Joint Case Work Intervention in an OPD Community Pathway
Research type
Research Study
Full title
What are practitioner's perceptions and experiences of a brief joint case work intervention within the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Community Pathway?
IRAS ID
309932
Contact name
Rosie Rutherford
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 10 months, 7 days
Research summary
The Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway is a National initiative to meet the needs of service users who present a high risk of harm to others and who have traits of personality disorder linked to their offending behaviour.
Within the OPD pathway, joint casework (JC) is a brief intervention (1-6 sessions maximum) offered by OPD teams across the country. In this intervention the OPD practitioner works directly with the person on probation (service user) and probation practitioner. The JC needs to have an express purpose for solving a particular dilemma (OPD Pathway Guidance Principles and Best Practice, 2019). The aims of JC include increasing insight into an individual’s personality difficulties, directly impacting their offending behaviour, and upskilling probation staff in their psychological thinking about cases and embedding this into their future practice. There is currently no agreed understanding of the ‘active ingredients’ for successful JC. There is some guidance regarding what the JC should address (e.g. to engage the individual in motivation work) but no guidance relating to how the intervention could/should be done.
Currently there is very limited research investigating joint working, in the community forensic mental health field. There is some research exploring key themes, such as balance of power, the balance between therapy and risk and the importance of a collaborative approach (Foster, Bell, and Jayasinghe. 2013; Unnithan, Prabha, Johnson and Janis 2012). These papers were concerned more with general multi-agency working rather than co-delivery of a specific structured intervention such as JC. In our review of papers we have concluded that further research into the experiences of those involved in JC is required with a view to understanding the active ingredients for successful intervention. We hope this will then provide a platform for starting to evaluate effectiveness in future studies.
This study will be using qualitative methods to explore the experiences of 10-12 service users and 10-12 practitioners who have been involved in JC within the OPD pathway. It is widely accepted now that understanding the perspectives of service users is essential for understanding and improving services (Bennett, 2014; Preston, 2015). It is also well acknowledged that service users and professional’s perspectives of interventions can differ (e.g. Livingston, 2018). It is therefore important to explore the experiences of both practitioners and service users involved in interventions.
We have worked together with experts by experience, to shape our research design and study question. Our research question is:
What are service user and professional's perceptions and experiences of joint case working partnership within an Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) community pathway service?
And the objectives are to explore:
1. The least and most helpful aspects of the intervention
2. Barriers Service Users experience (when accessing the intervention)
3. Relationship dynamics
4. The management and ownership of risk the person presents to others and themselves.
5. How experiences of joint working are different to probation appointments as usualParticipants will take part in semi-structured interviews, conducted either remotely or at a probation site. Thematic analysis will be utilised to code and theme the data set.
The results of this research will inform the practice of OPD joint case working services UK-wide through the dissemination of the results via presentation, conferences and publication. Participants will also receive a summary of research findings.
References:
Bennett, A. L., (2014). Service users' initial hopes, expectations and experiences of a high security psychologically informed planned environment (PIPE) Journal of Forensic Practice, 16(3), 216-227.
Foster, J., Bell, L., and Jayasinghe, N. (2013) Care control and collaborative working in a prison setting. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 27: 184-190
Livingston, J. D., (2018). What does success look like in the forensic mental health system? Perspectives of service users and service providers. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 62(1), 208-228.
Preston, N., (2015). Psychologically informed planned environments (PIPEs): Empowering the institutionalised prisoner. Forensic Update, 117, 7-14.
Prisons Strategy (2021) [White Paper] Ministry of Justice
Unnithan, Prabha, Johnson and Janis (2012). Collaboration in juvenile justice: A multi-agency study. Federal Probation 76:3
REC name
East of England - Essex Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/EE/0124
Date of REC Opinion
5 Jul 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion