Enhancing access to probation interventions

In 2012, Leeds Metropolitan University2 formed a partnership with the West Yorkshire Probation Trust3 in Leeds, enabling final year speech and language therapy students to undertake placements within the Trust. The opportunity enabled pairs of students to explore the need for Speech and Language Therapy within the Probation Service, working with high levels of independence, as there were no Speech and Language Therapists employed by the Trust.4 This discussion will review evidence of the level and types of communication difficulties within the offender population, consider the impact of such difficulties, how issues have been addressed and reflect on our experiences as Speech and Language Therapists at Leeds Beckett University of working with the Probation Service in Leeds. Courts can award intensive community orders as an alternative to prison sentences. As part of community sentencing, the Leeds Probation Service runs a series of programmes. Attendance at the groups is compulsory and non-attendance can result in offenders returning to court for breaching the requirements of their sentence. Students were placed in three different settings; the Thinking Skills Programme; the Integrated Domestic Abuse Programme5 and the Skills for Work team (not a compulsory intervention). The placement aims were to observe and assess the communication skills of the offenders attending the programmes; to observe and assess the communication style of the facilitators running the programmes and to review the resources used on the programmes.

http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/psj...