Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to improve National Probation Service effectiveness for cases (a) of domestic abuse and (b) involving the safeguarding of children.

The National Probation Service (NPS) is responsible for assessing the level of risk posed by each offender under its supervision and ensuring that a robust plan is in place to manage any risk which the offender presents with respect to domestic abuse or to harming children. Her Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS) has recently created a Directorate to lead a major programme to ensure that the NPS’s operational practice is of the highest standard. All NPS staff are required to complete a training package on child safeguarding and domestic abuse and repeat the training, every three years to ensure that their knowledge and skills are kept up to date.

To support its contribution to local multi-agency arrangements, the NPS has developed a series of National Partnership Strategy Frameworks. They cover the NPS’s involvement in multi-agency risk assessment conferences (MARACs) for high risk domestic abuse victims and Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs).

(a) For domestic abuse, NPS staff are required to be alert to the possibility that there might be issues relating to domestic abuse in every case they manage and not just in those cases where the offender is already convicted of an offence in which domestic abuse is involved. The NPS is able to purchase specialist interventions from the Community Rehabilitation Companies to address the risk of domestic abuse. The then National Offender Management Service (NOMS), now Her Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service, produced and promulgated updated Domestic Abuse Guidance in August 2016.

(b) The NPS issued a Child Safeguarding Policy Statement in January this year, to replace interim guidance. NPS staff now have access to a range of safeguarding toolkits, information, quality assurance tools and practice guidance. In addition, the NPS has produced and promulgated a guide to staff supervising perpetrators of child sexual exploitation.