The safety of you and your family is extremely important to us and we have been working to ensure we do everything we can to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

We have worked made some adaptations to our offices to ensure that they adhere to COVID-19 government guidelines.

Before you attend one of our offices, your Case Manager will be in touch with you to provide you with everything you need to know about safely returning to your probation appointments.

Your Case Manager will also complete an assessment on your personal circumstances to see if it is safe for your return. We hope this gives you confidence about the safety measures we have put in place to protect you and your family.

We also have some face coverings should you need to travel on public transport to your appointments. Please speak with your Case Manager who will send you a face covering out in the post when they contact you to discuss your return.

Please remember, do not come to our offices if you are feeling unwell, speak to your Case Manager.

Your Case Manager will be in touch with you soon, until then, please do not report to any of our offices unless you have been asked to and be sure to attend any other appointments that your Case Manager does schedule for you. If we do not have a contact telephone number for you, please contact your Case Manager as soon as possible.

Once we have completed an assessment of your personal circumstances and you have received all the information about how we intend to keep you safe upon your return, we will set an appointment up for you to see your Case Manager at the office.

Any appointments we make will be staggered to ensure that we can safely distance you from others attending our offices. It will be important for you to keep to your appointment times. The time given to you will ensure that you are safe. Failing to attend at your scheduled time may lead to you being turned away as others may have appointments at the time you arrive.

Some of the changes we have made to keep you safe:

• Hand sanitising stations for you to use around the building, sanitising helps to reduce the spread of COVID-19
• Closure of shared facilities such as toilets (in some of our offices) and refreshment stations to help reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19
• We have staggered appointment times to support social distancing
• Perspex screens in meeting rooms to provide you with extra safety and re-assurance
• One-way systems to help maintain 2m distance
• Increased cleaning in all areas of the building to ensure that all touch points and reception areas are kept clean to reduce the spread of COVID-19

We need your mobile number in the event of a further lockdown, we will contact you by text to inform you of next steps.

Community Payback

We have been really busy making our unpaid work sites safe for your return, we are checking each of our sites against our risk assessments and putting things in place so you can safely complete your unpaid work hours. We are hoping to have some unpaid work sessions up and running over the next couple of weeks, our unpaid work coordinators are currently working in the background to identify those who can return to complete their hours first. We have a safety-first approach to everything we do; everything needs to be just right for your return and as soon as we are ready, we will be in contact with you to discuss your return. If you have any immediate questions, please contact your Case Manager who can help answer any questions that you may have.

Some of the changes we have made to keep you safe:

• We have reduced the number of attendees for unpaid work sessions and moving forward, you will be asked to attend directly to your allocated unpaid work site, one of our supervisors will meet you on site on your allocated days for attendance.
• To maximise your safety, if you have not already been issued with your own unpaid work kit i.e. boots, goggles, gloves, we will issue you with your own unpaid work kit, this must be brought to each of your unpaid work sessions along with enough food and water for your working day, until you complete all of your hours, this avoids cross contamination and decreases the risks associated with COVID-19. (We are no longer able to offer refreshments on site).
• We have created a new toolbox talk that will help you understand each of the safety measures we have put in place to ensure that you can work and operate safely around our unpaid work sites.
• A risk assessment will be carried out each time we visit an unpaid work site, in the event something has been changed without us being notified, we need to be certain it is safe for you to still work.
• We have a strict cleaning regime in place with the correct cleaning materials that conform with government guidelines, including cleaning stations to support hand sanitising and hand washing throughout your working day.

If you have unpaid work or a programme requirement and are not be able to finish it before your order expires, we are still waiting for government guidance as to how to deal with this. Further updates will be provided as soon as possible

Useful Information

• For those awaiting court dates, there is a backlog at the courts due to COVID-19 lockdown. Court teams are working on making their courts safe and will be in contact with you as soon as possible.
• Some courts are safely opening breach courts again, if you do not have a court date for your breach or want to talk about your breach hearing, please contact your Case Manager who may be able to provide you with further details.
• We will update you once we know what will happen with expired orders with remaining unpaid work or programme requirements outstanding, at present we do not know what will happen with these orders. Your Case Manager will be in contact with you once we have more information.

Programmes, short interventions

We are reviewing our plans to re-commence our group programmes and exploring locations that we can deliver our programmes in a safe environment. Once we have finished our review, we are hoping to commence some group intervention sessions, your safety is our main priority. We may ask you to report to a different location to attend your sessions, all of this is still work in progress. We are looking at lots of different options to deliver group work in a safe environment and once we have more information about our plans, we will be in touch.

Any sessions that we do put in place for programmes, brief interventions or RAR activities, will all be completed in a safe environment to ensure that you and your family are not put at risk. Please speak to your Case Manager if you have any questions about our plans, they will look forward to hearing from you.

Some of the work going on right now to help you to return safely to your programme’s session involves: Risk assessments on group rooms, looking at alternative sites to deliver group intervention sessions, looking at group sizes, identifying the interventions we should deliver first and how we deliver these in a safe environment.

CRC Letter - CGM SH

CRC Letter - HIOW SH

CRC Letter - HLNY SH

CRC Letter - MY SH CRC

Letter - WY SHC