Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation has praised Interserve’s CRCs in a report which references the number of research projects undertaken by Community Rehabilitation Companies nationally.

Interserve undertook two research projects, accounting for two of the three bodies of research cited by HMIP that were undertaken by the UK’s 20 CRCs. One of the company’s projects was approached by Dr Rebecca Woolford, Research and Evaluation Manager for Interserve’s justice business, and the other by the Policy Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU) at Manchester Metropolitan University.

HMIP published a bulletin on “Building the evidence base for high-quality probation services: The role of probation providers” and both of Interserve’s projects were referenced in the report as an example of good research practice.

Dr Woolford worked collaboratively with managers, practitioners and external academics on various projects including observations, interviews and focus groups (face-to-face or remotely). PERU embarked on a ‘personalisation’ project to develop, pilot and evaluate more innovative approaches to personalised ways of working with service users, promoting positive life choices, tackling root causes of lifestyle problems, and building personal capacity and resilience.

Dr Woolford said: “I am delighted HMIP has cited our work. This demonstrates that we grounded our practice in reliable and robust research to underpin an evidence-based approach in working with service users in a probation setting.”

To read more about the research undertaken by Dr Woolford, please click. To read more about PERU’s research into Interserve’s use of Personalisation, please click.