Professional Perspectives of the Community Sentence Treatment Requirement Pilot in Bedfordshire

This interim report explores the perspectives and views of professionals who work across the Community Sentence Treatment Requirement (CSTR) pathway in Bedfordshire. It should be noted that whilst the term CSTR is used, it only refers to individuals who are sentenced to a Mental Health Treatment Requirement (MHTR) as part of their Community Sentence. The rationale for using the term CSTR is that some of the women are also sentenced to other types of Community Sentence alongside an MHTR. Semi-structured interviews were completed with 9 professionals working across the CSTR pathway in Bedfordshire, each lasting between 30 and 60 minutes. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim to enable a rich and reliable interpretation of the data. Transcripts were thematically analysed involving the following six steps: ‘familiarisation’ through reading and re- reading transcripts, ‘code generation’, ‘theme identification’, ‘review’ of themes and codes, ‘labelling themes’, and ‘report writing’ (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The principles of the British Psychological Society Ethical Guidelines (2009) guided ethical practice. This report presents keys themes that were identified in the analysis and makes recommendations for consideration by the Bedfordshire CSTR Programme Board. It should be recognised, however, that the data on which this report are based were captured late 2019/early 2020 and practices/partnerships may have changed.