Early testing and formative evaluation of the Enablers of Change assessment and sentence planning tool for adults with convictions

Abstract

The Enablers of Change assessment and sentence planning tool has been designed to assess the risks, needs, strengths and protective factors of adults with convictions. Developed by Interserve, a Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) provider in England, the tool is an innovation. The first of its kind in the United Kingdom (UK) to operationalise the risk needs and responsivity model with the ‘good lives’ model and desistance principles for the general adult population of low to medium risk of harm individuals managed by CRCs. This article reports the development, early testing and formative evaluation of the tool and recommendations for its onward development. Given that such integration is regarded by many as the ‘holy grail’ of probation practice, this article is of international significance and will make an original contribution to the limited evidence base on operationalising desistance in the management of adults with convictions in the UK and other jurisdictions.

Enabling change: An assessment tool for adult offenders that operationalises risk needs responsivity and desistance principles

“…Whether it adequately integrates RNR with the GLM and desistance approaches, avoiding dilution in order to provide additionality requires further testing. Proposals for assessing this along with a larger scale quantitative evaluation of the tool have been submitted to Interserve and the Ministry of Justice and are summarised in Wong and Horan (2019). Until this is undertaken it will not be possible to conclude whether it provides an effective and robust assessment that guides effective intervention planning and rehabilitative approach.…”

“…Importantly, the evaluations (Wong and Horan, 2019) provide some indications that the central eight risk factors (Bonta and Andrews, 2017) are each mapped to the EOC constructs. All eight factors are described as being implicitly included within the EOC constructs.…”

“…However, practitioners and service users die experience limitations to the first iteration of the EOC tool, which informed the first evaluation’s conclusion that the tool did not have face validity and that a number of steps were necessary to improve the tool. Recommendations that were actioned by Interserve in developing the second iteration of the tool included: a review of the operationalisation of the theoretical underpinnings and rationale of the EOC; a break-down of the constructs to ensure that each area measured only one thing; ensuring the scoring system was uniform across and within the constructs; improved reflection of a strengths-based focus of the tool by removing deficit-focused scales; the incorporation of processes to collect information on risk; ensuring that the ratings on the self-assessment form (completed by service users before their assessment) were in the same direction as those on the EOC; improved training and guidance; and a review of the appropriateness of language for the participants (Wong and Horan, 2019). This sought to ensure that the EOC tool balances technical performance with fitness for purpose (Merrington, 2004) and includes practitioner perspectives of the desired characteristics of a risk and needs assessment tool (Moore, 2015): practitioners indicated clarity as to why each item is included; definitions of the items were experienced as clear and less ambiguous; scoring systems were experienced as simple to follow; evidence boxes are available for expansion; service users are offered the opportunity to input into their assessment; the tool is useable within limited time constraints; and it was experienced to complement current practice.…”

“…This article examines the theoretical underpinning for the EOC tool and the conceptual integration of desistance with the RNR and GLM models. It acts as a companion piece to an article that provides an account of the development, early testing and formative evaluation of the EOC tool (Wong and Horan, 2019); and other papers that will examine the innovations intended by the tool: more effective offender engagement; and co-production. In this article, we start by considering the rationale for desistance-based tools integrated with RNR and GLM; then examine how these models and principles have been incorporated into policy and practice in the UK and Europe.…”

“…However, research does suggest that the outcomes of criminal justice case management could be enhanced by the integration of strengths-based approaches with the more empirically evidenced RNR principles (Horan, 2015; Serin and Lloyd, 2017). Although it should be acknowledged that their inappropriate integration could increase risks through the dilution of evidence-based risk management practice (Serin and Lloyd, 2017; Wong and Horan, 2019).…”