Nacro's response to Breaking the Cycle Green Paper

Breaking the Cycle: Nacro’s response | 50engage and those who do not who are often part of the problem. This distinction suggeststhat there is no single method of working, but a variety of different approaches that should beorientated to individual circumstances and needs.Work with troubled and troublesome families goes far beyond the remit for youth offendingteams. Early intervention can be most effective in the early years. Family support work andparenting services should be provided by agencies that specialise in this field. Work withwomen should be carried out by gender-specific specialists to ensure that there is appropriatesupport for those experiencing domestic and sexual violence. Nacro believes that the existingnetwork of women’s community projects funded jointly by the Ministry of Justice and theCorston Coalition of Independent Funders and delivered by voluntary organisations should besustained and commissioned to provide holistic family support services, working within multiagencyteams. Again, Nacro supports full implementation of the strategy in Healthy Children,Safer Communities.Q59 What more can we do to engage people in the justice system, enable andpromote volunteering, and make it more transparent and accountable to thepublic?Many people are engaged in the justice system as volunteers – magistrates, lay inspectors,prison visitors, members of prison independent monitoring boards and trustees of voluntaryorganisations, to name but a few. Many more work as volunteer mentors or provide other formsof unpaid voluntary support to charities and statutory agencies working with offenders.Nacro welcomes the proposed reforms to the vetting and barring scheme and to theRehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Both reforms will ensure that barriers to volunteering arereduced.The plans for elected local police and crime commissioners have yet to be spelt out in detail,but may provide further routes for involvement in the justice system at local level. Voluntarysector organisations (often through local second-tier infrastructure support organisations) areoften represented within local community safety partnerships, but again it is unclear how thesestructures will develop in the future. There is a need for government to continue to consultwith voluntary and community organisations to ensure that opportunities for volunteering aremaintained which enable volunteers to play a central role in the system.