Download or read book The Management of Staff Sickness Absence in the National Probation Service written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-04-26 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This NAO report examines sick leave in the National Probation Service, which was running at 12.3 days per person in the 2004-05 period at a cost of £31.6 million. A number of recommendations have been set out as follows. That the National Probation Directorate should agree with the Chief Probation Officer a consistent minimum standard for collecting and reporting sickness absence data in their areas. This in turn could be used to produce comparative analyses, and offer a basis to diagnose the causes of sickness absence. An upgrade in some areas of their information technology systems should occur, so that better management information can be compiled. All probation areas should implement the mandatory elements of the national policy on sickness absence. All Chief Officers should review their action plans for reducing sickness absence. Sickness absence should be managed effectively but sympathetically, by including return to work interviews, along with a means of distinguishing between avoidable and unavoidable sickness absences, and addressing the culture of absenteeism. Long term sickness absence should be reviewed as a matter of urgency. Policies relating to work/life balance should be implemented nationally.
Download or read book Professionalism in Probation written by Matt Tidmarsh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-14 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores probation staff understandings of professionalism in the aftermath of the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms to services in England and Wales. Drawing on the sociology of the professions, this book offers an original and timely contribution to the criminal justice literature, examining the ways in which professionalism in probation has been reshaped and renegotiated in response to the market logic that has dominated public services in recent decades. The case of the TR reforms offers a useful platform for exploring broader shifts in understandings of professionalism. This book demonstrates the ways in which professionalism in probation can be understood as a discourse through which professionals are expected to be receptive to the demands of multiple stakeholders – offenders, taxpayers, the state, and, additionally, the market. It situates TR in a marketising continuum, the logical endpoint of a period of reform that has sought to discipline staff and reshape their understandings of professionalism. Written in a clear and direct style, this book is essential reading for researchers engaged in probation, rehabilitation, criminal justice, and organizational and professional studies.
Download or read book The Termination of the PFI Contract for the National Physical Laboratory written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-05-10 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1998, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and Laser, a special purpose company jointly owned by Serco Group plc and John Laing plc, signed a 25-year long Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract. Laser would build and manage new facilities for the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), comprising 16 linked modules, containing over 400 laboratories, and replacing many existing buildings. The planned cost of the new buildings was approximately £96 million. The DTI would pay Laser a unitary charge, of £11.5 million (1998 prices) a year once the new buildings were ready, the charge increasing annually based on the increase in retail prices. The project suffered considerable construction delays and difficulties in achieving the specification for some parts of the buildings, mainly due to deficient design. In December 2004, it was agreed to terminate the PFI contract. The DTI paid Laser £75 million for its interest in the new buildings. This was the first termination of a major PFI contract involving serious non-performance. This report examines the problems that led to the termination, why these problems arose, how the Department managed them and the value for money consequences of the termination. The report finds that the DTI successfully transferred risk in the PFI contract to the private sector, but that the project risks could have been reduced with firmer control and better communication. Up to and including the termination, the Department's investment in the new facilities was about £122 million (March 2005 prices). In return, the Department secured an asset valued at £85 million and for which all but eight of more than 400 laboratories should be capable of being made to meet its specification in full. The private sector reported a loss of at least £100 million.
Download or read book Improving the Use of Temporary Nursing Staff in NHS Acute and Foundation Trusts written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-07-12 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes booklet 'Good practice in managing the use of temporary nursing staff' (39 p., 21 cm) on inside back cover.
Download or read book Dictionary of Probation and Offender Management written by Rob Canton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers new ideas and concepts as well as the established probation lexicon, including institutional, legal, political and theoretical terms used in the discipline and importing concepts from the disciplines of sociology, criminology and psychology.
Download or read book Dictionary of Forensic Psychology written by Graham Towl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past decade, forensic psychology has grown rapidly as a subject, with an increasing number of forensic psychologists working in demanding roles in prisons, secure training facilities, and high, medium and low security healthcare facilities as well as other parts of the criminal justice system. This Dictionary is designed to meet the needs of both students and practitioners. It contains approximately 100 entries on key terms and concepts, arranged alphabetically and contributed by leading academic and practicing forensic psychologists.
Download or read book The National Programme for IT in the NHS written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-06-16 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Programme for Information Technology in the NHS (the Programme) is a ten year programme to use information technology (IT) to reform the way the NHS in England uses information, and hence to improve services and the quality of patient care. The core of the Programme will be the NHS Care Records Service, but other elements include x-rays accessible by computer, electronic transmission of prescriptions, and booking of first outpatient appointments. The Programme was launched in 2002, and is now run by an agency, NHS Connecting for Health. This report examines: the progress made in delivering the systems against the original plans and costs (part 1); steps taken by the Department of Health, the agency and the NHS to deliver the Programme (part 2); how the IT systems have been procured (part 3); how the NHS is preparing to use the systems (part 4). The NAO estimates the gross cost of the Programme will be £12.4 billion to 2013-14. Although the pilot NHS Care Records Service will not be in place until late 2006, almost two years late, and other milestones have been deferred, the NAO reports substantial progress with the Programme. Management systems are in place, contracts were placed quickly and achieved large reductions in prices from bidders, and contract terms include important safeguards to secure value for money. Deployments of operational systems have begun, and several additional tasks have been delivered that were outside the original brief. Three key areas are identified which present significant challenges to the successful implementation of the Programme: ensuring IT suppliers continue to deliver systems that meet the needs of the NHS, to agreed timescales without further slippage; ensuring NHS organizations play a full part in implementing the systems; winning the support of NHS staff and the public in making the best use of the systems to improve services. The NAO report makes a number of recommendations for future management of the Programme.
Download or read book What Matters in Probation written by George Mair and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The What Works initiative is having a profound impact on the work of the National Probation Service, and much has been invested in new accredited programmes - both in terms of the numbers of offenders planned to complete these programmes and their anticipated impact upon offending. Yet there has been little scholarly or professional discussion of the nature and risks of the new paradigm: it is important that it is subjected to critical debate and scrutiny. This book aims to provide a critical overview of What Works, providing a wider set of perspectives on a project which is vital for the future of the National Probation Service.
Download or read book Annual Report and Accounts written by Great Britain. National Offender Management Service and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Redemption Rehabilitation and Risk Management written by George Mair and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Redemption, Rehabilitation and Risk Management provides the most accessible and up-to-date account of the origins and development of the Probation Service in England and Wales. The book explores and explains the changes that have taken place in the service, the pressures and tensions that have shaped change, and the role played by government, research, NAPO, and key individuals from its origins in the nineteenth century up to the plans for the service outlined by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government. The probation service is a key agency in dealing with offenders; providing reports for the courts that assist sentencing decisions; supervizing released prisoners in the community and working with the victims of crime. Yet despite dealing with more offenders than the prison service, at lower cost and with reconviction rates that are lower than those associated with prisons, the Probation Service has been ignored, misrepresented, taken for granted and marginalized, and probation staff have been sneered at as ‘do-gooders’. The service as a whole is currently under serious threat as a result of budget cuts, organizational restructuring, changes in training, and increasingly punitive policies. This book details how probation has come to such a pass. By tracing the evolution of the probation service, Redemption, Rehabilitation and Risk Management not only sheds invaluable light on a much misunderstood criminal justice agency, but offers a unique examination of twentieth century criminal justice policy. It will be essential reading for students and academics in criminal justice and criminology.
Download or read book Supporting Small Business written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-05-24 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2000, the Department of Trade and Industry established the Small Business Service (SBS). This report presents four aspects of its work in more detail - SBS's role in: influencing Government regulations and policies; facilitating small business access to finance; helping to join up services across Government; providing advice and support to small business. The NAO report also sets out a number of recommendations, including the following: that the current performance measurement framework could be simplified, by reviewing the Public Service Agreement objectives and targets; that an improvement in the programme of evaluations should align Government targets with small business aims and objectives; that the Small Business Service actions and activities should be supported by well documented cost-effective evidence; that the Government Action Plan for departmental co-operation should be further developed, including specific commitments from government departments on the actions they are undertaking and the resources they have committed to small business issues. The latest data, from 2003 showed that of the 3.5 million businesses in England all bar 5,400 were either small (with fewer that 50 employees) or medium-sized (with 50 to 249 employees). Small and medium sized businesses are found in all sectors of the economy, account for half of all business turnover and employ 57% of the England's private sector workforce. This report examines the SBS's performance management framework and its performance against key targets.
Download or read book Progress on Tackling Pensioner Poverty written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-07-21 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2002 report Tackling pensioner poverty: encouraging take-up of entitlements (ISBN 0102919577) examined efforts by the Department for Work and Pensions to increase the take-up of benefits by pensioners. It was followed by a report from the Committee of Public Accounts (ISBN 0215009347) that made a number of recommendations. This report looks at the changes the Department have made against those recommendations and the challenges that remain. The overall conclusion is that the Pension Service has made substantial progress in helping pensioners secure their entitlements, using new and thought through approaches. However there is more to be done. This report is accompanied by a technical report that describes the methodology and findings in greater detail.
Download or read book The Right of Access to Open Countryside written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-06-09 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduced under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, the new right of access (commonly known as the 'right to roam') was phased in between September 2004 and October 2005, giving walkers the right to walk on large areas of the English countryside without having to keep to specified paths. 865,000 hectares of land (around 6.5 per cent of all land in England) is in practice open to the public and of this, 733,000 hectares is land to which no right of access previously existed. The NAO report finds that the right to roam was successfully introduced by the Countryside Agency in conjunction with Defra two months ahead of target, with easy access to over 90 per cent of the sites tested. There were initial problems with the countryside access website established to provide public information about the scheme, relating to the quality of online maps of access land and to the search function, but these had begun to improve by April 2006. The cost of implementing the open access programme was almost double the original estimate, largely due to a failure to pilot test the implementation of the scheme and a lack of adequate project management. In total, the cost of implementation is estimated to be £69 million and ongoing running costs are expected to be around £13 million in 2006-07. Although the benefits of the scheme cannot be easily quantified in financial terms, the NAO's initial assessment of the new right of access finds that it passed the key test of whether walkers can use it. Recommendations made include that in order to improve public transport facilities to enable people on low incomes and from urban areas to have more opportunities to use their new right of access, the Agency should explore with local councils the cost-effectiveness of diverting weekend bus services past open access land.
Download or read book Fines Collection written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-05-25 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fines are the most common sentence imposed by Magistrates' courts in England and Wales, covering a range of crimes including motoring offences, drug offences, criminal damage and TV licence evasion. In the year 2004-05, penalties totalling £352 million were imposed, with £75 million cancelled and £222 million collected. Following on from an earlier report (HCP 672, session 2001-02, ISBN 0102914508) published in 2002, the NAO has examined whether the changes made in practices and procedures have resulted in improvements to the enforcement and collections of fines. It is estimated that a 25 per cent reduction in the number of legally cancelled fines would result in potential savings of £6.9 million per year and prompter payment of fines would yield further annual savings of almost one million pounds. Although a series of measures have been introduced by the Department for Constitutional Affairs to improve the system, over two thirds of the cases examined required enforcement action before the offender made any payments. A number of recommendations for further improvements are made, including in relation to developing performance indicators; prompter collection of fines, including making payment facilities (including cash) available at each court; focusing staff resource allocation on the early stages of enforcement; and addressing IT problems caused by the delay of the Libra system
Download or read book International Benchmark of Fraud and Error in Social Security Systems written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-07-20 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The report, based on research carried out by RAND Europe and commissioned by the National Audit Office, presents the results of a benchmarking exercise investigating the issue of fraud and error in the social security systems of eight European and non-European countries (covering Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States). The study describes the different systems studied, assesses the scale and prominence of the problem in a national context, outlines approaches taken to measure and to reduce fraud and error, and draws out the principal themes emerging from the comparisons of relevance for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Findings include that the availability of data and methodologies for measuring fraud and error at national level vary considerably, but the DWP is at the forefront in developing estimates of losses arising from fraud and error in social security expenditure. The high levels of estimated fraud and error in expenditure on benefits, £2.6 billion in 2004-05, have led to the NAO qualifying the DWP's accounts and those of the former Department of Social Security for 16 years in a row. The rates of fraud at the DWP appear comparable to those of other countries, such as USA, Ireland, Canada and New Zealand, and it compares favourably in terms of awareness of the problem and activities to combat the problem.
Download or read book Child Support Agency Implementation of the Child Support Reforms written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-06-30 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new system for child support was introduced for new cases and those with links to new cases from 3 March 2003. There were new rules for child support and a simplified calculation of maintenance. In addition the Child Support Agency underwent substantial restructuring and introduced a new IT system. This was necessary because the Agency had been previously missing its targets, suffered from a large backlog of unprocessed cases and there was a low level of compliance from non-resident parents. However there have been problems implementing the reforms. This report provides an assessment of: what caused the problems; the impact on the quality of service provided to the customers; and actions taken by the Agency in response to the problems and the lessons learnt.
Download or read book Using the Contract to Maximise the Likelihood of Successful Project Outcomes written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-06-07 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report is one of a series of studies by the NAO which examine key factors involved in improving project performance in defence equipment procurement, with the aim of establishing best practice in relation to a theoretical 'gold standard' developed by assessing and comparing results of overseas and commercial operations. Following on from the first report in the series (HCP 30, session 2005-06, ISBN 0102932611) which identified the contract as a key component of project control, this report sets out recommendations on how the Ministry of Defence and its industry partners can best use the contract to maximise the likelihood of successful project outcomes. (It does not examine methods (competitive or otherwise) the MoD might pursue to select a potential supplier, as the effective use of competition will be the subject of a future report). More information on the evidence underlying the recommendations in this report and the gold standard criteria developed can be found on the website: www.naodefencevfm.org
