Losing the Plot

Probation of Offenders Act 1907 Clause 4d : "It shall be the duty of a probation officer, subject to the directions of the court - to advise, assist and befriend him, and, when necessary, to endeavour to find him suitable employment." 

As we continue to struggle with an increasingly bureaucratic, punitive and fractious probation service, it's worth remembering that when this enlightened and pioneering legislation was enacted, it predated the arrival of the social work profession; the court disposal was not a criminal conviction; and the recipient had to give consent. Interestingly, the Act remains in force in the Republic of Ireland. 

--oo00oo--

"Are you honestly saying probation officers should undertake 21 months of training and be paid £30-35k to go to the cinema?"

I really can't fathom out what point this person is trying to make? Why should encouraging our often dis-enfranshised, dis-engaged and socially excluded service users to do different things and getting to know them outside of a formal interview room, be "beneath" the work of a probation officer, irrespective of what they are paid? What are you saying the role of a PO should be, as all I see are risk management and sentence plans about "addressing lifestyle", "engaging in pro-social activities" or "moving away from peers", with no substance or skill attached on behalf of the PO to actually making this happen.

I once took a service user to the theatre (in my own time and while I very briefly mentioned this in Delius records I feared my employer actually finding out which itself speaks volumes). And why did I do this? Because I was getting NOTHING meaningful out of him in office visits and wanted to open his mind to "another world" and felt he had the potential to enjoy and experience other things in life (he'd never been to the theatre before, was a chronic alcoholic, it was actually a free event, but he had no idea these things even existed or how to access them). Am I bad probation officer? Would you not class this as an "intervention to assess and manage risk"?

As I recall it, the recent thread of posts started off due to a (yet another) commissioning proposal about NPS employing "mentors" to "support" our vulnerable and isolated during COVID19. So while such mentors get to know the "real person" outside of an office context, our jobs once again become fragmented - we try to "manage risk" with only partial information because the person is engaging with so many other agencies, or get in trouble if we weren't effective enough at "joint partnership working". We've fragmented off the job to so many disproportionate and disparate agencies, that it's no wonder our job is often described as reading a million emails and phoning people all day long, interspersed with "check ups" with our service users about whether they have done X or Y with another agency - personally I don't think that's worth £35K either, and writing crappy OASYS isn't either.

So in response to this poster, why should it be OK for a mentor to "take our service users to the cinema" and not develop such relationships ourselves? Why is "mentoring" seen a valid endeavour, but probation officers delivering mentoring not?

Be warned that the more we accept our jobs being farmed off to (generally lower paid) keyworkers, ETE workers, mentors, resettlement agencies, drug workers, charities, mental health workers, generally none of which are particularly more trained than us to deliver useful interventions in their respective fields, that our role will become even less necessary than it already is. Just look at the list of "day one services" under the new model - ETE, housing, "emotional support", accredited programmes, and I believe "one to one" interventions are being delivered by a separate team too - just what exactly is left to do for the Probation officer paid £35K?

*****

Equally, be warned that if we don't farm off the lower-skilled aspects of our work to 'generally lower paid' keyworkers etc, then we are at greater risk of becoming the lower paid partner in the arrangement ourselves. We may all aspire to be part of a nobler profession, but there's a limit. And to be frank, what would the justification be for, say, accompanying a service user to buy new bedding, or escorting them to a healthcare appointment if someone else can help out (aside from just limiting the pressures of our own workloads)?

*****

NPS employing "mentors"? Nope. Let's look at it again: "I understand the probation service is in discussions with a major volunteering charity about providing volunteers who can support the more vulnerable people on probation, mentor and befriend them." They're going to pay someone like Bubb to oversee carefully selected folk to do the work for nowt. Gratis. So you can be chained for many more hours inputting data & taking the shit when it all goes tits up. Haven't heard much from Napo or Unison about this. Anyone?

******
Animal farm Orwellian dystopia probation. It's already impossible to see who the real leaders are. If the work is shed externally there will be less of a need for all staff. Are we all so daft on this blog. Thatcher's legacy the privatised structures are all about self employment. If you once worked for telecom you now work in a franchise. Public sector lost staffing to private ownerships on reduced pensions and piece meal working. There can be no advocating our work out. Instead you must define the professional work and get it established as key core PO functions. Stop the rot.

******
I agree. I'm the person who started this initial thread. To confirm, by stating the other individuals were "generally lower paid", I did not mean to infer they have lessor skills; in fact, I made a point of saying they are no more or less trained than us to deliver the work in their allotted fields. By de-professionalising probation and commissioning out aspects of the work which I derogatively described as "farming out", they have been able to allow such work to be paid at far lower rates, with far less employment or pension rights, in the name of "charity" or "third sector" work. Obviously they tried to do this also with CRC, who (alongside NPS with reliance on PSO), were allowed to employ "responsible officers" or such like, to do the same work, again at far less pay. So we should all be worried, unless as others have stated we re-claim the professional ground and not accept that, as [above] seems to, taking a one-dimensional view about "buying bedding".

I for one feel very privileged to be working for what is still a public service, with (in comparison to many) a good rate of pay which includes other benefits such as a good pension, sick pay, fantastic holidays and generally good employment rights and stability, not to mention job satisfaction. I had the choice to work in the private sector (which I did for many years as a graduate) - had I stayed there the pay may well have been better now, but without all the other benefits mentioned, and the work and employment culture sucked; targets and QA and monitoring existed in insurance too, worse so. What I lament in probation is that we measure the wrong things and place too much emphasis on whether X or Y was done, rather than the meaning behind those things, and the constant "referring out" worries me greatly.

As for [above] your comment has sickened me. I can think of a hundred different reasons why "buying bedding" and "accompanying someone to a medical appointment" should be done by the PO and not a third party. Using these opportunities to see the person in the "real world", how they operate, teaching and practicing new skills, gaining confidence - you think sitting in the office allows that? Not to mention all the millions of reasons I mentioned in my original post about taking someone to a free theatre event. If you really think "buying bedding" is all about the bedding, then I really fear for your service users and what they can possibly gain from you sitting in your office with the pontificating and derisory attitude you have displayed on this blog.

******

I recall a drive to recruit and work with volunteers back awhile, pre TR. It created more work in trying to organise it than it achieved positive outcomes. If the organising of volunteers is outsourced and monetised it will be one of two things: highly bureaucratic with lots of vetting, training, etc, or cheap and very dodgy.

*****
Many many moons ago... I started my probation journey as a volunteer. It was an in-house project with a Probation Area, overseen by a senior manager. After three months' intensive training & clearance I was allocated to work with an inner city team where any of the POs in the team could submit suggestions for work they would like me to undertake with their cases. The volunteer manager would oversee the suggested tasks & select what they felt was possible/appropriate. The most common work involved taking family members to see cases incarcerated in prisons beyond the reach of a day return on public transport. Any direct work with a case was supervised by or very specifically laid out by the PO, with very clear instructions.

I had direct access to & supervision by the senior manager running the project & if there were any concerns about a situation I was removed from the task & thoroughly de-briefed. The project ended after two years when the senior manager took another role & no-one else applied for the secondment. I suspect it was also an expensive project. I don't know how many other volunteers were involved. It was certainly as intense as my training placements and prepared me well for my career. I dread to imagine what the 2021 version will be like.

******
High risk is where it's always been at really. In the 70 and 90s the focus was sharpened to resources follow risk. The old softly softly bus fares and befriending fund dried up fast to pay for managerialism expenses and business MBAs for middle managers. It saw the offender services decline and the training aided by the new direction of Labour paving a way for PFI hostels, bringing in outsiders and coming from new partnerships. We all lost the plot perhaps, being too relaxed.

The work was different then and so was the nature of employees. Today staff are grotesquely disfigured from care and nurture to value only numbers a grossly new metric to qualify throughput and quantities. Quality takes time, money and patience. Three things they do not understand. To get back to anything half way near, will require a cultural shift. The latest cohorts were not trained or selected for the traits needed to reform reflect or value experience of other. We are stuck with a monstrous machine of technocrats craving and striving for new data streams and by cramming numbers not the three things required.

I understand the ongoing mud slinging of which this is part will not bring the changes anytime soon. We all realise the Grayling destruction will take another generation before the rebuilding. This in my view remains impossible while politics control the dogma of Tory business ideologies. Just as long as the Tories remain in government I hope.

*****
Service users have been judged and sentenced so why would advise, assist and befriend be such a difficult concept to grasp? One of the best bits of advice (after degree, 2 years CQSW and a pass or fail 1 year probationary period) was to really get to know the client, and their families. Earn their trust based on professional boundaries and compliance will follow. It seems that over the years the importance of compliance was lost to enforcement.

*****

In my mind, it's not that officers now "can't" or don't want to or don't understand the concept of advise, assist, befriend. It's that the service has tried to reduce every outcome to a measurable metric. Take point above, about "really getting to know the person and their families." This is measured by "how many times did you do a home visit", have you done an OASYS in 15 days, did you do the web (in London), have you seen the person once a week, did you use CRISSA. I've no doubt that officers in the 1980s "got away with doing little" as they do now by entering blank entries or pulling through OASYS. But the question "how did you actually get to know the person", or to what extent did meaningful engagement with their families actually make a difference, or did it? The current metrics don't improve practice for anyone, but in my view completely overwhelm motivated officers to do their jobs.

--oo00oo--

I'll end this compilation with a private communication:- 

There’s a meme going about: “Helping one person might not change the whole world, but it could change the world for one person.”

Maybe we should stick that on our letterheads where “Advise, Assist Befriend” used to be. Same stuff, basically. And chuck in the ripple effect to this argument for a Probation Service that has at its heart the welfare and progress of its clients and we are onto something. Every client that does less harm, thrives, is a human victory, plus reduction of victimisation and a saving to the public purse.

The debate here about whether the “old school” Probation Service and its ethos had an effect will never be answered by recourse to the spreadsheets. It is too complex a mash of (lack of} social provision, media, politics, legislation to find a definitive answer. Not to disparage academia: the profession was built on a rich blend of theory and practice. When that is reduced to bureaucracy, and monetisation, baby and bathwater are well and truly thrown out.

But for now, I would like to invite stories. Hard to share those stories that warm the hearts of Probation professionals given the privacy confidentially and respect that we extend to our cases. Let’s give it a go, carefully. Your starter for 10: Names and details changed to protect the less than innocent:

Approached in the street by Joe, a long gone but then “prolific” and notorious client: I had worked with him a good few years back: He came with a pile of conditions and expectations from the court. Early on, while we mooched about in seemingly aimless conversations, the thing that engaged him, was core, emerged, so we went with that. It was nothing much to do with any assessment or whatever, it was just a thing he wanted and needed which was a positive: being able to read, scared and embarrassed by his inabilities. Getting there took patience and skill, and jettisoning the rigid and paltry “plan” for a genuine interest in and support of an individual requires confidence and professional autonomy. 

His pre-cons printout was like the telephone directory: both width and quality, but when I met him in the street I hadn’t seen him for a few years. He was applying for a professional qualification, what must he declare by way of criminal convictions? We went back to the office and checked. All were “spent”. Hard to credit. We high fived. He got a bit tearful. Now a family man with a small business. There’s a whole lot of cases which don’t get there of course. But some that do. They don’t come back, of course, so we lose sight of the joy, and the benefit of that.

Free Labour

Volunteers have been around for a long time in the Probation Service and traditionally this was recommended as a way of helping to decide whether the type of work appealed or not. Some areas, including my own, decided to dispense with them as managerialism took a hold, but were quickly reinstated as public spending cuts began to bite. 

Now of course volunteers are regarded as essential by the privateers running CRC's as a way of cutting costs. Volunteers used to be regarded as 'added value' in helping professional staff supervise clients, but increasingly they are being used for core tasks and even performing clerical functions. Selection, training and supervision vary enormously and I suspect trouble is being stored up, but that's another story.  

Interestingly, the NPS have recently decided they don't want volunteers at all and CRC's have been told to withdraw those that have been working with NPS clients. The speculation is that the decision might at least be partly to do with cost as I've heard talk of CRC's wanting to charge NPS £30 an hour for the services of a volunteer! Another example of how innovation is indeed developing nicely as the TR omnishambles beds in. 

So, as we await to hear just how far the next round of Tory spending cuts will affect probation, it's probably worth taking a look at other key public services such as the police and their plans for volunteer labour. Here's Danny Shaw's report on the BBC website:- 

Volunteer army may swell police service ranks

Most people don't choose to spend their weekends at a police station. But Alan Hunt does.Every Friday and Saturday night, between 19:30 and 04:00, you will find the cheerful pensioner in a back office at Blandford Forum police station in north Dorset.

His "job" is to monitor footage from four CCTV cameras covering the centre of Blandford, a bustling market town notable for its distinctive Georgian buildings. At closing time, with people making their way to and from Tiffany's, the town's only nightclub, Alan comes into his own, scrutinising a bank of TV screens for signs of trouble on the streets.

He is patched into the police radio system and alerts officers when they're needed on the ground. "Somebody bit somebody's ear off," says the 73-year-old, recalling the worst thing he's seen in the five years he has been doing the role. "There was a chap with a knife once," he adds. The retired builder and road-sign maker is Dorset Police's most prolific volunteer. The unpaid work he does for the force fulfils an ambition he has nursed since childhood.

He says: "When I left school that was my original intention - to go into policing, as a student. But unfortunately we were not a very rich family so my mother said, 'You've got to stay at home and earn some money.'"

There are 400 other police volunteers in Dorset. Half work in staff roles, like Alan Hunt; half are special constables, with the full powers of police officers. Martyn Underhill, the area's police and crime commissioner, wants to increase volunteer numbers and expand what they're able to do.

He says: "I see it as a fantastic resource. As Robert Peel said, 'The public are the police, the police are the public' - this brings diversity, it brings additionality, it brings great scope to policing I believe in".

Greater role

The Home Office also wants to extend the role of police volunteers. A consultation closed in October on plans to give them a wider range of powers and create the volunteer equivalent of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs). The proposals are expected to be included in the Policing and Criminal Justice Bill later this year.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, writing in the consultation document, says unpaid police staff play a "vital role in community safety" but there is "more that volunteers can do". Mrs May says she wants to encourage people to get involved in policing if they have "skills in particular demand" such as accountancy and IT, in order to help forces investigate cyber-crime and fraud.

I met Adam, 37, one of this new breed of police volunteers at the central London offices of the National Crime Agency (NCA). He didn't want me to know his surname because of the sensitive nature of what he does. His paid job is a security adviser for an insurance company that allows him to attend NCA meetings and carry out special projects - it builds up his experience, improves his CV and helps the NCA catch criminals.

"Because I've got quite a lot of experience in IT, I see things maybe somewhat different to how they would," says Adam, who had to be vetted before taking on NCA duties earlier this year. He wouldn't take a paid job with the NCA because he can earn significantly more in the private sector - but the benefits for the NCA of being able to tap into such expertise for free are clear. The organisation receives about 50 applications from volunteers each week, 10% of which are successful.

Sensitive issue

But at a time when the paid police workforce is shrinking, the recruitment of volunteers is a sensitive issue. Unison, one of the trade unions that represents PCSOs and other police staff, is concerned the Home Office proposals are simply a cheap way of plugging gaps in the police service resulting from government cuts; 37,000 posts have been axed since 2010, and thousands more are projected to go over the next five years.

Ben Priestley, Unison's national officer for police and justice services, says a "Home Guard" of 9,000 volunteers has been "quietly recruited" to backfill roles that have been lost, raising concerns about competence and accountability. "There's a general question about whether the general public believe that policing should be carried out by, in many cases, well-meaning amateurs," says Mr Priestley.

"Policing is a serious business, dealing with serious crime, and our members who work as police staff are fully trained, they're fully vetted and they're very, very committed to the job they do. If you're a volunteer, you're not under the direction and control of a chief constable, as police staff and police officers are, and that's a very real problem, and I don't think the general public would be happy about that."

Police volunteers

There are currently 16,000 volunteer police officers in England and Wales, known as special constables. Specials undergo training, wear police uniform and have the same powers in law as their "regular" colleagues. They tend to do mainstream policing, such as foot patrol, crowd control and crime prevention, rather than specialist work, and have to be available for at least 16 hours each month.

In addition, there are 9,000 volunteers performing a wide variety of different staff jobs in the police. The union Unison, which surveyed police forces last year, says Kent has the largest number of volunteers (850), while volunteers in Thames Valley put in the most hours (70,000). The survey identified more than 60 volunteer roles, ranging from mountain rescue to animal welfare, crime scene investigation to firearms licensing.

Unison says most of the 43 constabularies are planning to increase their use of volunteer police staff, including Nottinghamshire, which is aiming for a fivefold rise by the end of 2015.

At Dorset, Mr Underhill says a "complete complaints system" is in place for volunteers, though it's seldom needed. He says the recruitment of volunteers is not driven by austerity - at least in his constabulary - but is a way of supplementing the work of paid staff.

That's certainly in evidence at Dorset Victims' Bureau, based at Bournemouth police station, where employees and volunteers work side by side, updating crime victims about their cases and giving them advice. Whatever the objections, the financial realities of policing are such that this partnership between police and citizens will become even more of a feature of law enforcement in the years ahead.

Free Labour

I'm grateful to the NAPO discussion forum for highlighting a current job offer by the Hampshire Probation Trust on the Isle of Wight for a receptionist/admin officer. The only problem is the level of pay - there isn't any! :-

"Volunteer wanted - on the Isle of Wight (Newport Office) Ideal for Graduates/Job Seekers who wish to broaden their work experience. Duties will include: General reception duties; answering the telephone, taking messages, dealing with questions/queries from offenders, dealing with petty cash and offender travel claims, etc. General admin work including filing. sending letters, dead filing/archiving. Ad hoc court administrative duties."

Now most of us with long memories are very familiar with the use of volunteers within the probation service. Traditionally this was seen as a route for recruitment, not just another avenue for the mostly middle class to do something useful within their community. I know many officers started their careers as volunteers and they were a very useful resource, particularly in helping to provide for the welfare needs of clients. 

Sadly, with the move away from our welfare orientation, many services gave up on volunteers completely, only to rediscover the concept in recent time with a new focus on mentoring and former offender engagement programmes. There's also a growing realisation that retired officers can be a valuable resource, skilled and able to undertake some supportive work with clients that 'adds value' to the limited amount of time hard-pressed officers have for each case.

Again, those with long memories will remember the days when probation used to regularly take part in YTS and Work Experience programmes when school leavers were encouraged to gain their first taste of the work place over several weeks. But this is very different. 

There's no doubt that volunteering is definitely 'flavour of the month' once more in probation circles and I guess if you were cynical you would notice that it happens to coincide with a period of economic stringency and a government keen on fostering a 'Big Society'. But it takes macho Hampshire HR to take the concept to a whole new level and just blatantly try and fill real jobs with free labour. 

Absolutely disgraceful and I think we can expect an emergency motion at the impending NAPO AGM in Torquay.   

Too Risky?

Eric Allinson the prisons correspondent of the Guardian wrote an interesting piece for the paper way back in 2007 on a new project being set up at that time called Gate Mate. An initiative by The Princes Trust in partnership with other organisations such as Clinks, the article explained that:-


"Former prisoners are to be appointed to every probation service in England and Wales in a bid to cut the number of young offenders who return to crime after a spell in prison.

The scheme, which builds on an initiative by the Prince of Wales, aims to break the cycle of reoffending by young people.

Following a summit at Clarence House at which Prince Charles met 25 ex-offenders, ministers are working with the Prince's Trust and the probation service to set up a network of former inmates to act as key advisers to the 42 local probation services.

The meeting was called after the trust received hundreds of letters from former prisoners who said that without the help of the charity they would have been back in jail.

Only one of the 25 ex-prisoners at the summit said they had been met by anyone on leaving jail.
Under the new scheme, former prisoners will be appointed as "gate mates", offering one-to-one support to newly released offenders.

One of the first is Mark Johnson, who has been appointed to the probation service in Dorset. Seven years ago, Mr Johnson was a drug addict living on the streets, until he turned to the trust for help.

He now visits young offenders in prison, and said he is overwhelmed by their response to the proposed gate mate scheme."

This sounds like a brilliant idea and I notice that some four years later the GateMate website says:-

"GateMate is striving for the voluntary and community sector to provide a national mentoring service for young adults (aged 18-24) leaving prison."

So what happened to:-

"Former prisoners are to be appointed to every probation service in England and Wales in a bid to cut the number of young offenders who return to crime after a spell in prison."

Possibly the answer lies with the Probation Service having become so bound up with the issue of 'risk' that they've simply decided to steer clear of the thorny issue of allowing ex-offenders to become volunteers. I recall this always was an issue in the past when my own Service had a thriving volunteer organisation, but then summarily decided to dump the whole volunteering thing as not being effective or worthwhile.

I remember thinking at the time how shortsighted and out of step this was with developing ideas on the benefits and synergies of ex-offenders being able to help other offenders. But this requires the taking of some calculated risks. Of course there was a time when the Probation Service would have been in the vanguard of such exciting and innovative developments, but not any more it seems, weighed down as we have been by proscriptive NOMS control and increasing prison philosophy. 

Having said this, I'm aware that several Trusts are experimenting with mentoring projects, but this seems to be on the basis of partnerships with other organisations, rather than via the route of direct volunteer accreditation. I can't help feeling another missed opportunity.

Doing More with Less

The clear message from the coalition government is that deep spending cuts will mean the public sector will have to become yet more efficient. Now we have Ed Miliband, the brand new supposed left-leaning leader of the Labour Party saying "the public sector will have to do more with less". So, if the writing on the wall is that clear - I wonder what it will mean for the probation service? Now, if only I was in charge.....

I'd see if we could cope without so many managers, especially those at Head Office with strange titles like 'business development manager', and do we really need 'public relations managers' or 'research managers', or 'offender management managers'?  Could Head Office be a tad smaller? You get the gist.

We could turn the clock back and recruit volunteers again. Rather stupidly management decided a few years ago that they didn't fit into a modern professional service. So we not only lost a useful recruiting avenue for future entrants to the service, we also robbed many clients of the extra personal contact and mentoring that used to be provided by experienced and well motivated people.

Look afresh at the whole 'programme' industry that grew up during the fervour surrounding the 'What Works' debate a few years ago. I was always sceptical that a prescriptive 'one size fits all' approach was the correct avenue to go down exclusively, thus effectively stifling any innovative developments. Without doubt programmes are beneficial for many participants, but they consume a huge chunk of resources and there are not always enough appropriate participants available. I would mention in passing that one eminent academic reminded me that the whole point about the process was that it was a debate and consequently there should be a question mark after 'What Works'. It sort of puts everything into perspective for me.

Carry out an urgent review of bureaucratic processes and in particular OASys. The time has come to admit the blindingly obvious that it was a massive mistake, ill thought out, foisted upon us by our prison service partners and is now a mill stone hanging around every officer's neck. A staggering 41% of an officers time is spent in front of the computer, much of it on unproductive involvement in OASys. Management know this because the concept of 'OASys-lite' was introduced as a way of getting some improvement in productivity with low risk cases. If this issue could be addressed urgently, not only could there be a massive increase in productivity generally, but just imagine what it would do for staff morale. 

Get managers of all grades to have some regular client contact and write the odd PSR. I think that would not only help with productivity, it would boost morale but most importantly of all it would serve to reinforce in a very 'hands-on' way exactly why officers lose the will to live when completing a full OASys.   

If only I was in charge.....