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Today I was at the Liaison and Diversion Development Day hosted by Mersey Care NHS Trust at the Indigo Centre in the grounds of Ashworth Hospital just outside Liverpool.

There is a growing consensus that making progress in improving opportunities for people facing multiple and complex needs will require ‘system change’. This is particularly vital, so it is said, in a time of austerity when introducing new interventions is less achievable.

Last week at a ceremony in Church House, I was presented with a Churchill medallion following my 2011 trip to Australia to identify new and innovative responses to people with complex needs.

The Home Affairs Select Committee have been keeping me busy this week, with their report on Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) published on Monday and our response to their inquiry into policing and mental health submitted yesterday.

This week I attended the launch event for St Mungo’s new report, Rebuilding Shattered Lives. The report has been developed with contributions from a wide range of agencies, including Revolving Doors, and focuses on homeless women and how we can provide more effective support for them.

Today, we are submitting our response to the government’s Out of Court Disposals review. The review is wide-ranging, and intended to take stock of current Out of Court Disposal (OOCD) arrangements with the aim of making the system simpler and easier to understand, and increasing public support.

A year ago today, the first generation of police and crime commissioners (PCCs) was elected.

We continue to work with Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire probation trusts and with HMP Holloway and HMP Norwich to test methods of service user involvement.

Today we are publishing our impact report setting out what we have achieved at the half way point in our strategic plan 2010 – 2015. We’ve kept it very brief – I know you are all very busy! – but we wanted to give a sense of what we’ve been doing and the difference we think we’ve started to make.

How do you measure social justice? The concept is difficult enough to define, let alone quantify. Nevertheless, the government’s Social Justice Outcomes Framework, published towards the end of last year, seeks to do just that.

Today I was with colleagues in Manchester for the first conference of the National Liaison & Diversion Development Network. This event was an important milestone in efforts to improve responses to people with mental health problems and learning disability who come into contact with the criminal justice system.

Having spent the week before this Labour party conference coordinating a joint response to the draft guidance on Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNAs) and Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategies (JHWSs), I have been thinking a lot about the health inequalities faced by people with multiple and complex needs.