CRC Dispute - Latest 4

As always, thanks go to the reader for sending the following:-

5 October, 2016 

Dear Colleagues 

DDC Redundancy Agreement 

This letter is to give formal notice of our intention to review the DDC Redundancy Agreement in accordance with the terms of the agreement itself which indicated a review date of September 2015. 

We would now like to meet with you by way of a short sides meeting to review the agreement and the proposed date for this meeting is Monday 17th October at 11.00 am at Queen’s House, Exeter. 

I would be happy to receive any comments in advance of the meeting but failing that we will take any comments on the day with a view to concluding the review by the end of October, 2016. 

I look forward to seeing you then. 

Yours sincerely 

John Wiseman 
Probation Director

--oo00oo--

06 October 2016

Hi John

Thank you for this letter, you might appreciate we had hoped that you would have thought to look at policies that would help staff arrangements. Policy reviews should consider what will help staff well being. Especially during this period of change. Reviews should be conducted under the harmonisation requirements contractual upon you within the terms of the staff transfer and protections agreement. You will know as we have made many representation on this subject within the JNCC meetings. It requires all policies to be harmonised upwards on the most favourable terms.

Within NAPO we understand your most likely intentions are to attempt find ways to reduce existing terms protected within the redundancy collective agreement. I will not rehearse all our arguments of protections here. You will know these are already part of the national dispute. Also that the Joint secretaries representations were made yesterday in London. This matter now remains ongoing so a JNCC meeting to review this position is unlikely.

This current dispute hearing, having not been determined, and until the Joint Secretaries make a formal response It would be premature to continue any approaches towards any protected collective agreements. I urge you to review your intentions and properly look into the Working Links obligations to all our Napo and wider staff Members. You might find the provisions of the contracts and within the amended and restated services agreement the basic CRC contract could be your priority. Indeed I have shared references of the contract document with you previously. This was also noted at the joint secretaries meeting. To that end considerations of the MOJ contract managers will be looking into heads of dispute within the joint Unions presentation. No doubt they will be seeking to resolve matters so we move forward and we should respectfully wait that process to conclude. Indeed they may well direct a hold on the current situation for all sides, and in light of the pending probation inspection which has yet to find on its inquiries.

The indication you would like to review the redundancy collective agreement is a small narrative to wider crisis developing within the DDC CRC. Staff are in some fear for their roles. Many have written to the Unions having felt pressured out of their jobs and into roles that they would not want. Staff are reporting incredible working conditions that could not get past a reasonable health and safety assessment yet none of this is a priority management issue?

Instead during this year when formal S188 redundancy notices have been issue by you within the management Working Links your sub division of DDC. At no stage have you indicated any willingness to review policies despite NAPO on several occasion raising the harmonisation upwards agenda. You have pressed home that there will be no harmonisation of outstanding dual terms across DDC.

The recent working links briefings 04 10 16 have made direct reference to applying for early retirement using the agreed local procedures People over 55 are still able to apply for early retirement, in accordance with their local policy, as an alternative to the voluntary severance scheme Napo reps reasonably understand from this offer (and within the balance of our collective knowledge) it means you are now operating the current redundancy agreement. That you will be honouring the terms laid? You knowingly are providing by offer in the 4th October newsletter and invitation for all staff grades. Application for staff over 55 under the DDC Redundancy agreement actually provides for those applicants the rate for early retirement without any loss to their current accrued pensions. Our local policy does not provide reduced early retirement terms. So the offer is what staff are entitled under locally agreed policy.

The redundancy agreement is a pay related matter. Pay issues include a range of protections and can form compensation in lieu of jobs as a settlement. Pay protection issues are for three years protected in staff transfer and protection document. We in NAPO and the management engage within the branch JNCC recognition agreement and constitution. The proposal is not realistic in the timescale you conclude given the process we are required to follow.

Finally and on your other recent attempt to agenda a break away from the national collective bargaining agreements. NAPO AGM in Cardiff last week voted to reject any proposal to disband the current nationally protected agreements on collective bargaining and there could be no consent locally for this to happen within DDC. I draw your attention to the clauses in contract that Employees terms and conditions are renegotiated by consent. Following your request to bring these matters to union members attention this has been copied to all.

Dino Peros SSW Branch Chair
JNCC Napo Rep

Pick of the Week 2

Time to resurrect this feature I think. Some contributions that particularly caught my eye over the last week:-

It was obvious to all with the possible exception of every greedy CRC company, Chris Grayling and every spineless CEO who failed to utter a word against TR, that in Year one the only way that savings could be made was to cull staff.....tick......now going into Year two they are realising that the promised profits are just projections not worth the paper they were printed on therefore go back to the tried and trusted getting rid of staff with the excuse of restructuring......tick......now the next year will be even more interesting as there will hardly be any staff to cull so what do they do next?

......well this is when they return to the MoJ to blame them for selling them a pup and ask for more money...but the cupboard is bare so they'll look to join forces with other agencies under the guise of yep you guessed it restructuring to provide 'better services to clients'......sub text meaning we've no idea what to do next....the promised freedom to innovate disappears into the distance as the desperate hunt for profit continues.......I have it on good authority that two possibly three CRCs are looking to hand back the keys with each waiting for the other to be the first..it's a game of business brinkmanship with neither wanting to be the first failure.......there's a lot of loose tongues at the MoJ at the moment and rumours of a strategic rethink on the cards as the realisation dawns that making money out of offenders/clients/criminals is a lot harder than they thought...

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When allocating a case you fill in two long and dull forms. One is the CAS (CASELOAD ALLOCATION SYSTEM) which uses information from the RSR (Risk of Serious Recidivism)form. The CAS asks a load of largely pointless questions but at the end is a table with a list of five or so questions, any one of which if answered yes is an auto-NPS allocation. They go something like has this person

1 Committed a S15 offence (serious violence or just about any sex offence)
2 Are they a Foreign National being held by immigration
3 Are they on a deferred sentence
4 Does the RSR tool result in a score of 6.8 or above
5 Something else which I thankfully have forgotten for now. It may actually have to do with professional judgement.

Now the kicker is that if you DO NOT hit one of the above you could have a signed letter from Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Yahweh and Shiva the destroyer stating that this guy is going to kill somebody (and after all they would know, being omnipotent and all that) and YOU ARE GOING TO THE CRC.

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The risk mantra is being chanted over & over again, but no-one seems to be asking "what does that mean?". I read "he's high risk", "she's medium risk", "they're low risk", "High risk at point of offence are now low risk", "Med risk are always high risk..."

I'm not wanting to be rude but it really doesn't mean anything. Risk is not a generic box into which people are crammed (no pun intended). This is why I would agree that risk IS a smokescreen, in the same way that the weekend patient mortality figures were a smokescreen for Jeremy *unt, and in 45 minutes we were to be obliterated by WMD. They're the manipulations & sleight of hand of professional politicos to achieve ideological ends, not real-world events.

How many different elements of risk category do probation staff work with? Oasys, PPO, RM2K, ARMS, SARA, MARAC, MAPPA...

Sure, filling in the forms means the information is collated, but what then? Risk-averse managers start pissing their pants because of resource implications, they dump their anxiety on their staff (or try to get shot of the case to another agency), and the whole shithouse goes up. No-one gets a good deal - not the client, not the practitioner, and not the public. The only benefit seems to be that the manager is praised for "flagging up a risk issue"...

...Meanwhile some poor PSO in a CRC has a caseload of volatiles who are in and out of court, getting high every day on anything they can get their hands on, exacerbating any mental health or behavioural traits, knocking their various partners about and inundating the local children's services with numerous safeguarding cases. SFOs are primarily populated with offences involving mental health, domestic abuse, child protection.

And guess what? Mental health services have been axed to the bone, domestic abuse is rife and social services are in crisis. Now probation has been decimated and the 70% of "low & medium risk" cases sold off to private enterprise who are focused on profit, shedding experienced and "expensive" staff, replacing POs with PSOs, and generally cooking up a disaster which will explode very soon.

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And here's one for the mix. How about the wonderful introduction of ORA? Hurry up now and do his OASys start custody. He'll be out in a week and you can do his OASys start licence. The week after when his licence finishes you can do your OASys review to end licence and start post sentence supervision. Don't worry though, if he doesn't comply with that you can do another OASys review along with your breach file so you can get him back in court for his inevitable £50 fine with order to continue. We've really sorted this no supervision for under 12 months haven't we? Hey ho though. We can buy some more services from CRC to get them back on board and make them offence free. (from Facebook - but I particularly liked it)

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So historically it could be argued that probation WAS a vocation, which became a job, and is now all but extinct:

1870s: Frederick Rainer makes a five shilling donation to the Church of England Temperance Society to help break the cycle of offence after offence and sentence after sentence. The Society appoints a 'missionary' to Southwark court and the London Police Court Mission is born.

1880s: The mission opens homes and shelters - but the Probation of First Offenders Act 1887 contains no element of offender supervision.

1900s: 1907 & The Probation Service is formally established. Between 1910 and 1930 the prison population halves, probation has played a major part.

1920s: The 1925 Criminal Justice Act establishes probation committees and the appointment of probation officers becomes a requirement of the courts.

1940s: The 1948 Criminal Justice Act introduces prison after-care and provides for funding of Probation Homes and Hostels.

1950s: The Central Council of Probation - the forerunner of the Probation Association - is formed to speak with one voice for all employee probation committees. Home Secretary Rab Butler attends and says: "I think that your service is perhaps the most devoted in the country."

The CJ Act '91 had a disastrous impact; suddenly the work of the probation service was something that politicians could and did tinker with in order to make a name for themselves. And here we are.

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This blog does attract some fools making mischief and some comments can be clownish. But some of the most foolish, clownish and disingenuous comments are to be found in the various missives issued by the NPS and CRCs, whether its their silly acronyms or the deceitful way they rebrand every cheapskate reform as an exciting innovation. We read their stuff and line by line you know they are lying through their teeth. They claim to be inclusive and to value their workforce whilst savagely cutting headcounts. They claim to be morally motivated to help service users to lead better lives, but their core motivator is making money and handsomely rewarding their misanthropic elites who lie so effortlessly and strive to keep the workforce in a state of job insecurity. And if at some point in the future their profits or reputation should slide, they will walk away and flog their contracts just as G4S are now doing with the youth jails.

Why Did They Do That?

Since starting this blog I've been reminded of the gulf between the right-wing tabloid press and probation and saddened although not hugely surprised by the apparent gulf between probation and the police. There appears to be a chasm of misunderstanding and an entrenched stereotypical view that basically says 'the police catch 'em and probation and the courts get 'em off'. In terms of offenders the thesis seems to go like this 'they know right from wrong; they've had their chance; they need locking up for longer; they need a harsh punishment'. This is coupled with the other part of the thesis that says the soft liberal hand-wringers 'excuse their behaviour; are easily fooled; are soft on crime; live in nice areas and don't get robbed'. 

I want to try and tackle these myths. Although I might be clear about what probation does, why it does it and why it's worthwhile, clearly others disagree or are sceptical. I appreciate it is going to take some explaining because it isn't always straight forward, but I think it's worth giving it a try. If the job of a probation officer is about anything, it's about trying to understand why people do things. Why they acted in a particular way. To be honest I don't think there is anything very unusual about this as it's part and parcel of normal human nature. The difference is that as a probation officer the quest for understanding anti-social or criminal behaviour is at the heart of the job and a major component of our ethos.

It is only when you understand the reasons for certain behaviour that the first step can be made in trying to effect change. However understanding is not to be confused with excusing. I have heard it said that probation officers do not accept that offenders need take full responsibility for their actions. This is complete nonsense and the only limited exceptions that I can think of are those involving either a mental illness, learning disability or personality disorder. Normally our work very much involves getting an offender to accept responsibility for their actions and the underlying reasons that contributed towards them.  

People always do things for a reason, but they may not always be conscious of why. Whether it's buying product A as opposed to product B. Choosing a career, life partner, how much to drink, what to eat, how to vote, whether to steal, to take drugs, to hit somebody are all examples of decisions. As often or not the explanation will be grounded in reasoning of some sort. It might be as a result of a careful weighing-up of the pro's and cons and it will be fairly self-evident. But on many occasions people do not make seemingly rational decisions. It could be that they acted on a whim, or prejudice, or ignorance, or impulse. Their reasoning might be affected by drugs, alcohol or emotional state. Every ones intellectual capacities are different, as are their life experiences. We've all been exposed to positive and negative role models, had good and bad experiences and all this affects the way decisions are made.

This may well all sound like teaching Granny how to suck eggs, but it lies at the very heart of what we are trying to do and why probation officers are expected to have some knowledge of sociology and psychology, amongst other things. In trying to arrive at an answer to the question 'why did they do that?'  I've never found it particularly helpful to think in terms of 'good or bad' but rather try and stay focused on just trying to understand. Of course there are as many unique explanations as there are individual people and acts. This is why I have difficulty with much of the recent reliance on treatment programmes for offenders, as opposed to individual casework. It's one reason why I feel the programme approach is not being as successful as envisaged. 

Probation becomes involved with somebody as a result of an action or set of behaviours. They might on the one hand be relatively minor such as theft from a shop or at the other extreme a single life changing event that involves serious injury or death. In each case there will be reasons or an explanation for the behavior, but this is not the same as a motive which is a much more narrow definition. The police are normally concerned to discover the latter, but not so involved with the former which has become one of our areas of expertise. After some years experience I can say that the process is not always either obvious or straight forward, but a good starting point is to ask of course.

In my small town there is a notorious nightclub that over the years has generated quite a bit of work for the police, NHS, local solicitors and probation. Each time I have been involved in writing a PSR for a common assault, ABH, or GBH I have asked 'why did you hit him/her? and the answer has invariably been 'because he/she looked at me/my partner funny'. It doesn't get you very far, but it does demonstrate the disinhibiting effect alcohol has when someone is already a little paranoid through long-term cannabis use or just feeling insecure or jealous in a relationship. None of this is an excuse though for denying responsibility for the behaviour, but it can help everyone, including the court and offender, to try and understand why it happened as a prelude to change.