Education is rehabilitation

Jacob Tas may have to draw heavily on his "ruthless focus on outcomes" as chief executive of crime reduction charity Nacro. Tas, who took over from Paul McDowell in May this year, appears a good fit for Nacro given he joins at a time when there is an increasing focus across the youth justice sector on the quality of the interventions delivered to vulnerable young people and the outcomes they achieve.

For example, the Troubled Families programme will ultimately be judged on the number of families it "turns around", and specifically getting persistent truants back in school and preventing young people taking part in antisocial behaviour.

Meanwhile, in youth custody, the number of young people entering the system has fallen but reoffending rates remain stubbornly high, prompting the need to develop interventions that can tackle the underlying reasons why some continue to commit crime.

To this end, Nacro is leading the Beyond Youth Custody project, a national programme funded through the Big Lottery Fund to challenge and promote practice in resettlement services for young people and young adults following release from custody. Using that evidence base, the five-year programme will engage with practitioners and policymakers to develop sustainable models of resettlement that can be delivered and adopted on a national scale.

Fresh initiative

Another Nacro initiative aimed at narrowing the gap between offender and community is the Staying in Touch programme, which aims to engage young people released from custody in education, training, housing and substance misuse programmes. A follow-up to the Daedalus scheme run at Feltham Young Offenders Institution, Staying in Touch operates across 22 London boroughs.

Tas says Nacro is learning "valuable lessons" from both schemes. He adds: "From Beyond Youth Custody we are learning about fragmentation in the system and the need for consistency of provision from custody, through the gate and out in the community.

"Staying in Touch is just one example of how far the commissioning environment has changed in recent years. The big conversation with commissioners these days is all about outcomes - getting young people into work, or into education and training."

This can sometimes extend to a proportion of Nacro's income being dependent on hitting certain outcomes targets. It is a situation Tas says he is comfortable with.

"Payment by results is an important part of this process," he says. "In view of all this, like many other organisations in our sector, Nacro is focusing its attention on producing and measuring these outcomes and of course this is challenging. But we don't shy away from working to improve the prospects for young people who may be the furthest away from the labour market."

Multiple social problems

Even so, Tas, who spent 16 years as an executive at shipping firm P&O NedLloyd before taking on senior roles at Action for Children and The Prince's Trust, believes more sophistication is needed when measuring outcomes, such as those used in the Troubled Families programme.

"The set-up is too simplistic - you get paid if certain things are done, but you should be paid for all the outcomes rather than the few," he adds.

Creating a more sophisticated system for tackling the multiple social problems faced by repeat offenders was the key theme of a fringe meeting hosted by Nacro at the Labour Party conference in Manchester last week. The more entrenched nature of these problems also needs to be recognised by policymakers and those measuring outcomes, says Tas.

"This is a hard-to-reach cohort of young people, with chaotic life chances and trauma that is not easily fixed. But it doesn't mean we do not do our best," he explains.

Nacro now runs education and work-based learning programmes for vulnerable young people aged 16 to 18 across more than 30 education centres in England. Almost half are young offenders or known to the youth justice system.

Earlier this year, Ofsted rated the services as "good", with inspectors praising the quality of teaching, support and care; behaviour management; and the culture of respect forged in the centres.

"Our learners include those who have complex needs - learning difficulties, low educational attainment, time in custody, some have grown up in care and some have suffered abuse," says Tas.

"But they all need to be challenged educationally and supported in order to learn. We refuse to routinely exclude on the basis of prior offending because we believe that everyone should be given a chance at rehabilitation.

"They come five days a week to undertake intensive study programmes with a vocational focus based on what jobs are available in the community, such as catering, motor skills or retail," Tas says. "We build the employer engagement and are paid based on outcomes."

Tas wants to develop Nacro's education work further and now supports some 14- to 16-year-olds at risk of exclusion who attend classes at the centres "a few days a week to keep them engaged".

"Our country is obsessed with academic achievement, but for some young people that's not the way they learn," he explains. "We engage with young people on an individual level in a collaborative way."

But he believes this approach needs to be extended by working more closely with local authorities, police and schools to develop more "wraparound solutions" that meet the individual needs of young people at risk of offending.

"Strategically, we are looking at how we can go in (to schools) with education, housing and social work teams - including group therapy and substance misuse services - and then become a true partnership," he adds.

One option of achieving this that Nacro would like to pursue is delivering services in pupil referral units (PRUs), either in partnership with existing PRUs or running their own. Such a move appears logical - PRUs are now inspected by Ofsted under the Common Inspection Framework, the same used for mainstream schools and alternative education providers such as Nacro.

Tas adds: "I would like us to deliver services in PRUs on behalf of local authorities - particularly those units that are struggling - because we understand these issues."

There is little doubt that Nacro sees education delivery as being a central part of its future, not to mention a key mechanism for tackling the cycle of offending that affects a small hardcore of families.

However, it is not an advocate of the government's controversial plans for a secure college for 300 young offenders that would put greater focus on developing the education of detained 12- to 17-year-olds.

Tas explains why he is wary of the proposals: "What we feel is warehousing of lots of different young people together, which is cost-driven, is not conducive to rehabilitation. But we won't walk away - whatever the estate available we want to work with it."

Nacro has also recently highlighted the hidden problem of children who are disengaged from mainstream education and how this is a key risk factor for a young person getting involved in the criminal justice system.

Its Ghosts in the Machine report highlighted the problem that 20 per cent of children who enter the secondary school system at 11 have been "siphoned out" by the age of 16 because their education attainment is so poor it would harm the school's exam results and position in league tables.

Problem of 'lost' children

Often this "lost" group of children are initially educated at home or in separate units in the school, but as they get older are often drawn into gangs and crime because they are effectively forgotten. Nacro's research suggests that up to 30 per cent of children could have this "not known" status, indicating that the need for training and education support is only going to increase in the future. Its work to map the extent of those lost in the system also links with its involvement in the Department of Health's Liaison and Diversion scheme.

This £25m initiative, trialled in 10 areas this year with the intention of going nationwide by 2017/18, aims to work with the police and courts to ensure offenders with mental health and substance misuse issues, and learning disabilities get help to tackle problems as speedily as possible.

Nacro's role in the programme is to lead on the Offender Health Collaborative element, a partnership that ensures liaison and diversion services meet the needs of those that come into contact with them. Its success would appear to hinge on measuring whether the interventions provided are delivering the outcomes needed to make a lasting difference.

Jacob Tas CV

• 2014 Chief executive, Nacro
• 2011 Director of operations and deputy chief executive and, latterly, interim chief executive, Action for Children
• 2007 Director of England, The Prince's Trust
• 1990 Director of operations and latterly director of human resources for shipping company Royal P&O Nedlloyd
• 1985, Applied Econometrics, University of Amsterdam
• 1983 Reserve officer, Royal Dutch Navy
• Tas is also currently a trustee of War Child UK and a founding member of the Centre for Narrative Leadership