Abstract
The UK Strategy on Managing High Risk of Serious Harm Offenders with Severe Personality Disorder proposes an important role for offender managers in completing case formulations about such offenders. There is little evidence on whether this can be achieved. Our primary aims were to devise, implement and evaluate training in case formulation for offender managers. A secondary aim was to assess whether the training led to changes in offender manager attitudes towards working with offenders with personality disorder. A 5-day training programme was delivered to 20 offender managers, whose ability to carry out case formulation was assessed before and after the training using a 10-point quality checklist. Attitudes towards personality disorder were also assessed before and after. Qualitative feedback on the training was used to provide further insight into the findings. Offender managers showed a significant improvement in their ability to carry out case formulation following training, with 7 of the 10 quality domains on the quality checklist rated as at least 'satisfactory' post training. Qualitative feedback highlighted reasons for some of the shortfalls in two of the three areas that did not show improvement. Improvements were shown in attitudes towards working with offenders with personality disorder in two of three domains. Our findings provide further evidence for the effectiveness of training offender managers in case formulation. This is encouraging in terms of extending implementation of the Offender Personality Disorder Pathway, but a full trial is indicated, partly not only because sample sizes have been small so far, but also because the participants have been enthusiastic volunteers rather than randomly selected offender managers, and there are indications from other work that we know too little about optimal extent of training and about whether its effects are sustained. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Highlights
The recent UK Strategy on Managing High Risk of Serious Harm Offenders with Severe Personality Disorder proposes a significant role for Offender Managers (OMs) completing case formulations on personality disordered (PD) offenders
Despite the high economic and social costs of these disorders, research on the effectiveness of interventions for PD remains limited (e.g. Gibbon et al, 2011) and there has long been a debate as to whether individuals with PD should be managed within the health or criminal justice system (e.g. Eastman, 1999)
A practitioners’ guide has been published by the National Offender Management Service in the UK to address some of these gaps (Ministry of Justice, 2011), and new guidelines set out principles and standards for Case Formulation (CF) as part of the UK Government’s Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway strategy
Summary
The recent UK Strategy on Managing High Risk of Serious Harm Offenders with Severe Personality Disorder proposes a significant role for Offender Managers (OMs) completing case formulations on personality disordered (PD) offenders. Aim The primary aims of this study were to devise and implement a training programme to teach Offender Managers to carry out case formulations, and assess their subsequent ability to do so. Case Formulation (CF) is a process that provides a psychological understanding of a person’s difficulties, and ideally results in a treatment plan to address them (Hart et al, 2011). It is both a process and an outcome, in that the process of CF leads to the development of a specific formulation for each individual.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
