Community Justice Outcomes Improvement Plan
The CJOIP provides the strategic framework for the Community Justice Ayrshire Partnership. Local strategic assessment of strengths and needs will be undertaken during the development of each plan, including significant engagement with stakeholders and communities.
The plan will link closely to the Local Outcome Improvement Plans (LOIPs) developed by each Community Planning Partnership and will also link to the National Strategy for Community Justice and the new Community Justice Performance Framework (formerly the Outcomes, Performance, and Improvement Framework (OPIF)). These documents outline several nationally determined outcomes, indicators, and improvements for community justice.
Scottish Government and Community Justice Scotland Update
In May 2021, the Scottish Government and Community Justice Scotland issued a joint statement in relation to the review of the National Strategy for Community Justice and Review of the Outcomes, Performance, and Improvement Framework (OPIF). It outlined the Scottish Government’s intention to review the Strategy in Summer 2021 and informed that Community Justice Scotland have reviewed the OPIF and concluded that it needs to be revised.
The new National Strategy was published in June 2022. Community Justice Scotland indicated that recommendations regarding the OPIF (rather than publication) would be made to Scottish Government at end of September 2022 predicated on three-month post publication of strategy. Publication timeframe would be dependent on Scottish Government accepting recommendations and the timeframe / steps needed to publish.
Following submission of proposals by Community Justice Scotland in September 2022, Scottish Government colleagues circulated a draft revised OPIF for consideration by the Community Justice Network. The draft focused on setting out the national outcomes and the national indicators which are to be used to measure performance in achieving the national outcomes.
To allow local areas to add context to the quantitative national indicators, the draft set out an expectation that local supporting evidence will be gathered and analysed to provide context to the national indicators. To support this, Community Justice Scotland have drafted an improvement tool to sit alongside the OPIF, which sets out the role of local supporting evidence in understanding and reporting performance in relation to the national outcomes.
The Community Justice Improvement Tool and the new Community Justice Performance Framework (formerly the OPIF) were both published on 1st April 2023.
Community Justice Ayrshire Partnership Position
Following agreement by the Community Justice Ayrshire Partnership Board, the Ayrshire Community Justice Outcomes Improvement Plan (CJOIP) 2018 to 2021 was extended until the end of 2021. Work took place during 2022 to establish the evidence base for a new plan through a Strategic Needs and Strengths Assessment, however due to delays with the publication of the National Strategy and the OPIF, the Partnership were unable to develop a new CJOIP during this time.
In the absence of a revised OPIF, the Community Justice Ayrshire Partnership Board agreed to the development of a Transition Plan to guide the work of the Community Justice Ayrshire Partnership from 1st April 2023 to 31st March 2024. This will allow the Partnership to establish a baseline position based on the National Outcomes within the OPIF and establish priorities to be included within the new Ayrshire CJOIP.
After considering the information outlined above, the Community Justice Ayrshire Partnership Board have decided that the Ayrshire CJOIP should not be revised at this time. We want to ensure that our new plan aligns and reflects the new Community Justice Performance Framework and new Strategy, therefore we are taking a pragmatic approach and will review and revise the Ayrshire CJOIP following publication of these documents. Community Justice Scotland were consulted as part of this decision-making process and are comfortable with this approach.
It is anticipated that the Ayrshire CJOIP will be published on 1st April 2024.
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