domestic abuse advocacy and specialist exploitation services. The charity provides a collection and mentoring through the gate service for offenders being released from prison funded by the MOJ which includes the provision of basic toiletries and clothing. Support is also provided to families of those arrested and those sent to prison, and that includes offers of family conferencing when the offender is released to help to create a stable environment.
Mentoring is also provided for young people at risk of becoming involved in crime – currently in Thames Valley and soon in Gloucestershire. This has enabled the charity to get involved again with early intervention work. Restorative Justice services are offered to all victims of crime, can also be offender initiated and can be undertaken on release or in prison settings. RJ is also provided in the school setting for a speedy and early response to serious incidents to help to avoid exclusion or criminalisation.
We also provide a technical and covert solution for high risk domestic abuse victims available only via the police that provides victims with additional support and a speedier response. This team is also rolling out an app for lower risk individuals to find out more information about DA (BrightSky) and also rolling this out across the world with the help of Vodafone Global foundation.
Funding is a complicated area for charities and is probably the most stressful and difficult part of the role. Whilst writing a funding strategy in early 2020 I was advised that our reliance on bigger, statutory organisations for funding was a weakness and we needed to diversify. The new strategy does allow for this – but the reality is that had we changed our funding strategy to rely less on these big contracts and grants, we would very likely not have survived the COVID pandemic. Our contracts continued, services were delivered albeit in a very different way, and we had a fairly steady funding stream coming in. Our weakness became our lack of unrestricted funds to fund the centralised running of the charity. It has been a challenging year to get funds from donors for this when businesses and foundations have all been struggling for finances. The challenge continues as the country goes into recovery and funding opportunities are sought from charities everywhere! I think the challenge is harder because of the diversity of the support that is offered. People will readily get behind charities that support victim, but can be less supportive of offenders being supported. The message is always that to help to prevent the reoffending of an offender will automatically save a future victim and that is really key to getting funds.
The OPCC gets money from the MOJ to commission victim and RJ services and we were fortunate enough to get the tender for both of these services. We are also working with the police federation to encourage more serving officers who become victims to access the services. As you would expect we are subject to strong contract management and scrutiny in terms of delivery and budgetary management but the commitment from the team at the OPCC is obvious. They really care about victims and have spent a lot of time and energy getting the services just right. It is a pretty strong relationship and you can really tell the desire to engage with and work with charities across the sector. If you read the Commissioners crime plan there is a victim focus and also a focus on the importance of reducing reoffending. We obviously do a lot of work in this areas as well although accessing the funds distributed by the OPCC to other authorities is a bit of a mine field. Other funding comes from the MOJ via the reunified probation service. This has involved a lengthy qualification and bidding process leading to commissioned contracts. The Big Lottery have been very supportive as well and have funded the family centred programme for a few years. Our longest support has been the Vodafone Foundation which has funded the covert technical device for DA victims for 11 years. Other funds come from putting forward bids for specific areas of work to trusts, foundations and organisations in the field. They obviously then have to sift through many applications before making a decision.
We have a really strong relationship with the police which is so important. My networks are still strong which is helpful but we also need to link into the sexual violence teams, the DA teams, schools and safeguarding teams as well as the Violence Reduction teams. As the CEO I am also the independent chair of the Domestic Abuse Steering Group for Thames Valley which includes all the statutory and non-statutory partners involved in DA across the three counties. We have a lot of ex officers who are volunteering as mentors, particularly for young people and their experience and insight can be so powerful.
Alongside supporting others, our focus is on continuing to evolve and broaden our offer. I am keen to continue to work with young people and focus on some of the early intervention work. Our current Thames Valley programme for youngsters is running out of funding and it’s future is looking uncertain. We are also looking at funding opportunities to take us into drug recovery centres to do RJ work with addicts and their families, to broaden our schools work, to get into Young Offenders Institutions to do more restorative work and to also continue to deliver training in many of these areas. We are also keen to rebrand and find an identity that recognises our geographical spread and our more diverse work.