Developing a Health and Justice Strategy for Greater Manchester

Poor health adversely affects both victims of crime and offenders. From learning disabilities to drug addiction to poor mental health, it is clear that there are a range of health factors that directly increase your likelihood of entering the criminal justice system. The links between health, victimisation and offending are both critical and complex: that is why we have developed a health and justice strategy and are the first city-region to do so.

The aim of this strategy is to improve the health of people who are already in the criminal justice system, or who are at risk of entering it – either as a victim or offender. We believe this will reduce the risk of some people becoming a victim, and prevent others from getting involved in crime, as well as reducing the risk of reoffending of those already caught up in crime.

We have developed a vision and a set of priorities for our Health and Justice Strategy. We sought your feedback to help us improve the support we give to vulnerable people who come into contact with the criminal justice system in Greater Manchester.

The feedback that was collected during this consultation will be used to shape the delivery plan for the Greater Manchester Health and Justice Strategy.

This consultation was open from October 2nd and ran until October 31^st 2019.

We received 281 responses to this consultation. The majority of these responses were received via the online survey, with a smaller number shared with us directly via email.

We were pleased to note that victims of crime were well-represented among the public responses (73%), as were individuals who consider themselves to have a disability.

90% of respondents either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with our vision for an integrated strategy for health and justice, and 90% of responses also agreed with the priorities which we set within the strategy. We take this as a good indication that members of the public are broadly in favour of our approach, and are supportive of the direction we are taking.

Members of the public were clear about their preference for approaches that focused on prevention. Specifically, the parts of the strategy which they considered most important included the reduction of violence on one hand, and the prevention of young people becoming involved in crime on the other.

A number of important pieces of feedback were given, and we have taken note of several. These included:

• Mental health: members of the public were keen to see a greater emphasis placed on mental health in the vision and priorities of the strategy. It was acknowledged that mental health was recognised explicitly throughout the document, but the public’s perception was that work on mental health should be made more prominent.
• Support for offenders: while often sympathetic, members of the public expressed a lack of certainty about the rationale behind improved support for offenders. There was concern that a greater emphasis needed to be placed on supporting victims – and that these two objectives needed to be approached with distinctly from one another.
• Wider considerations: members of the public identified a number of other factors which they felt were just as important in determining offending related behaviours. These included education (for children and young people) and employment opportunities (for adults). They felt that ‘health and justice’ only made sense as a strategy in the context of wider issues.
• Communication: members of the public expressed a concern about the degree to which we would communicate with them. They were keen for us to consult with them and involve them in designing and delivering policy. They were also keen for us to tell them clearly about what we are doing.

The results of the survey were formally reviewed by the steering group for the Greater Manchester Integrated Health and Justice Strategy, and key decisions were taken about amendments to our approach. The Strategy, and specifically its delivery plan, has been revised to reflect the considerations taken on board during the consultation.

The feedback we received from the survey as well as our engagement with staff has informed a number of proposed amendments to our initial proposals.

The updated strategy includes:

• We will make specific provision for mental health within the delivery plans for appropriate priorities. We will also distinguish mental and physical health in the outcomes framework for the strategy.
• We have ensured that work streams designed to support victims are separate from work streams designed to support offenders. Work on victims and offenders will be resourced specifically and distinctly. We will specifically monitor outcomes for victims as well as offenders within the outcomes framework.
• We will adopt an approach to service user engagement which directly involves service users in developing policy.
• We are going to re-draft our priority on “family justice” and will seek to make sure that we recognise the importance of the whole family.
• We will develop a communications plan in the first part of 2020 which will ensure we keep the public appraised of our work.
• We will direct resources towards the priorities which the public have expressed as the most important in the first instance: violence reduction, and the prevention of young people from becoming victims or offenders.

The Integrated Health and Justice Strategy for Greater Manchester will be considered at parallel meetings of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership on Friday 31^st January 2020.