One Year In
After almost a year at Revolving Doors I wanted to take stock.
Firstly, I wanted to thank colleagues, partners across the sector and Forum members who we have worked alongside to end the revolving doors of crisis and crime for people who face multiple problems. As I said recently this is a wonderful sector to work in – full of creativity and commitment.
We’ve seen real progress in some areas, including the continued roll out of liaison and diversion services across the country where the Revolving Doors Lived Experience Team have sat on the Programme Board at NHS England and helped shape the national operating model. We have also piloted and demonstrated in practice how people with lived experience of multiple and complex needs can inform local commissioners and decision-makers resulting in real service and system changes through our successful Commissioning Together project.
I can’t mention everything but some of the highlights for me this year have been our literature review on the common concepts for recovery and desistance across the fields of mental health, substance misuse, and criminology. This is part of an ambitious project aiming to break down academic boundaries and promote collaboration between researchers, leading to greater insight into the experiences of people facing multiple needs.
I’ve also really valued our influencing work with Police and Crime Commissioners, including our work to highlight examples of promising practice such as work with women in the criminal justice system, young adults and early intervention – more of which could change people’s lives.
And it’s been a real pleasure working with the Forum who this year alone amongst other things have been involved with Public Health England, MOPAC, NHS England, guest editing a Clinks service user guide, speaking at our research network, developing our manifesto and got some great media coverage for their personal achievements.
It’s also been very clear to me that although much progress has been made since Revolving Doors was founded our mission is as relevant and critical as ever. Between 20 and 40% of police time is still spent on mental health incidents and, as the Prime Minister acknowledged recently, 60% of short sentence prisoners reoffend within a year. The UK still sends to prison a disproportionate number of people with learning disabilities and we, as a society, still fail to provide the joined-up integrated care that would prevent those facing multiple problems from falling into the criminal justice system.
Finally, I am really pleased to say this year we have both increased our overall income and, for the first year ever, brought in more than 50% of our income from social enterprise work.
Grants will always be crucial in enabling us to do critical thinking, challenging policy work and pilot innovative approaches. However, as the funding landscape changes I am really proud that we have built a sustainable social enterprise model that is helping us to better fulfil our mission. To ensure we make every bit of investment and income count, we are moving to nearby London South Bank University Technopark. This also brings the added benefit of being amongst more than 30 other social enterprises and charities, and furthering our links with the research community of the university.
All in all it’s been a really enjoyable first year.
