About the USP

Find out more about the User Scrutiny Panel of the CA4RJ project, its purpose and role. For more questions, please contact the project partners.

USP’s Role

The User Scrutiny Panel (USP) is a formally constituted body within the CA4RJ project, made by restorative justice professionals, artistic professionals, as well as public members with migration background, who take on responsibility for evaluating and steering the work of the project partners.

The CA4RJ consortium incorporates the views of the USP in the project’s development, thus the USP has an important role to play in helping and advising the project consortium in their decision making in respect of improvements of project outputs and activities.

The USP consists of a minimum of 7 and no more than 20 members who will meet regularly. The aim of these meetings will be to evaluate and discuss the CA4RJ project and outputs as well as to discuss and incorporate the current needs of the community.

The aim of the USP is to support the project outputs for all professionals and migrants and give their perspective on the development, needs, and necessary improvement.

USP will act as a working group activated within the project with three main objectives:

1. Collaborating with project staff in the development of outputs and designing of activities
2. Supervise and implement “quality control” on project outputs and activities
3. Managing and implement impact evaluation, according to the expected project impact and involved stakeholders.

In order to fulfil its role USP carried out various reviews and quality checks based on a range of sources, including:

• key performance indicators;
• project outputs and deliverables;
• performance reports on research, training and piloting strategies;
• participants feedback;
• participants satisfaction surveys.

The main aim of any scrutiny exercise is to identify if there are areas where the project consortium could make changes for the benefit of the final beneficiaries or if there are areas of strength which could be replicated in other areas/target groups.

In this way, USP used various information to help to identify these areas of the development that needed improvement and changes to adapt to the needs of the target groups of the CA4RJ project better.

USP’s Membership

Each member of the USP agreed to deliver their role for the project duration (until June 2023), after which there will be a review.

Each member has been required to sign an agreement of their role and commitments.

Through the agreement of roles each member has taken on the responsibility to:

  • attend each group meeting
  • come prepared for each meeting
  • be well organised
  • read agendas and relevant paperwork ahead of each meeting.

All of the members of the USP decided and agreed together on the boundaries and expectations of the members.

Each member is required to be:

  • motivated, proactive, good communicator, collaborative, committed to acting ethical, adapting to changing circumstances, able to analyse societal and economic factors contributing to crime, ready to assess models for correction and re-education, problem sensitive.


Working tools

The User Scrutiny Panel Coordinator is responsible for communicating group meetings back to the CA4RJ Project Team and vice versa.

The dates of meetings are discussed periodically, with them expected to be quarterly (every three months).

The meetings are held online and are organised via email.

Meeting agendas are discussed in the previous meeting and with the coordinator.

When needed, project staff will be invited with the group’s permission.

USP representatives will be invited to CA4RJ transnational partner meetings, when needed.