- About Us
- Our strategic plan
Our strategic plan
Download a pdf of our full strategic plan.
Download a pdf of the Executive summary.
Our strategy in a nutshell . . .
Ask any police officer, A&E nurse or prison officer and they will tell you about some familiar faces: men and women they see time and time again who have poor mental health and multiple other problems, who never seem to get the help they need. This group, who we estimate to number at least 60,000 in England at any one time, generates hugely disproportionate costs to our communities and the public purse. Their lives are characterised by exclusion, chaos, crime and antisocial behaviour. They are victims as well as perpetrators. They can be found in all of our communities.
We call them the ‘revolving doors’ group.
Our emergency services and criminal justice system are forced to respond because our mainstream services do not. Our health and welfare systems, designed to tackle one problem at a time, or to focus on more serious conditions, are simply not geared up to provide the sort of help people need to avoid or escape this trap. The result is that people are caught in a downward spiral as one problem exacerbates another, causing damage to themselves and communities, generating huge costs to the public purse.
Now, with the doubling of the prison population, a 60% reoffending rate among prison leavers who have served custodial sentences of less than six months, and the need to reduce public expenditure - tackling the waste of resources, and of people’s potential that this failure creates, must be a national priority.
This is our plan to do something about it.
Revolving Doors Agency’s unique purpose is to stimulate reform of the health, welfare and criminal justice systems to end the revolving door.
Our approach is to share our deep understanding of the problem with others to create practical, evidence-based solutions. Our expertise comes from our partnerships with the police, NHS, prison service and councils across the country, the involvement of people with direct experience of the issues through our national service user forum, and our wide network of policymakers, local leaders and service providers across a range of sectors.
So while we no longer provide direct services ourselves, the impact of the changes in services that we continue to influence has helped hundreds of people to turn their lives around. We have also shown how targeted early intervention enables people to connect to the right services to address their needs and stop them committing crime in the first place.
Our demonstration projects operate across the country and include ongoing work in HMP Lewes in the South East, and in the community in Durham, Birmingham, Warrington, Islington and Milton Keynes. Our partners Hafal are running a service aimed at women returning from prison to Wales. Elsewhere projects aimed at system change are underway in the women’s prison HMP Styal, in Yorkshire and Humber and in Watford. Lessons have been learned from our pilots in communities as different as Barnstaple in North Devon and Tower Hamlets in East London.
Now, after a decade and a half of demonstrating the need and working effectively at local level to show what solutions look like, we do not have to reinvent the wheel. But it is clear that, to really change the system, a different approach is needed from government.
This was recognised in the Social Exclusion Task Force report Reaching Out in 2006. A range of initiatives point the way including Total Place, the Integrated Offender Management pilots, the Adults Facing Chronic Exclusion pilots and the recent Offender Health Strategy.
These are all heading in the right direction but, on their own, they will not bring the system change that is required. To do this the Government must recognise and prioritise this group and then develop and implement a comprehensive policy framework that incentivises the necessary changes on the ground. We are convinced that this can and must happen. The case is clear.
We are driven by a strong ambition set out in our vision: an end to the revolving door of crisis and crime, when anyone facing multiple problems and poor mental health is supported to reach their potential, with fewer victims of crime and safer communities as a result.
Drawing on the lessons from our work across the country and the experience of the members of our national service user forum, we have set out how things would need to be different in the future to achieve this vision.
With this clear sense of what needs to change, we set out, under five strategic aims, how we intend to create a momentum of change that takes us a significant way towards achieving this vision. In the next five years we will work with our partners to:
1. Win political commitment - Political leaders in central and local government and in opposition understand the case for reform and implement an effective policy framework. We will make a strong economic case demonstrating the savings that can be achieved through effective interventions.
2. Involve people with direct experience - People with experience of multiple problems and the criminal justice system are engaged in improving local services and national policy.
3. Improve frontline responses - Leaders, managers and frontline workers in the criminal justice system and public services promote a culture of inclusion and partnership.
4. Support local leadership - Local leaders and commissioners across criminal justice, health, housing, social care, substance misuse and other sectors work together to improve outcomes.
5. Build a stronger organisation - Revolving Doors Agency has the resources, skills and support necessary to influence change within a sustainable business model.
We cannot do this alone. We need to work with our supporters, local partners and our network of experts, most of all those people who have experience of being in the revolving door themselves. Together we can bring the change so badly needed.
