Relational practice in an offender personality disorder partnership: what we might learn from barriers

Purpose The Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) strategy (Joseph and Benefield, 2012) mandates the co-delivery of services between NHS clinicians and criminal justice workers. The strategy assumes that joint responsibility of and a psychologically informed approach to high-risk offenders with problems associated with the diagnosis of “personality disorder” will lead to reductions in re-offending and increase psychological well-being. The purpose of this paper is to articulate some potential barriers to working relationally which may help to explain difficulties in implementing a coherent approach which can underpin research for the pathway. Design/methodology/approach One explanation for the difficulties in generating evidence for effectiveness of the OPD pathway is that the psychologically informed approach is poorly defined, inconsistently applied across the country and, therefore, difficult to research. In addition, continuous organisational change has provided a less than optimum foundation for research and evaluation. This paper outlines the efforts of one OPD commissioned partnership to articulate a relational practice framework which is linked explicitly to public protection. Findings This paper goes on to outline important lessons from implementing this model that appear to have implications for working relationally in this context and within these partnerships. Barriers to relational practice related to mental states (rather than operational obstructions) were identified. Practical implications Specific organisational conditions required to support complex, psychologically informed, relational work need to be in place. This paper argues that there are implications for training. Originality/value This paper will go on to argue that we should consider how a similar set of barriers may also operate to limit the effectiveness of risk assessment with this group.