This District serves a diverse population of around one million people in the City of Birmingham, stretching from Four Oaks in the north to Kings Norton in the south, and from Sheldon in the west to Handsworth Wood in the east.

Twelve field teams comprising some 125 probation officers are deployed to supervise offenders in all parts of the city and to provide support to Birmingham Crown Court and Birmingham and Sutton Coldfield Magistrates’ Courts.

In addition, there are specialist interventions teams responsible for overseeing Unpaid Work, Drug Rehabilitation Requirements, and programmes designed to help offenders alter the previous patterns of behaviour that got them into trouble.

Some probation staff in Birmingham are seconded to local Youth Offending Teams. They also work at a strategic level with the Area Child Protection Committee (Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board), Crime and Disorder Partnership, Multi Agency Public Protection Panels, Supporting People and the Drug Action Teams.

Following the recent reorganisation of the Probation Service to meet the requirement of the National Offender Management Model, Birmingham probation staff are concentrating their efforts on those offenders identified as presenting the highest degree of risk to the public and those who are most likely to re-offend unless closely supervised. The Prolific and Priority Offenders project epitomises the excellent multi-agency offender management that exists.

Strong partnerships have been developed at an operational level with voluntary organisations. These include SIFA who work with offenders with alcohol problems, Prison Link who help black and ethnic minority prisoners and their families and B Mag who help with financial management difficulties. Focus Housing Association, provides an accommodation finding service for offenders in the community and Drug Solutions Birmingham work with drug using offenders.

Within Birmingham, the Probation Service has made good progress in developing the use of Fast Delivery Reports as an alternative to Standard Delivery Reports, to enable cases to be dealt with more quickly at Court thus avoiding delays.