A number of intervention programmes, known as ‘accredited programmes’, addressing particular types or root causes of offending behaviour are run by staff in the Lincolnshire Probation Trust. These include compulsory courses for sex offenders, drink drivers, and perpetrators of domestic violence, which are aimed at changing offenders’ thinking and behaviour.
If your miss a session, you have to do a catch-up session. If you continue to miss sessions without a good reason you may be in breach of your community order and could be sent back to court. Some programmes have limits on the number of catch-up sessions, insisting an offender starts the programme again.
Accredited programmes available at Lincolnshire Probation Trust are:
Cognitive Skills Booster (CSB): This programme aims to help both male and female offenders to think more rationally, understand different points of view, control their impulsive behaviour, improve their social skills and solve problems reasonably. The Cognitive Skills Booster is a group programme which supports the learning from other programmes that you have attended, for example Enhanced Thinking Skills, Think First and One to One. The court may order you to follow this programme as part of your sentence. It will help you to apply the skills you have already learned, especially to the difficult situations which may have led you to offend. This will help you stay away from crime in the future. The skills you learn will also be useful in dealing with other problems and difficult situations.
Community Sex Offender Groupwork Programme (CSOG): The CSOG is a programme approved as suitable for persons convicted of contact or non-contact sex offences against child or adult victims of either, or both sexes. The aim is to prevent further sexual reoffending, by looking at how thoughts, attitudes and emotional responses are linked to abusive behaviour. For offenders given a community sentence participation is normally a condition of a Community Order, but for someone given a custodial sentence it can be a requirement of a Licence after release.
For anyone who has not already completed a Sex Offender Treatment Programme (SOTP) in prison there are two main ways through the C-SOGP. For most it involves attendance at 240 hours of groupwork taking more than 2 years to complete; for some the groupwork lasts for 100 hours and can be completed in about a year. It is important to recognize this will make major demands. These include:
- • Regular reporting to a Probation Officer to complete work that forms part of the Programme;
- • Daytime attendance to complete progress questionnaires;
- • Daytime attendance at meetings with the Probation Officer and NSPCC staff before, and at key stages through the programme;
- • Consistently attending and contributing usefully to the groupwork sessions run by the project
At the start of the programme you will have to attend during the daytime for one full week, and then for further individual days each week, if possible. The rest of the Programme usually uns for 2½ hours on a weekday evening, although sessions during the daytime may also be arranged. If you have taken part in a SOTP during sentence you will probably attend either 190hours of groupwork, or a 50 hour Relapse Prevention group.
Controlling Anger and Learning to Manage It (CALM) : The CALM course is for men only and aims to address violent offending relating to anger management issues, excluding racially motivated violence or domestic abuse incidents. CALM is a groupwork programme of 24 sessions each lasting 2 hours. There will usually be 2 sessions per week. There will be between 4 and 12 people in the group with 2 staff. At the start and end of the group you will complete a number of questionnaires. They are not hard and you will be given help if you need it. The questionnaires help us to see if the group is working.
CALM is based on the idea that behaviour, thinking and emotions are related. It will help you understand why aggressive behaviour happens and how you can control it in future.
The group will help you to:-
- – Reduce aggression by managing your emotions better
- – Understand what triggers your anger and aggression
- – Learn how to prevent getting too worked up
- – Resolve conflict better in future
- – Manage negative emotions that are linked to aggression
- – Identify ways to stop offending in future
Drink Impaired Drivers Programme (DID) : This programme is for men and women. Drink Impaired Drivers Programme is a group of 16 sessions each lasting 2 hours. There will usually be between 4 and 12 people in the group with 2 staff. The aim of the Drink Impaired Drivers Programme is to reduce the likelihood of committing another drink drive offence by improving your knowledge, awareness and ability to tackle problems in other ways.
By the end of the programme you will have had an opportunity to learn to:
- • Understand how alcohol affects the body
- • Challenge attitudes towards drinking and driving
- • Consider the consequences to others of drinking and driving
- • Examine the alternatives to drinking and driving
- • Understand how alcohol affects the skills required to drive a car
- • Monitor your own drinking patterns and to understand why you drink
- • Recognise how emotions can affect making decisions
- • Consider the reasons why you committed the offence
Integrated Domestic Abuse Programme (IDAP) : IDAP is for male offenders and aims to reduce the risk of violent crime and abusive behaviour towards women in relationships by helping the perpetrators change their attitudes and behaviour. It aims to thereby reduce the risk of all violent and abusive behaviour in the family.
IDAP aims to increase the offender’s ability to respond non-abusively, to change his abusive beliefs and to empathise with his victim(s). It give offenders a greater sense of responsibility for their violence, helps them to accept that they exercise choice in the way they behave and increases their ability to identify high-risk situations and to manage these effectively in the future.
A Women’s Safety Worker from Lincolnshire Probation Trust works with women victims of domestic violence as part of this programme. The Women’s Safety Worker helps women victims and any children to access full support, advice and assistance from other relevant organisations, to ensure they are safe. Victims are given regular updates about how the offender is progressing on the programme and asked for feedback about his behaviour at regular intervals, including when the programme is over.
Low Intensity Alcohol Programme (LIAP) : This programme is suitable for men and women. It aims to tackle ‘binge’ drinking, anti-social attitudes, problems of self-control and a lack of knowledge about the effects of alcohol. This program is offered by local alcohol services and the trust. It is a condition of a Community Rehabilitation Order to receive and comply with treatment for your alcohol misuse.
The program aims to:
- – reduce the nature and extent of alcohol misuse
- – stabilise alcohol misuse and related lifestyle issues
- – establish sustainable positive change
- – reduce alcohol related reoffending
Treatment Orders are intended for offenders:-
- – when alcohol plays a significant part in their life
- – when their alcohol misuse has caused or contributed to the offence(s) for which they are charged
- – when it is agreed that the nature and extent of their alcohol misuse can be helped by their active participation with the treatment order.
It is an opportunity to examine the nature and extent of alcohol misuse and how it affects offending and other aspects of life. It provides an opportunity to come to terms with the problems related to alcohol misuse, and to control and reduce alcohol misuse/offending. It provides advice and information on the risks associated with alcohol misuse, and it provides appropriate clinical treatment. The treatment at the beginning will last three months. If help is still required with alcohol related problems at the end of the order, a voluntary treatment can be agreed by the alcohol service.
As this order involves treatment it cannot be made unless consent is given. To participate in the treatment order, you must agree to allow the alcohol service to share information on your attendance and progress with your probation office. This information may be used to inform the court of your progress.
Normally it is required to keep weekly appointments at the alcohol service with the key worker, and the probation officer will be informed if there is failure to attend appointments and enforcement/breach action will be taken if you fail to attend without good reason.
Progress on the Order will be reviewed regularly by the Probation Officer and key Worker and there is the opportunity to discuss the treatment and progress on the programme. If the Court sentences you to a Community Rehabilitation Order with alcohol treatment the treatment service will be specified in the Order.
Offender Substance Abuse Programme (OSAP): OSAP is suitable for both men and women with serious substance misuse issues. It aims to raise their awareness of the link between drug and alcohol misuse and offending, and to provide offenders with the skills to reduce or stop substance misuse, thus reducing offending. The court may have ordered you to follow this programme as part of a community sentence, or it may be a condition of your prison licence.You will learn different ways of solving problems and learn
- • skills to help you plan for the future, including getting a job and how to spend your leisure time
- • to improve your self-control and social skills
- • to avoid other people who abuse drugs or alcohol
- • to understand the effects of drugs and alcohol and the link to offending
- • to how to avoid going back to drugs or alcohol
There are 26 sessions. There are two sessions a week, each for 2.5 hours. There are also pre-group and follow-up sessions which your offender manager will discuss with you.ffender
One to One (1:1) : One to One aims to enable offenders to develop a range of problem-solving skills in order to change their behaviour and the underpinning thought, values and attitudes related to offending. The court may order you to follow this programme as part of your sentence. It will help you look at your skills and how you make decisions, learn how to think things through and make decisions without offending and learn how to use new skills to solve real problems in your life
Thinking Skills Programme (TSP): TSP is a group programme which helps offenders to think things over rationally, instead of acting rashly and getting into trouble. TSP is a group of 23 sessions each lasting up to 2½ hours. There will usually be 2 sessions each week. There will be between 4 and 12 people in the group with 2 staff.
TSP is based on the idea that behaviour and thinking are linked. This group can help you to learn new ways of thinking about the choices you face in your everyday life and will help you stop offending.
The new skills we offer are:
- Not being so impulsive,
- Thinking in a creative way
- Thinking logically
- Finding alternative ways forward
- Considering how your behaviour affects other people
- Learning to listen to others
- Learning how to convince others
- Learning how to negotiate
- Making better decisions