Thames Valley Partnership
‘protecting victims, supporting offenders and their families’
The Thames Valley Partnership works in partnership with the statutory, private and voluntary sectors to provide long-term sustainable solutions to the problems of crime and social exclusion. We work to protect victims and reintegrate offenders. Our strength is in collaborative working and integrated approaches across sectors, particularly linking Criminal Justice services to voluntary sector and Local Authority providers.
Our broad spectrum of work includes programmes around the needs of families of offenders, work in the field of domestic abuse, support for victims, restorative justice, community cohesion, mental health issues, early interventions & initiatives around young people and arts related projects.
Find out more about the different aspects of Our Work.
News
Arts Funding News!
We are very pleased to announce that we have secured funding support from The Monument Trust for the forthcoming two years. The Monument Trust is particularly interested in supporting our arts programme and, along with our grant from Arts Council England, this will ensure we can continue investing in creative approaches to our work.
We are currently having discussions with various partners about the details of our new arts project which will commence in Spring 2012 – more news on this to follow shortly.
Not one but two Partnerships!
Accepted evidence suggests that as well as being a very powerful catalyst for change in the behaviour of offenders, restorative justice can make huge financial savings in the criminal justice system, through reducing reoffending. Since 2001 the Thames Valley Restorative Justice Service (TVRJS) led by TV Probation has achieved an international reputation as a centre of excellence in the field of post sentence restorative justice with serious adult offenders.
The Thames Valley Partnership is therefore delighted to announce that it has taken over the governance of the TVRJS with effect from September 2011. Furthermore the Partnership has been selected to be one of two organizations to partner the Ministry of Justice in a 3 year programme of RJ Capacity building across the National Offender Management Service in England and Wales.
Geoff Emerson TVRJS Manager says ‘Potentially this is the most significant initiative in adult criminal justice practice for a generation. TVRJS has been instrumental in showing that it is possible to integrate RJ safely into existing CJ processes. Our practice and campaigning (with others ) over the past 12 years has been vindicated and the full potential of RJ is about to be rolled out across the whole of England and Wales’.
Patsy Townsend, Director of Thames Valley Partnership …
” Winning this contract is wonderful news and a tremendous opportunity for the Partnership to contribute to this national initiative. The Partnership’s involvement and interest in the development of restorative justice goes back to the mid 1990s and we are delighted with this exciting development, and thrilled to be collaborating with the TVRJS which fits so well with the values and objects of Partnership”
Cafe Conversations 4th October
Brainstorming Ideas!
The Partnership’s association with the New Leaf organisation offers informal support, through volunteer mentors, to short term prisoners leaving custody. Several New Leaf volunteers also staff the recently launched Court Desk.
We were therefore delighted to join them at their recent Café Conversations event held on 4th October at Aylesbury College. The evening brought together volunteers and steering group members for an informal evening of enthusiastic networking and ideas sharing!
For more information about New Leaf visit their website at www.newleafproject.co.uk
TecSOS
The Partnership is pleased to be facilitating the roll out of a brand new project which will dramatically improve the outcomes for known domestic violence victims. The new TecSOS initiative funded by the Vodafone Foundation and working in conjunction with Thames Valley Police and the Met. uses the latest mobile phone technology to prioritise and highlight emergency calls from victims. The scheme, already successfully introduced in other parts of Europe, will be implemented across 8 police forces in the South East over the next few months.
The new project was revealed to the public on 29th September at the Tate Britain as part of Vodafone’s event to celebrate 20 years of ’Mobiles for Good’.
Initial findings are overwhelmingly positive – the new device is being wholeheartedly welcomed by victims
“ I feel safer when out and about “
“…..enables me to continue with my day to day life ”
Further information from john@thamesvalleypartnership.org.ukRead More -TecSOS – Times article
Art Transforming the Lives of Young People -Transit Dance
For those of you who were interested in the Transit Dance Project which was recently featured on this page, you may also like to read an article evaluating this project, written by well known writer and consultant Richard Ings.
