Intensive Engagement in Gloucestershire initial meeting April 2018

1. Intensive Engagement in
Neighbourhood Policing April 2018
Initial Engagement
Richard James
Tim Curtis
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2. Why do things have to change?
International
• Fragmented communities, alienation, disaffection, radicalisation.
• BREXIT
National
• Austerity - impact on public sector- agencies facing substantial cuts
• Demand focus emerging
• New PM- ‘My government will continue to work to bring communities together and
strengthen society.....Legislation will be introduced to prevent radicalisation, tackle
extremism in all its forms, and promote community integration.’ Queens speech 2016
• NPCC Vision 2025
• HMIC PEEL 2017
• National Violence Strategy
Local
• Police and Crime Plan aspirations
• NHP Review 2017- Same problems in the same places, alongside new complex settings
• Harm Reduction Review 2017- the need for integrated early interventions adopting
problem solving approaches
• Need to develop and deliver ‘Evidence-based’ policing
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3. Gloucestershire Police and Crime Plan
priorities
Gloucestershire Police and Crime Plan 2017-21
• A determined approach to prevent crime, disorder and
manage demand effectively
• Creation of a depth of partnership supporting public
service integration
• Becoming better at prevention rather than increasingly
being focused on reacting
• Collaborative Working
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4. Safer Gloucestershire
• Reducing demand for public services through early intervention and
a preventative approach.
• Using an evidence based decision making approach to determine
priorities and problem solve
• Being more proactive and responding quickly to new threats.
• Proactively managing community relations and tension in
partnership with the local community and networks.
• Ensuring services are centred on people and communities – and
reducing duplication.
• Working with people and communities – building on their strengths
and encourage self-help
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5. What is Intensive Engagement?
• A response to the increasing expectations for local
policing and partners to deliver community safety
• A ‘lean’ and universally applicable model of capacity
building that builds the capacity of locally integrated
teams
• A focus on generating active community participation
• Targeted activities and contextualised solutions- Locally
Identified Solutions and Practices (LISP’s)
• Early intervention and integrated working
• An evidence and research based approach
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6. Intensive Engagement- What does it
look like?
• Evidence Based Capacity Building
– ‘On location’
– With partners/ stakeholders
– 8-step repeatable/ scale-able and evaluated approach- including ‘Rich
Picturing’
– Teaching application of ‘mechanisms’ that are known to work
– On-going advice, support, coaching, networking and access to Subject
Matter Experts (SME’s)
• Evidence Based Implementation
– Face to face working with stakeholders at all levels, internally and
externally
– Application of systems based techniques to embed change
– On-going advice, support, coaching, networking and access to Subject
Matter Experts (SME’s)
– BAU focus
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7. Training- some problems!
• Limited research exists in UK (some more in USA)
• Not ‘context-specific’
• Too often not evidence based
• Not undertaken with ‘partners’
• Not aligned to business priorities
• Not seen as important by operational business-
often seen as ‘counter culture’.
• Limited effect (often ‘decay’ has occurred within
6 months)
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8. Going deeper
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9. The context
• “engagement and consultation with their
communities was predominately focused on
public meetings, local priorities were based on
the concerns of a small and unrepresentative part
of the community, and some hard-to-reach
groups in these areas reported that
neighbourhood teams did not engage with them”
• Myhill, A (2006/12) Community engagement in
Policing; Lessons from the literature. National
Policing Improvement Agency
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10. Community Engagement
• “The process of enabling the participation of
citizens and communities in policing at their
chosen level, ranging from providing
information and reassurance, to empowering
them to identify and implement solutions to
local problems and influence strategic
priorities and decisions”.
• Myhill (2012:1) and repeated by Simmonds
(2015:1), College of Policing.
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11. Definition of Intensive Engagement
“A structured and consistently repeatable
process of community engagement and
involvement activities aimed at improving co-
production of community safety and resilience,
shaping policing strategies and resources to
prevent and resolve problems in order to
improve legitimacy, sustain visibility and
ensuring procedural justice.”
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12. 12
Policing is currently at Rung 4 or 5

13. The 8 step process
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Intensive Engagement- Locally Identified Solutions and Practices (LISP)- 8 step toolkit
LISP step 1 Clarify the justification for commencing Intensive Engagement -scan what is known about the neighbourhood. What does
crime and other data tell us? What are the issues identified? What is the evidence for this? Is there an evidence base for
adopting as a location?
LISP step 2 What community assets already exist in the location? What networks and associations are there? What are the
vulnerabilities are in the area? (what makes this area already mostly successful?)
LISP step 3 Who shares the problem? Stakeholders & networks Identify who are directly involved in this issue? (individuals, agencies,
businesses, residents etc). How are all people/ agencies involved associated?
LISP step 4 Develop Problem Rich Pictures – Engage with community members to establish how all stakeholders see the problem?
Where do the issues arise? What parts of the neighbourhood are successful? Map the results
LISP step 5 Form a working group made up of stakeholders who are engaged and able to make changes
LISP step 6 Develop Solution Rich Pictures –Engage the working group to identify what the solutions look like from the stakeholders
perspective? How can they be achieved? What would the neighbourhood look like if all the issues were solved?
LISP step 7 Agree Interventions & Evaluation (Who is doing what, when, how, by when, what does success look like?)
LISP step 8 Establish escalation processes with stakeholders, authorities and agencies- what will make the interventions fails? What are
you going to do about it to prevent that happening? Who will you need to approach to unblock barriers to progress?
Builds on the SARA model, but asks different questions and tackles a different type of
problem: super complex and messy community problems

14. ‘Some’ of the reasons why IE works
Community Policing Research
Evidence
Features of LISP based Intensive Engagement
In-depth understanding of people, place
and problems
In-depth investigation of the police crime problem in the context of the other problems
experienced in the locality
Full and consistent application of
interventions
The training and subsequent evaluation of the quality of LISP work, and standard
proforma
Sufficient ‘dose’ of intensive engagement
with sufficient time
Success, i.e. depth of understanding of the problem and success of the interventions is
determined by the working group rather than police timeframes
Proactive contact Deliberate choices are made at the screening stage about the importance of the locality to
policing outcomes. Process requires identification of all potential stakeholder groups,
including hard to reach.
A group of residents Where community organisations appropriate to the problems don’t exist, the LISP process
creates the social capital and networks to allow this to happen
Joint problem solving Co-production of the problem analysis and solving stages is central
Highly connected individuals The LISP working group is made up of highly connected and highly capable people,
Support is won Working group members elicit a clearly understood self-interest that underpins
expected successes to secure and ‘win’ support
Attuned to community dynamics The rich picturing processes develop a nuanced and empathetic understanding of the
community and the issues and tensions within it.
Tacit skills Training, with the aid of the publicly available handbook, briefings to senior officers and a
process of identifying the best implementations of LISP and mentoring of officers ensure
that police skills are embedded and propagated across the force
Not reliant on multi-agency delivery Where statutory partners are actively engaged, LISP provides a clear and discrete
method for limited involvement. Where statutory agencies are not engaged, LISP provides
a clear evidence base for Police and community to hold statutory agencies to account.
From CoP ‘What works’ Centre
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15. Vertical/horizontal delivery of IE
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Senior leadership
Sergeants
PCSOs
Priority Area
Neighbourhood Police Officers
Community Partnership officers
Force-wide Specialists, ASB etc
Investigative & Reactive officers aware
Inspector

16. The Training Process
• 1 day, with detailed coaching at each step
• 15 participants; horizontal and vertical teams
• Handbook for reference after training
• Developing the learning relationship
• Understanding the policing problem from their
perspective
• 1hr guided ‘walkabout’ in target locality to experience
the whole ‘problem situation’
• Practice in rich picturing and problem solving
• Shifting from deficits to assets-based thinking
• Setting evaluation criteria
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17. Small team coaching at each step of
implementation
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Intensive Engagement- Locally Identified Solutions and Practices (LISP)- 8 step toolkit
LISP step 1 Clarify the justification for commencing Intensive Engagement -scan what is known about the neighbourhood. What does
crime and other data tell us? What are the issues identified? What is the evidence for this? Is there an evidence base for
adopting as a location?
LISP step 2 What community assets already exist in the location? What networks and associations are there? What are the
vulnerabilities are in the area? (what makes this area already mostly successful?)
LISP step 3 Who shares the problem? Stakeholders & networks Identify who are directly involved in this issue? (individuals, agencies,
businesses, residents etc). How are all people/ agencies involved associated?
LISP step 4 Develop Problem Rich Pictures – Engage with community members to establish how all stakeholders see the problem?
Where do the issues arise? What parts of the neighbourhood are successful? Map the results
LISP step 5 Form a working group made up of stakeholders who are engaged and able to make changes
LISP step 6 Develop Solution Rich Pictures –Engage the working group to identify what the solutions look like from the stakeholders
perspective? How can they be achieved? What would the neighbourhood look like if all the issues were solved?
LISP step 7 Agree Interventions & Evaluation (Who is doing what, when, how, by when, what does success look like?)
LISP step 8 Establish escalation processes with stakeholders, authorities and agencies- what will make the interventions fails? What are
you going to do about it to prevent that happening? Who will you need to approach to unblock barriers to progress?
Senior leaders

18. Plan to finalise
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19. 19

20. What it might look like
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21. 21

22. 22

23. PCSO picturing
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24. PCSO feedback and planning
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25. 25

26. 26

27. Next steps
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28. Barriers
• Community engagement unfocused, inconsistent and speaking to
the wrong people
• Communities disengage over short-term ‘have your say’ and ‘world
cafe’ events
• Abstraction and unplanned ‘busyness’- reactive, downstream
• Lack of triage in calls for service
• Officers lack ‘street craft’ to observe root causes of problem
• Where middle management are not experienced in NP, PCSOs are
being treated as ‘shift officers’, and deployed on low grade data
collection tasks
• PCSOs responding to problems that are not resolvable by PCSOs
(bilking, catalytic converter theft)
• Removal of ACA may result in less connection to victims and wider
community
• Not being ‘driven’ by management performance needs
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29. Conclusions
• “This study has demonstrated that the 27
mechanisms satisfactorily map from the
vulnerable locality contexts to the PEEL
policing outcomes, therefore LISP is an
effective new tool in the neighbourhood
policing toolkit for engaging with high risk
vulnerable neighbourhoods in an effective,
legitimate and confidence building manner.”
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30. To recap
• PCSOs are, on the whole, already capable and experienced
in community engagement
• Intensive Engagement brings a procedurally fair, consistent
and repeatable process to that engagement
• It focuses effort on locations that are provide greatest calls
for service and are most vulnerable
• Enriched engagement with non-statutory partners,
residents and businesses
• Legitimacy and proactive visibility improves
• Improves community resilience and capable guardianship
• Allows public opinion to be balanced against victims
experience and what police know to be crime problems,
and challenges the stakeholders to present solutions rather
than just problems.
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31. Organisational Benefits
• Opportunity for early intervention
• Tactical integrated working
• Addressing local priorities
• Increased community intelligence
• Effective problem solving
• Increased community capacity and participation
• Reduced demand on services
• Access to wider support and funding opportunities
• Aligned to Gloucs Police NHP model and Harm reduction strategy
• Addressing HMIC PEEL feedback
• Meeting aims and objectives of Gloucs Police and Crime Plan
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32. Challenges for Senior Managers
• To understand and advocate the approach
internally and externally
• To actively support the training
• To create capacity for training and
implementation
• To monitor, support and evaluate progress
alongside current performance framework
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