Hampshire & IoW Multi-Agency Personality Service

About the service

The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Multi-agency Personality Service (H-MAPS) is jointly commissioned between Southern Health and Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) covering Hampshire.

The service is made up of three service streams; Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway, Intensive Interventions and Risk Management Service (IIRMS) and Pathfinder service.

This is a psychologically-led and informed specialised service where the team provide formulation, consultation, intervention, and training to support probation and health staff with formulation-based psychological ways of working with people who have personality difficulties linked to their offending behaviour. The service works directly with men and women presenting within the prison and probation service, both within Approved Premises and Probation Service Offices. 

Our service aims and objectives are to:

• Improve public protection - reduction in repeat serious sexual and/or violent offending and recall to prison
• Improve psychological health, wellbeing, pro-social behaviour, and relational outcomes for service users
• Improve competence, confidence and attitudes of staff working with service users who are likely to have complex presentations and significant and problematic personality issues
• Increase access to services in the community to ensure that treatment and management of service users is psychologically informed through both consultation, intervention, training, and supervision. 

What we do

H-MAPS provides a psychologically informed consultation, formulation, intervention, and support service for professionals in Health Services and Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) who work with individuals who have a diagnosis of Personality Disorder (PD) or have problematic personality traits, and who pose a high risk of sexual and/or violent offending and serious harm to others.

Our multidisciplinary team includes Clinical and Forensic Psychologists, Psychiatrist, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Occupational Therapist, healthcare support worker and probation officers.

For professionals:

• we provide psychologically informed consultation and formulation to teams and individuals who work within community health services and the probation service.
• we provide training to staff to increase knowledge and confidence of working with this service user group

For service users (for a small number of the highest risk cases, who meet the criteria for the service):

• Psychologically informed individual case working and management
• Individual and/or group-based psycho-educational interventions
• Outreach
• Individual support providing practical, psychosocial, and emotional support

Accessing the service

The H-MAPS service can be accessed in one of two ways:

National Probation Service referral (via H-MAPS Pathway Service)

If an individual is currently managed by the Probation Service and meets Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway screening criteria, their Offender Manager (OM) can refer into the service, requesting a consultation in the first instance in supporting their work with a service user. If suitable, joint case work between a H-MAPS clinician, the service user and their OM may be offered, which is used to assess suitability for any direct intervention work (via our Intensive Intervention and Risk Management Service; IIRMS). Any intervention offered is informed by formulation and provided whilst the person remains under probation supervision.

Health Service referral (via H-MAPS Pathfinder Service)

This typically occurs for service users who are not currently managed under probation supervision but who are care-coordinated by a Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) and fulfil all the below service criteria:

• Hampshire resident over the age of 18
• Presenting a high likelihood of violent and/or sexual offence repetition
• Presenting a high risk of serious harm to others
• Likely to have a severe personality disorder
• Clinically justifiable link between the personality disorder and the risk
• Remain care coordinated by the referring team

If the referral is accepted, we would offer an initial consultation with the referrer prior to deciding whether direct intervention with a service user is appropriate.