A Very Cruel Game

A very cruel game begins in earnest on April Fool's day this year. I should have written about it sooner, but my excuse is a preoccupation with government plans for privatising us. In the process though I've completely neglected the impending plight for many of our charges.

If you didn't know better you might think the government had unknowingly or accidentally decided to declare war on a significant section of the population, but of course the welfare 'reforms' are entirely deliberate and ironically will do nothing but hinder any attempt at a 'rehabilitation revolution.' 

Many, if not most, clients of the probation service are in receipt of State Benefit of one kind or another and as a group have never been particularly good at managing their limited incomes, often due to chaotic lifestyles involving either drink or drugs. A significant number have either learning disabilities or mental health problems that means coping on very tight budgets is extra difficult and there is a danger that spending decisions will not always be prudent. Of course the politically-correct would say it was about 'choice' and helps to encourage 'responsibility'.  

As a consequence, much of a probation officer's time has always had to be devoted to helping clients manage crisis situations brought about by a severe lack of money. I can tell you it's draining and extremely depressing for us, let alone the poor client, and often forms an effective barrier to any work we might wish to undertake concerning offending behaviour. But it's going to get a whole lot worse from Monday and as Polly Toynbee of the Guardian says, it will be the day that defines this government. 

Interestingly, as I write this, Grant Shaps, the Conservative Party chairman cites the present system as being cruel and hence justification for 'reforms', thus flying in the face of the new Archbishop of Canterbury and other church leaders who are quite-rightly pointing out they will hit the vulnerable.

Even before the new measures take effect, we know through leaked internal memos from the Department of Work and Pensions that Job Centre staff are being required to 'sanction' as many claimants as possible and try and trip them up at 'botherability' interviews. As always, this despicable tactic will mostly catch the scared and vulnerable, rather than the undeserving malingerers. As one staff member puts it, suicides will result, indeed just as we've seen with the infamous Atos capability tests designed to throw as many people off Disability Living allowance as possible. 

The saddest bit of all in this new twist to a cruel game is that many, many claimants have no idea what's about to hit them. In effect the changes in Council Tax Benefit, which will now only be a 'contribution' towards the total, coupled with the so-called Bedroom Tax, is in many ways a reincarnation of the despised Thatcher Community Charge or Poll Tax of the 90's. In one fell swoop, hundreds of thousands of claimants will see their benefit reduce significantly over night due to 'under-occupancy' and with virtually no hope of being able to move easily to smaller accommodation and retain their rights as tenants of social landlords.

As if this wasn't bad enough, payments will be made monthly instead of fortnightly and in respect of Housing Benefit, direct to the claimant and not the landlord anymore. Everyone aware of the situation knows that arrears of rent are going to accumulate quickly as many clients find it difficult or impossible to make up the shortfall, together with the extra responsibility of managing finances on a monthly basis. This is a gift to the 'payday' and door-to-door loan sharks as many claimants will feel pushed into their arms as a misguided way of coping. 

There is no doubt that the number of evictions will increase and many clients of ours will simply be unable to cope. They will be pushed over the edge. The final twist in this cruel game of making the poorest and most vulnerable pay for the mess we've got into, is that all new claims for benefit will have to be made online FFS. Can someone tell me how homeless, vulnerable and often chaotic people trying to get back into mainstream life can get easy access to a secure e-mail account, especially with libraries closing?

I see a massive amount of extra welfare-type work for the probation service and other statutory agencies, especially as funding for Citizen Advice Bureau's and civil Legal Aid have been dramatically cut. I wonder if any of this is making those carpet baggers currently sizing up contracts for probation work think twice? These 'reforms' are hardly going to assist with their efforts at making money out of the 'rehabilitation revolution' under PbR are they?

Even after these punitive cuts and with benefit levels capped at 1% for three years, thus ensuring inflation does its bit to help make the poorest even poorer, and before the Universal Benefit changes come into effect, astonishingly I see that the government is saying that the total welfare budget is not expected to reduce, merely that any increase will be 'managed.'

It seems even more radical measures to cut 'welfare dependency' could be on the way with the government feeling increasingly confident that the public mood is behind the deliberate widening of the division between the deserving and undeserving poor. This cannot be good for the well-being of any civilised society and I see the potential for serious trouble and unrest ahead.    

Some are saying that April 1st 2013 marks the beginning of the end of the Welfare State as we know it. On this day massive changes also come into effect as to how NHS services are commissioned, thus opening the door not just to more privatisation, but appallingly plenty of scope for many of these new commissioners to feather their own nest, despite supposed conflict of interest policies. 

As expected, the No10 petition has topped 20,000. You can sign it here.            

Being Candid

The Easter Bank Holiday is nearly upon us and I seem to have 'gate fever'. I just can't find the energy or enthusiasm to write much today. Something doesn't feel right about my internet writing experience of late and I think it's because things seem to have changed, and as most of my regular readers will know by now, I don't like change. 

The more I think about it, much of the stimulus for this blog has been sparked by the work of others, but it's drying up for a variety of reasons. I'm seriously missing Gadget. Apart from his often deliberately mischievous writing, his blog provided a vibrant platform for comment and discussion on many topical matters in the field of social and criminal justice policy. I find the silence both deafening and disturbing, knowing as we do that it must have been extinguished by order. 

I hope Bystander will forgive my saying that his blog is just not quite the same as it was in terms of range, frequency and content prior to heavy pressure being applied by Higher Judicial Authority. Many probation commentators and tweeters have been outrageously scared-off on the orders of Chris Grayling and even good old reliable Ben Gunn seems to be loosing interest in blogging since discovering the seductive delights of twitter. 

Even as I'm writing this, I can hear a voice saying that by it's very nature the internet will relentlessly throw up vibrant new talent with interesting things to say and in the process ruthlessly cast aside those that may have had their time. The still relatively-new Guerilla Policy blogsite is a good example of this and it's certainly opened my eyes to interesting stuff being written by lots of people I was blissfully unaware of. 

Part of my problem is I'm finding it very hard indeed to reconcile the new wave of 'openess and transparency' being espoused by government with quite blatant bullying of people who dare to tell stories that are 'off message'. The situation is becoming somewhat surreal I feel with the recent announcement of a legal obligation of 'candour' within the NHS. WTF does that mean exactly?! 

I remember thinking it was barmy when David Cameron announced in Parliament a few months ago that energy companies were going to be forced to limit the number of confusing tariffs on offer and ensure everyone was on the best tariff for them. How is that going to work in a capitalist market economy where the need for profit dictates that some of the people have to be  misled some of the time? Isn't that what advertising and marketing is predicated on under a capitalist system?

What's supposed to happen if this astonishing concept of a 'duty of candour' spreads? Are politicians going to be required to tell the truth? Will the likes of Waitrose have to point out how much cheaper Asda is? Will the hospital consultant have to point out the very poor infection history of their operating theatre? Surely it's all so much cobblers!

Have a good Easter and sign the No10 petition here. It should top 20,000 this weekend.              

'Failure Demand'

I've been taken down another fascinating avenue, this time courtesy of police blogger Nathan Constable and again featured on the 'Guerilla Policy' website. In the post 'Reform or Perform' he talks about his interest in system theory and particularly the concept of 'failure demand'.

According to wikipedia, the term as coined by Professor John Seddon, primarily in service organisations, is 'demand caused by a failure to do something, or do something right for the customer'. Somewhat understandably Nathan comes to the conclusion that most police work is due to 'failure demand':- 

"Just about everything the police deal with externally is a result of failure demand. Whether it be the failures of another agency to treat successfully a mental health patient; failure of the probation or prison service to rehabilitate an offender who then has to be caught again; failure of the judicial system to impose sufficient sanction on a recidivist; failure of an individual to regulate their intake of alcohol or drugs; failure of an individual to drive properly or safely."

Well if it's true for the police, it's certainly true for probation. We see 'customers' every day who have been failed in some way, mostly by the State, and since 1907 we've been expected to do something about it. To put it bluntly, if the State had done it's job better, the services of a probation officer might not have been required. I've touched on this theme before, as here in 2010:- 

"The thing that's always struck me about being a probation officer is that as a profession we have an absolutely unique window on our society. We are in an unrivalled position to be able to identify when things are going wrong in social policy terms, assess possible remedies and in the days when we had autonomy and freedom to innovate, develop and implement solutions. I've always felt that as an agency we were there to apply 'sticking plaster' and help patch people up who'd either fallen through the net or been harmed in some way by society; be an agent of the state providing a humane way of dealing with society's deviant citizens.  There was a time when I felt that a wise government would pay regard to such an agency that was so well informed and experienced and use that knowledge to both inform and improve social and penal policy. I guess it shows just how naive I've been when the opposite proved to be the case and the tables were turned against us - it was us that got changed.

One of the sadness's of the present situation is the difficulty we have in being able to adequately convey to new recruits the shear breadth and scope of innovations pioneered by the probation service in the past and during my career span. Supported housing, day centres, sheltered employment, youth projects, clothing stores, groups for drug users, problem drinkers, prisoners wives, family therapy, motor bike projects, intermediate treatment etc etc. etc. All this and much, much more has been stripped away from the probation service at a time when we have witnessed an unprecedented decline in the quality of some of our communities. A recent post by Inspector Gadget all too graphically illustrates the sort of world that will be familiar to many probation officers."

When we were social work trained and 'advised, assisted and befriended', if the tools to fix things for people were absent, we either developed them or pestered other organisations to provide them. But then the government decided that it wasn't appropriate for us to be helping, we should be punishing instead. Somewhat bizarrely though, we were still expected to magic rehabilitation out of thin air, but now restricted in what we could do. 

Yes we can run groups, programmes and other offence-focused work, but the same basic needs for education, employment, housing, health etc remain and many would say that the situation has become much worse in recent time. It's not probation's fault if it's felt we are failing to deliver rehabilitation. I think common sense says it's primarily the failure of the state to provide for the basics. 

Of course it's ridiculous to just release prisoners with £46 in their pocket and no support. But for those sentenced to 12 months or less, we have never been funded to assist this group, but we used to do it voluntarily. The introduction of National Standards put paid to that though. I don't think any of this is rocket science. Following on from the riots in the summer of 2010, just look what the government-appointed panel came up with in terms of recommendations - basically a plan to fix things:-

"Every child should be able to read and write to an age appropriate standard by the time they leave primary and then secondary school. If they cannot, the school should face a financial penalty equivalent to the cost of funding remedial support to take the child to the appropriate standard.

No child should be transferred into an unsatisfactory Pupil Referral Unit or alternative provision until standards are improved (unless there is a risk of immediate danger). 

Every child should have the skills and character attributes to prepare them for work, when they leave education.  

No offender should be placed back into a community on leaving prison without wraparound support, otherwise the community is put at risk.

No young person should be left on the work programme without sufficient support to realistically hope to find work. Government and local public services should together fund a 'Youth Job Promise' scheme to get young people a job, where they have been unemployed for one year or more.

All families facing multiple difficulties should be supported by public services working together, not in isolation. This will require joining up help for the 500,000 forgotten families."

To be honest I think I could add quite a few more things to the list that the State could fix. But I guess it's a start.