- Partnerships & Development
- Projects
- Navigator Project
Navigator Project
Region: East of England
Location: Watford, Hertfordshire
Delivery Partner: Guideposts Trust
Summary
The Navigator Project is exploring how the police can better respond to people with mental health problems, learning disability and other issues such as homelessness or substance use when they are arrested. A screening tool to identify unmet needs has been developed and has been incorporated within the existing custody risk assessment process. Those with unmet need are referred to ‘Navigators’, volunteers who can signpost them to the appropriate local agency.
The Navigator Project is part of our National Development Programme.
Project type: System change and service delivery
Project status: Active
Partners
- Guideposts Trust
- Hertfordshire Constabulary
- Hertfordshire Joint Commissioning Team
- Hertfordshire Probation
- Hertfordshire Criminal Justice Board
- Hertfordshire Partnership Foundation Trust
- A range of community stakeholders
Background
This project emerged from a local concern that people passing through police custody were not accessing support services available in the community that may be able to help them.
Project Aims
- To design a screening approach following arrest that will identify people who may benefit from the support of mental health, learning disability and health and social care services
- To establish a network of local health and social care providers to receive referrals
- To refer people with needs identified through the initial screening to established services
- To develop a multi-agency commissioning approach to take evidence from the project and use it to inform ongoing commissioning.
Project description
In order to put people in contact with services that may be able to help them, it is necessary to identify what kind of help they might need. The first task of the project was therefore to develop a way of finding out what people’s needs are. The initial phase saw the development of a tool for use by police in the custody suite that could be combined with the risk assessment process to identify common mental health problems and moderate learning disabilities. A comprehensive directory of local support services of relevance to this group was also developed, listing over 250 local services.
The project has now moved on to its second phase. Where an arrestee with support needs is not engaged with local support services, she or he can be referred to the Navigator Project whilst in custody or on release. A ‘Navigator’ is a volunteer – hosted by Guideposts Trust – who provides support, information, advice and guidance and who signposts the arrestee to appropriate local support services. Additionally, partner organisations have been encouraged to identify staff within their own agencies to develop and perform the Navigator role.
The Navigator Project worked with Viewpoint to ensure that service users were involved in the development of this project.
Funding contributions have been made to the project by a number of partner agencies.
