As professionals or students, you may wonder how the social work and criminal justice services in which you are working came to exist. We readily grasp that the programmes are delivered within organisations, and funding from both governmental and private sources support our efforts; however, what were the initial mechanisms that led to these programmes becoming established and later sustained? Whether you are new to these fields or have a wealth of experience, knowing how services evolve and improve provides vital skills in shaping future service delivery. Becoming an agent of change in these fields, rather than simply conforming to established protocols, is how individuals contribute to developing robust services. This chapter explores and explains the mechanisms – from the lens of complexity theory – behind the evolution of such programmes. This involves, first, discussing the four states in which systems exist; second, explaining the components of a complex system in order to frame inquiry; third, delving into the evolution, maintenance and sustaining programmes; and, lastly, concluding with a discussion of other considerations.

Social service organisations in the US, for example, typically consist of several programmes, each with their own funding mechanisms and expectations. These programmes address social problems identified by individuals advocating at the grassroots level for the creation of an intervention to address the social need they identified. These advocates typically have a deeper knowledge and purpose of mission concerning the issues than do others. They were motivated to find or develop their own schemes to address them because they have a friend or family member who has experienced a problem. Addictions-related criminal justice programmes are no different.

Given that the social work discipline has been grounded for decades in a person-in-environment perspective that highly values interconnectedness with others that are supportive, it is argued that using complexity theory as an undergirding approach provides the potential for developing a more informed and humane approach. This chapter assumes a post-positivist orientation (Morin, 2008) because those involved in identifying need, planning to address it, implementing the plan and then evaluating the plan apply an iterative process that continually modifies the programmes created.