Progress report on the MPA independent evaluation of the MPS Community and Race Relations (CRR) training

Report: 14
Date: 17 July 2003
By: Clerk

Summary

The MPA independent evaluation of the MPS Diversity (CRR) training started in October and is scheduled to be completed and the final report are available in September 2003.

This report provides an overview of the key progress of the project to date, highlights some of the areas of difficulties and proposed a process for receiving the final report that is to be presented to the project steering group.

A. Recommendations

Members are asked to: -

1. Note the progress of the project and the issues that are likely to affect its conclusion.
2. Agree the process outlined in paragraph 6 for receiving the final report from the project consultants.
3. Note the project expenditure for the additional questions included in the Association of Local Government annual Local Authority survey.

B. Supporting information

1. The MPA independent evaluation of the MPS CRR training programme began in October 2002 and is scheduled to be completed by September 2003. There has been a slight slippage to the timescale primarily due to delay a in the early phase of the project. Further delays have also recently been highlighted by the consultants the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) as a result of difficulties in organising a series of focus group meetings at borough level. This will be dealt with later in the report.

2. The project is being steered by a working group consisting of representatives from the MPS, CRE, GLA, Race Equality Councils, MPS Independent Advisory Group and the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender IAG. MPA members are also in attendance and the Group is chaired by Cindy Butts. The Working group provides and guidance to the consultants and day-to-day management of the project is provided by officers in the Consultation and Diversity unit.

The Institute of Employment Studies

3. The project consultants, the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) are using the ‘Diversity Cycle’ a methodology developed by the Institute They are also conducting the national evaluation of the CRR programme on behalf of the Home Office. The MPA has therefore benefited from the broader research and the learning from other police services in this area.

4. The consultants have provided regular project update reports and presentations to inform the working group of progress achieved against the original project timescale.

Progress to date

5. The key aims of the project is to focus on the impact of the CRR training on policing practice and whether or not the values promoted by the training has been embedded into the policies and practices of the MPS. This approach is more comprehensive than that taken by other evaluation methodologies. A copy of the most recent update on the project is attached at Appendix 1. This was supplemented by a detailed presentation by the project consultant members of the steering group.

6. The project has undertaken the following:

1. Initial desk research and expert interview with senior police officers and staff, MPA members, public figures with insight into the MPS, local community and public individuals as well as community members who have been the recipients of policing service. This aspect of the evaluation is largely completed and the outcomes will be presented to the steering group on 8 July. Although the steering group was keen to draw conclusions from this aspect of the evaluation, the consultants preferred to wait until they were able to look at all the information collected in order to draw inferences and conclusions in order to make the recommendations.
2. Case studies in four boroughs. The boroughs of Barnet, Harrow, Greenwich and Lambeth were selected by the steering group to provide in depth case study information on the implementation ad impact of the training. At the commencement of the project Barnet and Harrow were in the final stages of completing their first phase of the CRR programme. Greenwich and Lambeth had recently embarked on the ‘phase two’ of their CRR training having been among the first boroughs to have completed the training in 1999.
3. As part of the case studies the consultants have met with senior managers; observed the delivery of training sessions and held focus group meetings with police officers and other police staff in those boroughs. These observations have highlighted a range of areas for consideration for the steering group, including that that the CRR training tended to be differently delivered by police trainers and the independent trainers, that police trainers tended not to deliver the race aspect of the training and that participants tended to give greater credibility to police trainers. Many of these observations are reinforced by the MPS own internal evaluation of the CRR training. Other emerging observations will be highlighted in the project report.
4. Focus group meetings with members of the public and community representatives as a means of assessing the level of the impact of the training on community experience of the delivery of policing service delivered by the MPS.
5. Although the consultants have had a measure of success, these focus groups been more difficult to set up than were originally thought. They have not been able to gain access to these through the local contacts of either the police or local Community and Police Consultative Groups in Greenwich or Barnet. Although there were initially similar difficulties in Lambeth, this has been adequately resolved with the assistance of key members of the steering group who had access to and contact with local organisations, including youth organisations that have taken part in the focus groups. There has been less success in arranging these meetings in Barnet, Greenwich and Harrow.
6. The focus group is a very important aspect of the evaluation. MPA officers are assisting the consultants with identifying key contacts in the MPS and other key stakeholders that could assist with coordinating these meetings.
7. Analysis of data arising from the local Authority surveys. The project steering group was eager to find ways to seek the views of a large number of the public aspects of the evaluation. Rather than undertake a separate public survey just for the purpose of the project, it be agreed that the MPA would negotiate with the Association for Local Government for two questions be included in the annual local authority survey. The questions were ‘if I was a victim of a crime, I am confident that the police would deal with it seriously’ and ‘if I was suspected of a crime, I would trust the police to deal with me fairly’.
8. Thirteen local authorities agreed to include the question in their surveys, resulting in a response of over 9,500 responses across the inner and outer London boroughs that agreed to host the questions. The boroughs taking part included the four boroughs in which the in depth study was being carried out, Unfortunately, however, the results from one of the boroughs were misplaced by the survey company and the consultants will not be able to make any assessment of these results. The overall cost of taking part in the survey will be approximately £8,000. This is within the budget allocated.
9. The early analysis of the survey was presented to the steering group at its meeting of 8 July and it is expected that more detailed analysis will be produced on the draft report to be discussed at the next meeting of the steering group in September 2003.

Process for Receiving the Project Report

7. The project steering group is accountable to this Board for delivery of the final evaluation report. The final report will be presented to the October meeting of the Board, Members will be invited to the September meeting of the steering group, when the final draft report will be presented and discussed.

8. The steering group will, at its next meeting, give consideration to the publication of the report and recommendations will be made to this Board at the October meeting.

MPS Borough Evaluation Reports

9. Whilst this evaluation project has been going on the MPS have separately been carrying out its own internal evaluation of each of the CRR training programmes that have been delivered. Copies of these have been made available to the project consultants and to members of the project steering group.

C. Equality and diversity implications

The outcomes of the project will enable the MPA and MPS to make better informed assessment and decision regarding the implementation, content, delivery and monitoring of the current phase two of the MPS diversity training, which is aimed at focusing on gender issues.

D. Financial implications

The project is expected to be within the agreed budget. However the consultants have incurred in setting up and providing incentive payments to those who will be attending the local focus groups.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report authors: Julia Smith

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Appendix 1: Independent Evaluation of MPS Diversity (CRR) Training – June update

The study

To recap, the aim of the project is to carry out an independent evaluation of the MPS Diversity Training, known as Community and Race Relations training. More specifically the research will assess the impact of the training on views, attitudes and behaviour of officers and staff in the Service; and assess the contribution towards increasing trust and confidence in policing amongst minority ethnic communities.

The work involves:

1. an initial scoping stage, involving desk research and expert interviews;
2. case study work in four boroughs, involving interviews with staff, and the collection and analysis of borough level data;
3. focus group work with community individuals in the four case study boroughs; and
4. analysis of community survey data undertaken by ALG in a number of London boroughs.

The boroughs chosen by the steering group to provide a research context are: Barnet, Greenwich, Harrow, and Lambeth. Again, we should note that these boroughs may have received different training due to three-phased development of CRR training in the MPS.

The final stage of the work involves the synthesis of all the quantitative and qualitative data captured and the writing of relevant reports.

Current Progress

Although activities progressed more slowly than we had anticipated, we have now completed the bulk of the research. We believe we are on track to complete our work according to the adjusted timetable (below).

Initial scoping stage

This phase of the research is now complete.

We have completed our collection of general research literature and we are in the process of drawing together this information into a brief review. As yet we have received no data from case study boroughs.

We have completed our interviews with 14 experts suggested by the project reference group including senior officers in the MPS, members of the MPA, GLA experts, and independent consultants. We have produced a summary report, outlining the key themes from these interviews, which is available to members of the Steering Group.

Case study work with staff

We completed initial visits in the four case study boroughs between March and May (Harrow in March, Barnet and Greenwich in April, and Lambeth in May).

We have now completed second visits in all four boroughs, for which purpose we developed interview schedules and discussion guides for staff and for civilian officers. The second visits involved:

• face to face interviews with officers of constable or sergeant rank with regular contact with the public. These were non-specialist officers; and include a mix of gender and ethnicity:

The interviews explored the perceived aims of training, experience of training, effect on own knowledge and attitudes, and perceived effect on organisation. They also explored key events and actions/behaviours, through behavioural event (critical incident) interviews.

• focus group discussions:
  • with black and minority ethnic officers of constable or sergeant rank with regular contact with the public – who have experienced CRR training
  • with officers of constable or sergeant rank with regular contact with the public – who have experienced CRR training
  • with civilian staff with regular contact with the public – who have experienced CRR training

The group discussions also explored perceived aims of training, experience of training, effect on own knowledge and attitudes, and perceived effect on organisation.

Case study work with community individuals

We have contacted all CPCGs and Racial Equality Councils suggested by the MPA. As noted in the previous progress note, we have had initial discussions with Barnet CPCG, Greenwich REC, and Harrow REC. We explored in the discussions: their role, their membership, their interaction with the MPS, and their perspectives on CRR issues within their borough and on CRR training. We received from them lists of organisations and names of individuals who could be invited to participate in focus groups. We have pursued these leads but are still experiencing difficulties in securing attendance.

We have so far conducted only one focus group with young people in Lambeth.

ALG Survey

To recap the attitude statements added to this year’s ALG survey of London residents are as follows:

‘If I was a victim of a crime, I am confident the police would deal with it seriously’

‘If I was suspected of a crime, I would trust the police to deal with me fairly’

A total of 11 boroughs were involved. We now have the data for all the boroughs. We plan to undertake complex statistical analysis of the survey data in July. As noted previously, two of our case study areas, Barnet and Greenwich, are involved in this survey. Due to technical difficulties, however, there is only partial data for Greenwich.

Timetable

The project commenced in December 2002, but there has been some slippage in the original timetable. The timetable below represents our latest estimate of progress and outcomes.

Timetable progress and amendments

Concerns

• We are experiencing difficulties in securing attendance to focus group discussions with community individuals. We would ask the MPA to suggest possible alternative community groups to those we have already contacted, but with only limited success in securing their participation. It may also be necessary for the Steering Group to discuss an alternative strategy for the community consultation phase, if the present difficulties persist.
• The timing of the draft and final reports may have to be delayed (beyond August) if we are unable to undertake the community consultation in July.

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