My former colleague Barry Snelgrove, who has died aged 68 of cancer, was a forward thinking senior probation officer. He was involved in a number of groundbreaking initiatives throughout his career before joining the Home Office, where he became a policy adviser on issues connected with offenders.
In total Barry spent 21 years in the National Probation Service, working mainly in the London area. For three years from 1990 he was the director of Sherborne House in Southwark, an experimental day centre run by the Inner London Probation Service (ILPS) for young adult offenders. It provided, among other things, employment skills training, an accommodation finding service and an offending behaviour programme. It began each day by offering participants breakfast, since many of them were homeless.
