LANCASHIRE'S Probation Service is undergoing an internal reorganisation geared to further improving and raising the standards of its services to courts and local communities.

Staff at the service are being organised into specialist teams to focus their expertise on specific areas of work, such as community supervision, the resettlement of offenders back into the community and partnerships with other agencies.

The reshaping has been planned for more than a year and the new structure is in place ready for the outcome of a national review of probation and prison services.

Chief probation officer John Crawforth said: "We are committed to raising standards and improving performance.

"Our aim is to build on achievements and to deliver effective high quality services which are consistent across the county and ensuring the most positive results in terms of supervising offenders, reducing re-offending and gaining public confidence in community punishment."

Probation staff cover a wide range of work including:

Providing information on offenders to the courts;

Supervising offenders on probation or supervision orders in the community;

Running intensive group work programmes for offenders who commit specific types of offences;

Upholding victims' rights;

Working with offenders in prison.

Mr Crawforth added: "It is essential that we maintain continuity in our working links with a wide range of organisations and agencies.

"Probation continues to be at the heart of local communities and probation staff continue to be based in all our existing offices and in Lancashire's six prisons.

"The accent is not on what we can do alone, but what we can do with other organisations across the public, voluntary and private sectors."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.