Best of the Week

There are many events which celebrate the vainglorious bullshit of overpaid fuckwits, but none more so than the merry-go-round of astonishing new criminal justice initiatives being announced to the world by The Minister For The Bleedin' Obvious: "This ground-breaking new model will help offenders get their lives back on the straight-and-narrow before it’s too late". It makes my piss boil. Why? Because for the last thirty years there have been too many 'new initiatives' to count. Too much public money has been wasted on vanity projects which usually only last months, maybe a year at best, before the funding dries up, nothing more happens except that... we return to the status quo but with ever-reducing resources.

IF, and it's a very rare 'if', an initiative is effective and/or successful, the ongoing running costs are taken from pre-existing budgets, staff are taken from pre-existing posts. Around the time the Trusts were created it was often said that NOMS had 'more pilots than British Airways'. It is not helpful or productive or progressive to persist with such stupidity. Getafix is dead right - "The wheel can be reinvented, even if reluctantly, and ever so slowly." But where does it get anyone?

The MoJ scrapped the well-respected, perfectly functional vehicle that was a nationwide probation service, paid well over-the-odds for it to be stripped & taken away, and threw what they couldn't sell into the skip - which they also paid over-the-odds for. Now the MoJ are buying the wheels back - probably from the dodgy dealers they originally paid to take them away. And they think they're getting a great deal because they think they're brand new wheels!! Think about it. New Choreography, NOMS, Trusts, TR... if the £billions of wasted public money & other resources had simply been poured into what was in existence pre-1999 we would now have the most progressive & successful probation service on the planet. And thus... piss is boiling.

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I worked in a "Young Adults" team not long after I started work as PO. That was in the early 1990s. Similar ethos, it was effective and abandoned when National Standards were introduced. The wheel turns... recently I heard someone talking about an approach to interventions that sounded remarkably similar to Systems Theory!

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Oldies like me get a bit exhausted as things go round the block again, but this is to be welcomed, I guess (sigh), My main concern is that Pilots are always run by the enthusiastic and ambitious and then get rolled out underfunded as the enthusiastic and ambitious are required to demonstrate it can be done on a shoestring, Been there, done that.

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The wheel is spinning so fast that a) hamsters on the wheel just keep running b) those hamsters who look out of the window just lose the will, and look for an exit.

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"Mental health and substance misuse experts will work alongside National Probation Service staff... accommodation, training and employment services will also operate from the hub"

It never ceases to amaze me how many different services a person needs to attend, which in my view would be more effective if probation officers were trained and given the professional discretion to deliver meaningful services ourselves, directly. I'm not saying people should only ever attend with one person; but the only "groundbreaking" thing about this project is the fact the services are all "under one roof" - the poor person still has to attend with five different services (in addition to the jobcentre and their GP, so 7) if they are an unemployed drug user with mental health and accommodation problems. I've said it before but it's worth repeating, this approach de-skills the value (and point) of attending with probation, and whether "under one roof" or not complicates the lives of people who are, by very definition of the inclusion criteria for the service "young, vulnerable and immature". I just don't get it.

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The trauma stuff is good. I am a bit reserved about the Personality Disorder stuff: always resistant to theory/practice which is rooted in the idea the problem is not with the shit state of the economy and our society, and any new clothes the HMPPS Emperor gets of on. In my book, (evidenced based) work is simple: forge good relationships, manage the risk, advocate your socks off for the client. The less simple thing is the skills, experience and training that make that work. But none of the above much boosted by the shitshow of initiatives, projects, bureaucracy, contract-management, and other needless complexity that is strangling us.

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* but the only "groundbreaking" thing about this project is the fact the services are all "under one roof"

Been there, done that - intensive probation for prolific & persistent offenders - remember them? We had police, probation, substance misuse, mental health, housing & DSS staff all in one building & immediately accessible to those who had been accepted into the fold - it was necessarily selective & targeted (as is the ground-breaking world-first Newham project) because time, money & space were limited if we were to ensure meaningful involvement with each case, as opposed to rushed or superficial engagement.

TR meant the experienced & skilled probation staff were made 'redundant', funding was pulled & the police morphed the project into community surveillance, i.e. the project doesn't actually exist anymore but the single police involved is called a 'case manager' who has a list of numbers to call if s/he feels its necessary. But as many prehistoric hamsters will attest, the 'one-stop-shop' approach is most certainly NOT new.

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Agree - will it be any different with this ‘new’ service or new CFO Probation Activity Hubs, Probation Dynamic Framework contracts, ‘Local Leadership Innovation Fund’? Lots of duplicated spending pockets, instead of strategically funded/coordinated Services to meet needs. I started my career in 80s as a volunteer at a Probation Centre in Liverpool, then in 90s managed a Probation Centre in Bucks - all multi-agency partnerships, multi-activity and very successful. Significant relationships/trust are proven as the key to changing behaviour. Sadly too many staff required to dedicate their time to mechanistic systems rather than building skills to develop trusting relationships to effect change.

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A fascinating look at the changes that so many Probation Officers have also experienced. I sometimes wonder whether the daily grind of our "targets only" work prevents each of us realising the many changes for the worse that have occurred. Is this a parallel with the very, very gradually warmed up then boiled frog syndrome?

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Blimey! I did nothing wrong once. I had a job, then I didn't because of a contrived, constructed process whereby they said they couldn't afford to keep all the jobs going (even though they paid themselves much more than they used to get); then they stole most of my redundancy money & threatened me if I didn't take what was offered. No-one gave me £300,000 to keep my gob shut. Maybe its time to write a book? Maybe I'll ask Alison for some top tips... I've still got the emails & the letters.

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Nobody else even slightly irritated by Diane Wills' somewhat self-aggrandising account of her career, reading more like a job application or LinkedIn profile? Even more confusing given the complete volte-face in the mere 9 months between August 2017 and May 2018. It's not entirely clear whether she was actually a Probation Officer when enthusing about the role in 2017. I'm certainly not going to say the work or the culture has improved - it definitely hasn't. But I sense a bias here that might be more about Diane's current 'business' interests than a careful comparison of Probation then and now. Has Diane been competing with the Probation Service for work, or perhaps her business hasn't been securing the anticipated contracts with HMPPS to deliver work alongside the Probation Service? Given that Diane seems to have returned to the job she hates in recent years, I can only assume the business wasn't working out. Just saying.

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I did make similar observations myself - by "independent contractor" I assume she means she was a temp through an agency? That said, she does make some very relevant points and makes them well. Risk assessment and parole reports have indeed become "painting by numbers" and case formulation has become mechanistic, done only by "qualified PD psychologists". The damage OASYS has done and then the re-damage through QA tools has left us de-skilled and depressed, knowing that none of it makes a blind bit of difference but do it to their exacting standards due to fear of sacking and criticism in face of an SFO.

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These ‘core values’ and ‘professional standards’ stop outside the door of our elite leaders. Some are particularly good at throwing people under busses. “Speaking after the hearing, Chief Probation Officer Sonia Flynn CBE said: “This was a truly horrific crime and the decision-making was well below what I expect of an experienced probation officer, for which I sincerely apologise to Janet Scott’s family.”

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The Civil Services' core values are supposed to be integrity, honesty, impartiality and objectivity. If Alison's book is true, including the content and timing of this 'Annex 16', how can the likes of Sonia Flynn and Neil Appleby be allowed to remain as civil servants, let alone in very senior positions? Its not exactly a surprise but it is unsettling. And you have to wonder how these people can look themselves in the mirror each morning.

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I had no idea, until now, that the NPS had screwed up so badly that they had to pay Alison off before they were taken to tribunal. Its definitely not what we were led to believe in our division.

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I can't wait to read it Ali! Is it available in paperback yet? There are so many Probation stories that have not been told yet including many recent episodes such as the way the CRC Working Links was run before it collapsed. Unfortunately all I hear from Senior Managers is a clamour for "Good news stories" and gushing prose about "exciting" new ways of work. I have no quarrel with optimism but I believe it can only be real when we look at and properly deal with the problems, betrayals and outrages that have been carried out by Senior Managers since Chris Grayling's Probation Rehabilitation Transformation.

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Working Links run by the most corrupt people ever. Supported by many staff who did as they were told regardless of legitimacy. Links stole cash funding pensions percentage contributions and paid their clique of friends incredible salaries from the budget while cutting front line staff. They couldn't pay bills for vehicle insurance road funds mot laundry water. They closed, valuable office space intimidated staff and lied to individuals. Steve Jones Working Links sub chief is incredibly low rent low skill and low conscience. Local Napo fought these people and effectively run an internal exposures campaign on TV Jim's media, and local council motions with labour. The corrupted Tory linkages were everywhere but nothing stopped the production of the worst HMIP report ever from any area. It directly led to major leadership exit post links demise.

Links held on with a genuinely incredible financial accounts being marked as a going concern. This means having funds to run for the next 18 months. Links buckled 12 weeks later indicating the flair for auditors bad accounts. Aurelias turned on links then ate their cash devouring everything. Links desperately scrambling their debts to the HSBC monthly deadline saw offender provisions suffer. No desk phones no transport cover no tools no replaced products no expenses paid. Flooded shoddy offices no health and safety. The complete failure of leadership was painful to witness and their immediate complicit conduct. Just following orders I don't think so. Links had not calculated what the local Napo branch did do and helped bring them down sooner than later. Some of the early engagements were like a scene from made in Dagenham with cooperative overtures was beyond a joke. Senior unions officers talking like apologists than taking substantive action but for the local branch chair who had a fantastic team.

The four years of the idiocy complacency and complicit conduct from those in charge coupled to sheer gross and growing incompetence unravelled it should never have run so long and the cowardice of those who should and could have acted properly brought matters to a head faster but chose not to. These failings so derelict from their primary function and duty. They could not have any pride for their part.

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I will be reading it. I had 2 SFO investigations myself, both during the time that my CRC had an unofficial "no breach policy" prior to March 2017. I will never forget either the victims or the way I was treated by the SFO process. How did we get to this relentless blame culture that seems to desire one individual as a scapegoat for several systems that are dysfunctional (Senior Management, Government Criminal Justice policy, very poor recording, IT and risk assessment tools, weak Trade Unions and lack of working together across agencies to mention just a few)?

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Doing your job as best as you can in overwork situations bad admin poor IT late records failed attendances pressure not to breach, the absent workloads management agreement and no distinctions for proper case time allocation. Any good union would take employers to court threaten legal protection raise formal statutory grievances on multiple infringements and force employers to protect the public by protection of staff first as priority. Sadly we don't have that anymore and we have to look at why we have a such a pathetic unprofessional crock in Napo. Napo don't know much these days feckless low grade ego trippers who have squandered resources. Unison hide in the bigger staff avoiding probation officers plight as not the bulk of its members. SFO outcomes will likely remain the stick against PO staff. Fear rules.

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OM, long in the tooth now, I have several SFO's on my CV. In every case, without exception, my organisation has shat on me. I hate them for the lack of care they extend to case holders. They have got this so wrong. They talk of lessons learned but they don't learn them.

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In my last SFO investigation I was hugely assisted by the HMIP SFO thematic inspection report which poured criticism on the NPS SFO process as being unfit for any kind of purpose. For the first time, but not the last, I felt a smidgen of sadness that HMIP was more understanding and protective of my professional context than my employer. To anyone going through this 'blessed' process read the HMIP report and I think you will find it useful and supportive.

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Looking forward to reading it. Went thru an obviously rigged disciplinary myself with union rep - who it later turned out had an otherwise undisclosed relationship with the senior manager making the accusations. Lucky for me the Hearing Chair wasn't stupid & allowed me to deliver my own summing up when union rep tried to tell the hearing I was admitting all allegations.

A "Guaranteed sacking" for gross misconduct ended up as minor infraction of data protection (inadvertent but yes, it was), a slap on the wrist & internal enquiry about the wasted time & money, and the lies told by others coerced into submitting false evidence to the kangaroo court.

I think TR saved the skins of all involved as the Trust ceased to exist shortly afterwards. Guess where I was shafted. And guess what the CRC did next. But I wouldn't have coped any longer. I was on the ragged edge as it was after way too many months suspended & I'm much happier no longer embroiled with such a dysfunctional coven of vile bullies. Learned how to be a barista; now I'm getting paid to write, paint, travel (not so much for the last year) & generally enjoy life.

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I remember last year one of my cases allegedly committed an offence of rape. Having had sight of police evidence it was clear to me that he did not fit the profile of the offender. Despite this he appeared in court charged with one account of rape and one account of sexual assault against adult female. The serious further offence process was initiated at court and the case was put on hold and all documentation relevant to the case was printed off and Case file seized. I was given clear instructions not to have access to the case pending the SFO enquiry. I was made to feel like I had done something wrong. No account was taken of the high case load I was carrying at the time.

I was interviewed and asked questions about my management of the case. Basically the interview conducted by an ACO made me feel belittled and guilty that I did something wrong. I came out the meeting feeling overwhelmed and deskilled. In a bizarre twist of turn the police had in fact arrested the wrong person and no further evidence was offered by the CPS. Consequently, the offender was released without charge.

However, I did not receive any apology or explanation for being put through this terrible experience. I raised the issue with my manager and told that this is the way things are done. It just seemed to me that managers just want to quickly blame someone or point the finger at others at the first opportunity. We need to change the way we work. We need to treat staff with respect and not someone to point the finger at. It took me some several months to recover from this unfortunate experience. I hope for things change for the best in the future although I have my doubt.

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Ali, credit to you for sharing what I believe is essential probation reading. Many of us have been shafted by probation on occasion, by SFO and complaint processes. These processes can be horrendous and there is no protection or support. Probation senior managers, Heads of Service, ACOs and Directors, are always willing to throw everyone beneath them under the bus. Senior Probation Officers sometimes wear the Teflon too, but only if they’re in the inner-circle and if senior managers are not comprised. The SFO process is a blame game and the aim is to find fault no matter what. Most probation colleagues are manipulated through the process and made to believe it is development, when it is not. Anything that puts a negative maker next to ones name is potentially career ending.

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It's sort of weird that this has emerged as a theme now, as in totally awful that the MoJ/HMPPS, a secretive and defensive cabal, have been allowed to pursue an investigation process in-house, and quality checked by themselves. It all makes sense now: the crushing of individuals in order to protect the centre. The more polarised the gap between the ministry and Real Life, the worse this gets for practitioners trying to do a professional job connected to real life.

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I recall the days when something bad happened the team meetings would see a flurry of professional support re checking evaluating the issues and all contributing to the officer concern care and recognition of their upset. Self questioning reflection and ways that may have been a factor to prevent SFO although not termed that then were all normal things without officer recrimination. 

Today so many colleagues are involved in one case it seems easier to find a single missed entry or late breach whatever there is to just blame the one. Accuse the staff and then absolve the wretched procedures as self righteous. We need to establish all our professional judgement skills again. Revisit ownership of a professional standards which need and must have safeguards. This means: 

1 workload limitation 

2 tiering of the work duty responsibilities which are prescribed in written role boundary.

3 Timings properly agreed for all pieces of work. 

4 case allocations process timely and gate kept for best skilled staff and workloads balance.

We must re establish our frontline and professional judgement as a competency and as part of the reason why probation officers decisions are respected and calculated than that of the flawed OASys being the tool we are judged upon.

Justice Committee Hears From Justin Russell

On Tuesday, in connection with its inquiry into the future of the Probation Service, the Justice Committee took oral evidence from HMI Justin Russell, together with representatives from several CRCs. I've waited until written publication of the exchanges as I suspect there is much that will be of interest to readers. A long but important first part:-   

Q1 Chair: Our first witness, who is with us in the room, is Justin Russell, Her Majesty’s chief inspector of probation. Welcome, and it is very good to see you again, Mr Russell. 

Justin Russell: Thank you and thanks for having me. 

Chair: Thank you very much for coming to help us. Perhaps we can cut to the chase because we have seen a good deal of written evidence, of course, about the inquiry, and your work is familiar to us in any event. 

What a lot of people might be thinking is this: the probation service now is going through its second major reform in five years. The first was pretty substantial, with the CRCs and so on—a major reform; and now another major reform is going in the opposite direction. I suppose people might ask what confidence we can have that the new model will stick and that we are going to get a lasting solution that we can deliver on. As the person who is charged with inspecting the service, what is your take on that? 

Justin Russell: You are right to say that a lot of people hope that this new model will stick. It is the fourth major restructuring in over 20 years, following previous restructurings, so it is very important for everyone working in the service that they get some stability going forward. 

I do not think structural reform by itself will necessarily bring that stability. It is very important that it is backed up with real resources, strong leadership and the right performance framework. All of those elements have to be in place. Merely shifting boundaries around while changing the structures will not by themselves necessarily bring substantial improvements in quality. 

Q2 Chair: Some of the Committee’s findings and reports were quite critical of the previous structure and the fragmentation. Did that fit with the evidence that the inspectorate found? 

Justin Russell: It did, and I think the findings from the inspectorate over the five years of Transforming Rehabilitation matched what your Committee and the National Audit Office have been saying. From quite early on in our inspections, we were finding, as you say, a fragmented and two-tier service with some quite serious flaws in the way the structure had been set up. 

The most serious flaw of all was the commercial contractual mechanism, and the way that that meant some very serious underfunding of the CRCs. I think the Lord Chancellor came to your Committee and said that potentially there was a £700 million underspend on CRCs compared with what was expected to be spent on them over the seven years of the contract. That gap in funding has had a deleterious effect on the quality of service that they have been able to deliver. 

Q3 Chair: That is something you were able to pick up from your inspections. 

Justin Russell: It certainly is, and we have been picking it up since we started doing inspections after TR. There are some areas of good practice: some services have done well. We have seen some areas of improvement. London CRC, for example, has improved over the years, and South Yorkshire has scored well over the years. 

In our most recent round of inspections, we re-inspected nine CRCs and compared our results with our previous set of standards; three of them we now rate as good, so there have been some signs of improvement. The remainder are still in need of some improvement, particularly around the basics of offender management and managing risk to the community. 

Q4 Chair: That is very helpful. When you said, as you fairly did, that there are other things beyond purely reunification that were required, are there particular areas of the topics you highlighted to us that you think should be given the most focus? 

Justin Russell: In terms of what our inspections have found over the last two or three years, it is the focus on public protection. Actually, the CRCs have not been bad at looking at desistance and at reoffending. That has been very much where their focus has been, and they have introduced some interesting innovations around that; they have introduced new rehabilitation programmes and some quite sophisticated data tools to see what the needs of offenders are. 

We consistently score them down on the management of risk. Over half the cases we inspect in CRCs are not satisfactory in relation to protecting the public—assessing risk, planning for it and then reviewing it. That needs to be a key focus going forward. 

It is not just CRCs. It is the weakest area of performance for the National Probation Service as well. They score a bit better than CRCs, but it is still bringing their scores down. They all need to improve in that really critical area of public protection. 

Q5 Chair: System wide. 

Justin Russell: Yes. 

Q6 Dr Mullan: I want to pick up on a couple of those points. It is a really difficult thing to weigh up the extent to which you might attribute the factors, but would you say that the reorganisation was a small factor or a big factor versus the other things you talked about? 

Justin Russell: A big factor in terms of the poor performance? 

Dr Mullan: Fragmentation in terms of performance. 

Justin Russell: It was a big factor, but it was not necessarily the split, although that was a factor. The under-resourcing was a critical factor because so much of the probation budget goes on staff; that is the biggest element. It had a real impact on case loads and on the manageability of what staff were doing. We were consistently finding staff saying, “I’ve got too big a case load. I can’t manage that.” We were finding probation officers with 70 or 80 cases, and you cannot manage risk effectively or do a good job by the people you are supervising if you are managing that many people. That was a direct result of the lack of resources, and that, in turn, was a reflection of the failure of the funding mechanism. 

Q7 Dr Mullan: I assume that the funding mechanism is the same funding mechanism for the three that you found to be good performers versus the ones that were not. What do you think is the difference within the same framework and budget, the same contracts, for those to be good when others are struggling? 

Justin Russell: The overall shape of the contracts is similar, but they all went in with different bids and different tenders. Some of the providers were more ambitious in their assumptions about what they would get from payment by results in the later years of the contract, and those are the ones that are really suffering now and have the biggest holes in their budgets. What we actually see now is almost a three-tier probation system, where we have the National Probation Service, we have maybe three or four decently performing CRCs and then some that are really struggling because of the holes in their budgets. 

As we have gone back into those CRCs in the last year, they are still having to cut budgets; they are still cutting probation numbers. Particularly, Purple Futures and the RRP services in the east and west midlands are where we see those real issues very much at play. 

Q8 Dr Mullan: Did you notice any difference between whether they were perhaps a private sector provider or a non-profit provider? Did you see any pattern in that regard? 

Justin Russell: Not necessarily. There are good providers, both private and of a more mutual arrangement. Durham and Tees Valley is the best-known example of the more mutual arrangement. MTC is the provider for Thames Valley, and we have rated them good. Sodexo is the provider for South Yorkshire and we have rated them well. 

Private providers can do a decent job, but they are in a very different position financially and there are risks. Once you start to outsource something and you have large providers moving into the market—large parent companies—you are also at risk of what is happening to the owning company as well. If they get into trouble, the justice subsidiaries may struggle as well. We had that issue with Working Links at the beginning of last year when they went into administration. That caused all sorts of problems in the south-west and Wales.

Chair: That is very helpful. We have the new model; it is still in draft form, of course, at the moment. February 2021 is the time when I understand the final model is expected. 

Justin Russell: We are still waiting for the detail in the target operating model, and the detail behind the transition plans. 

Q10 Chair: We are about four months before it goes live at the moment. Do you have initial views as to the progress on that? Are you concerned that we are that close to going live? 

Justin Russell: It is an ambitious timetable. The clock is ticking, and they have eight months to go till June next year. My own experience of leading big transition programmes is that there is an awful lot of detail that you have to get right. If you do not get it right, you have people turning up to work on day one whose IT systems are not working, who maybe cannot even get through the door and who do not have half the cases they are supposed to be bringing with them. 

The critical things are that you need to make sure the people are coming across, that you have everyone in scope, and that you have sorted out terms and conditions, pensions and vetting and all the rest of it. You need to make sure that the IT and the data systems are right, because we are talking about 130,000 cases transferring into the National Probation Service, and you do not want to lose any of them on the way. 

You need to make sure that you have sorted all the buildings and the accommodation. Purely sorting out the leases on tens or hundreds of buildings is a detailed and difficult task. There are some big things that need to happen between now and June. We are going to do our own inspection of transition planning and readiness, starting at the end of November, and we hope to report in the new year on how we think that is going. 

Chair: That is useful, thank you. 

Q11 Rob Butler: I would like to continue talking about transition, if I may. Let us get to the nub of it: do you think there is enough time to transfer successfully by June 2021?

Justin Russell: Potentially. It partly depends on how much you can derisk what you have to do and the mitigations you have if things aren’t right. If you are trying to do everything on one day, there are huge risks attached to that. It is how much you can mitigate. 

Some of the obvious things are being done. They are lifting and shifting people’s case loads, so probation officers will move into the new structure with their existing case load, and will carry on supervising that so that people do not get lost in the process. They will carry on having the same line management. 

Ironically, one of the failures of TR was around encouraging innovation in IT systems, Because that did not really work out, quite a few of the CRCs are still using the NPS case management system, so they will not have to transfer that, although London and Thames Valley have their own case management, so that will be an issue. 

Q12 Rob Butler: That is a very pertinent point. I happened to visit Thames Valley CRC a couple of weeks ago and they are very proud of their IT system, which they would say is rather more sophisticated than that of NPS, particularly, for example, in being able to track their service users, as they call them, in real time, which the NPS system apparently does not. They are not going to be able to use that system, so they expressed concern that there is almost going to be a backwards step in some elements of supervising offenders once they go back to the unified model. Do you have concerns about that? How are you going to inspect it? 

Justin Russell: Yes. I have been to the Bicester office for MTC and looked at that case management system, which is called Omnia. I sat with a probation officer and they were really pleased with it. We have had very positive feedback from probation staff in both Thames Valley and London about that new system; it feels much more intuitive, and it is quicker to do assessments. I hope there are elements that can be transposed. 

That is an issue you need to talk to the Department and HMPPS about, but it is those sorts of innovations that TR was all about in some ways, and you need to make sure that some of the learning is brought along. It is not just IT: there are other things that they have been doing around community hubs and service user engagement as well. 

Q13 Rob Butler: If I quote you correctly, I think you said that you encouraged the NPS to capture what works in CRCs and transfer initiatives or ideas to the new service once it is a unified model. Will an element of your inspections be monitoring that to make sure that the advances that have been made, in an albeit flawed system, are not lost? 

Justin Russell: We will keep inspecting against our core standards around quality and management services and facilities; where we spot good practice, we will continue to flag that. We have been doing that with CRCs, and we will be looking to see whether they have brought that in with them. I have written to the Minister to talk about what I see as some of the positive things that CRCs have been doing. When we do a report, we flag up those initiatives as well. It is important to bring those over where they can, yes. 

Q14 Rob Butler: But do you have confidence that the transition can take place by June 2021, and that that is not overly ambitious? 

Justin Russell: Until we have done our national inspection in December, we will not have the evidence one way or the other, so I am happy to come back to you early in the new year and report on what that shows. 

Q15 Andy Slaughter: On transition, what effect is it going to have in relation to the existing workforce? I think you also have an ambition to recruit 1,000 new officers by January next year. 

Justin Russell: HMPPS have that ambition, yes. We will be holding them to account on whether they meet it as part of our inspection. 

Q16 Andy Slaughter: Yes. Do you think it is realistic? 

Justin Russell: I spoke to the director of the workforce programme last week, and we are very carefully monitoring what is happening with staffing numbers. We see signs on the ground that probation officer numbers, in the NPS at least, are starting to increase. We inspected the north-west NPS at the beginning of this year and were pleased to see that they have had 153 new trainees come into the north-west. I hear similar things from other regional directors. 

The last published figures showed that probation officer numbers had gone up by about 200, by about 6%, and the gap in the number of unfilled probation officer vacancies is coming down. It is still above 400, so they still have some way to go. I think the number of trainees, on the latest published figures for the end of June, was above 500, so there is a gap between that and 1,000. I am told that there were 9,000 applications for the most recent round of PQiP recruitment—the new trainees—so there is a pipeline, and obviously, as the job situation starts to tighten and people are looking for opportunities, that, to some extent, may help them to get bigger application fields as well. 

Q17 Andy Slaughter: It is perhaps not surprising in the current climate that there are a lot of applications for jobs, but this is becoming quite a familiar story. You could say the same thing with prison officers or indeed police officers, where the service has been cut back to the bone and there have been huge reductions over 10 years. Now some compensation is being made for that, but you have the situation where you are trying to recruit people, who perhaps have no background, and train them. In some cases that makes it worse for a period of time, because the existing service has to switch its resources to that sort of induction process. Given that we have very high case loads anyway, are you concerned about that process? What do you think can be done to mitigate the problems with it? 

Justin Russell: You are right to say that in the short term there are certainly pressures that come with recruiting new trainees: they have to have a reduced case load while they are training; you have to have someone mentoring them; and you have to have a trained assessor who is assessing them as well. All of that affects productivity, although in the long run, once they have the hang of the job, it goes back up again. They need to keep the numbers coming in; they need to keep recruiting. 

The other factor is that you have potentially 20,000 extra police officers coming downstream who will be putting more business into the courts and on to the probation service, and they will need to keep recruiting to meet that requirement as well. They will need to go beyond 1,000, I would have thought, to start to meet those extra demands as well. 

Q18 Andy Slaughter: It is a perfect storm in a way. We are transitioning from one system to another because the previous system failed; the service is trying to make up for the lack of numbers and deal with what are perceived to be the current problems of excess case load, which have caused some pretty distressing events to happen. Obviously, you are aware of all that, and it is your job to monitor, criticise and so on, but, going beyond that, do you have any insight into how the service should be operating? Do you have any advice, or do you not see that as your role? 

Justin Russell: I have been talking to quite a few regional directors over the past few weeks. They have to balance both recovery planning from Covid and preparing for this major transition next year. That is a big demand on them. They need support teams around them; they need support from the centre to be able to do that, and they need resources. I was encouraged that an extra £150 million went into the probation service this financial year. It is really important that that gets baked into the baseline going forward, and that they have a decent settlement in the spending review to support all of that work going forward. It will be very challenging for those leaders, particularly those who may be new to the NPS. 

Q19 Andy Slaughter: We all know that the MOJ has received probably the highest cuts of any Government Department, and this is only mitigating that to some extent. Do you see there being a risk to the public in what is happening at the moment, and do you think any steps should be taken on safeguarding in terms of the way that the service operates during the transitional period?

Justin Russell: As I said, our biggest areas of concern in our quality standards are around risk of harm and whether they are getting the risk assessments and the planning and reviewing right. That has consistently been unsatisfactory. We will continue to focus on that in all of our inspections relentlessly and check that lessons are being learned. 

There are some signs for encouragement, in that some of the scores have started to improve a bit. What I hope is that they do not start to go down again as we get nearer to transition. Keeping the service’s eye on the ball of delivery, as they also prepare it, is really important. As the CRCs head towards the exit door, it may become more difficult for them, particularly for their parent companies, to stay focused on delivery. A lot of CRCs are starting to lose their leaders, as senior leaders are now moving into regional director and heads of operation jobs in the NPS and leaving the CRCs, so there are real vulnerabilities around that which the service needs to look out for. 

Q20 Paula Barker: There is just one question from me. In respect of the workforce strategy and the transition, do you know whether the trade unions will be fully engaged, on behalf of their members, in the whole process? 

Justin Russell: I don’t know. I certainly hope they have been, and we will be checking on that in our transition planning inspection when we start it in November. That is certainly one of the questions we will be looking at. 

In the Wales example, where Wales went through the transition a bit earlier, there was, certainly in the offender management function, a lot of negotiation and liaison with the trade unions. I think that is still going on. I am not sure that they have yet settled the terms and conditions around the Welsh probation service, so there are lessons from that exercise for the rest of the country as well. 

Paula Barker: Great. Thanks very much. 

Q21 Dr Mullan: I have a couple of questions. In terms of the 1,000 figure— although this might already have been covered—as the companies are wound down and we move back to a single model and their staff transfer over, I assume it is clear that that 1,000 will be on top of any people who transfer in, because you are not really creating a bigger workforce if you are just bringing in-house existing people. Is that part of how you understand it? 

Justin Russell: The big problem we have is that there are no national figures on the CRC workforce; we do not know how many probation officers or PSOs they recruit, so it is very difficult to know how big the hole is that needs to be filled as they transfer over. We have been collecting that data as we do inspections. The data from the services that we have inspected shows that probation officer numbers have come down by about 10% across those we inspected over the last financial year, as resources have got tighter, so that is increasing the hole that needs to be filled. 

There are very few CRCs, if any at all, that are now starting to train new probation officers—it is not in their interests—so it is very much on the NPS to make good that gap. I am sure they take account of what the potential gaps in the CRCs are, as well as the NPS gaps, when they decide how big the recruitment cohorts should be going forward. 

Q22 Dr Mullan: I guess what I am getting at is how you are going to be able to draw a firm conclusion as to whether the overall workforce of people working on behalf of Government in probation has gone up by 1,000, versus people who have just come in from the companies. How will you know? 

Justin Russell: That is a very good point, and I will be asking the very same question as they continue to pass statistical bulletins, because the statistical bulletin, as you have probably seen, is purely NPS staff. We have never had a bulletin on CRC staff. There will at some point be a number of people who are in scope for the transition to CRCs and we will know that number, but, as you say, we will not necessarily know what the gap in that number is. 

Q23 Dr Mullan: I am interested in the vacancies in the sense that it is all very well to talk about lack of budgets, lack of money to hire people, and so on, but when you cannot hire people within existing budgets, it demonstrates that it is not just a matter of the overall money available to the services. Why do you think they are struggling to recruit? Are there not suitable people? Is it salary, or work environment? What do you think means that they struggle? 

Justin Russell: As you might expect, the biggest struggle with vacancies is in London and the south-east; and in the south-east it is the bits of Kent and the home counties that are closest to London. That has been a real issue. In our Joseph McCann review, we found staff shortages in the Hertfordshire office that had been supervising him. Some of our inspections have shown vacancy rates in the NPS of up to about 20%. They are being plugged with agency staff at the moment. 

What I am often told is that agency staff are quite happy to do long-term placements; they do not particularly want to go for permanent probation officer jobs because they find that reduces their flexibility. There needs to be some combination of thinking about what flexibility or work-life balance they can offer within the service, or if it is the salary. There was some language in the workforce strategy about looking at pay and conditions, which I hope indicated that they are considering what might need to be done on that, in particular in areas of high vacancy. 

Dr Mullan: It is interesting what you say about the number of applications and what they are applying to do, so maybe there is a more positive future. Thank you.

Maria Eagle: Briefly, before I move on to Covid, there is one thing that strikes me about the reason why the CRCs were set up and split away from the NPS. They were going to deal more with minor offenders who could be turned away from repeat offending more readily perhaps, and the NPS was going to stick with dealing with some of the very serious and dangerous offenders. Have you any view about all these challenges coming at once—the high case loads, the organisational change as the two organisations are put together, the lack of staff and the recovery from Covid—and what impact they are going to have, if any, on the ability of the service as a whole to deal with the high end, more serious and dangerous offenders? If they are not supervised properly and if they are not properly dealt with, the consequences of things going wrong can be much greater for those who end up being victims of perhaps further offending. Do you have any handle on that, and whether or not during this transition there is going to be an issue in dealing with the serious and dangerous offenders at the toughest end of the scale? 

Justin Russell: What we are finding is that supervision of the higher risk offenders who are in the case loads of the NPS has been rather better than the lower and medium risk offenders. Because those offenders will stay with their NPS probation officers as they go through transition, there should be continuity of supervision through that process and, hopefully, people’s eye will stay on the ball with them. 

Interestingly, when we did our study of serious further offences, two thirds of homicides committed by people on probation were people who had been assessed as low or medium risk, so it is not people at the high end who are offending. What we find as we look at CRC case loads is that they are pretty chaotic people: they are quite likely to have a drugs problem, and 40% of them are domestic abuse perpetrators. Calling them low risk is not necessarily always the case; they might be homeless and, quite typically, have issues with accommodation. 

We find that that population has huge needs. They are quite chaotic and need particular interventions and support, maybe different from supervising a lifer coming out of prison or someone convicted of a serious sex offence. They need the right sort of supervision and services going forward. It is important to make sure that that happens as they move over to the NPS caseload next summer. 

Q25 Maria Eagle: Can you let us know what your initial findings are on the inspection of probation services during the Covid-19 period? Obviously, that has changed how everybody does things, so do you have any initial findings from your inspections? 

Justin Russell: Yes. We have finished the fieldwork and have been writing up our findings. We looked at six local services, and in detail at 60 cases, in June, and we interviewed some service users about their experience and interviewed probation officers. 

We found that the probation service had done, in some ways, a remarkable job at completely changing their operating model overnight to one of remote supervision, so that 80% to 90% of people were receiving phone supervision rather than face to face. Some critical services had to be stopped altogether. They had to stop doing unpaid work; they stopped doing accredited programme delivery, or at least the new programmes. They necessarily, I think, focused on risk, on doing risk assessment, and on people’s welfare. In general, looking at the cases we inspected, they did a reasonable job of that. We did not have to raise any urgent alerts about people who had gone missing or were not properly being managed. It was by phone, but it was reasonably consistent contact; 75% of them had had a contact every week from their probation officer by phone. 

There were a variety of views from staff about having to work from home. The majority welcomed the flexibility it gave them and the savings in travel costs and all the rest of it. Some of them struggled a bit to find the space to work at home. In the probation service, there are some pretty challenging conversations with some difficult people; in front of your kids in your living room, that is quite a tricky thing to be doing, and people felt a bit stressed by that sometimes. 

We also talked to some service users. Where they were in a stable situation—a stable family life and somewhere to live—some of them preferred being remotely supervised; they preferred phone contact. It meant that they did not have to sort out childcare and worry about going on public transport. They said they felt they could be more open sometimes with their probation officer when they were doing interventions. With service users who were more vulnerable and might have a mental health problem and other welfare needs, some of them really struggled quite a bit and missed personal face-to-face contact with their probation officer, who could be quite an important person in their life sometimes. 

Q26 Maria Eagle: Having done some of that work, what is your sense of how the Covid-19 challenge and this period has changed priorities for the probation service? 

Justin Russell: One of the positives is that it has given the CRCs more experience of particularly focusing on risk, on risk assessment and getting that right. They have done a reasonable job of that, so those staff will be taking that into the new arrangements next year. People have got the hang of doing other forms of remote supervision, and, longer term, there will probably be a move towards some supervision continuing to be online or over the phone, but in a mix with face to face. 

One of the interesting things is improved multi-agency relationships. Probation officers have struck up good relationships with the police in particular and with social services. They are communicating more; they have daily conversations about who may have been arrested or flagged on social service systems, and more people are turning up for multiagency meetings—MAPPA meetings and MARAC meetings. Because it is much easier to dial into a virtual meeting, they are getting quite good attendance, and that is a positive. I would expect that maybe some of those will continue to operate like that going forward. 

Q27 Maria Eagle: Do you think that new priorities for the service will come out of this period that will continue, or will there be a shift back to old ways of doing things? 

Justin Russell: I think the priorities will remain reoffending, desistance and steering people away from crime, and the public protection role. Those are not going to change. The way they deliver those services may change to reflect the use of new technology. Necessarily under Covid, the focus was very much on risk and public protection. There was less delivery being done on offending behaviour programmes or interventions. Those are now being switched back on and people are starting to come in. That is the gap at the moment that will need to be filled; there are far fewer people doing accredited programmes at the moment than there were before Covid, and that number will need to go up. 

Unpaid work is quite interesting as well. The old model of doing unpaid work was that you put a lot of people in a minibus and took them off to do litter-picking or other work. It is quite difficult to keep social distancing, so they are having to find different ways of doing it. People are having to make their own way to work placements. There are fewer people on placements and there is more focus on individual placements. There are some quite big challenges around that as well. 

Q28 Maria Eagle: You recently launched a consultation on the future of adult inspections. Do you have any initial findings in respect of that work? 

Justin Russell: We are just going through our consultation responses at the moment and we will publish our way forward on that. There is broad support, I think, for two or three of the key things that we are going do. 

One is that, as CRCs and the NPS come together, we will no longer need separate inspection teams for the two different sorts of service, so there will be single inspection teams. They will be able to look end to end at every case they look at, right from the point when the initial court report is done through to planning assessment and on to review and through-the-gate release. Then we will aggregate all that data. 

A key thing we are going to do is start looking at a much more local level. Our inspections will look at local delivery units, which might be a single city, a unitary authority or a single county. That will give the probation service itself much more granular detail, so you will know how probation is performing in Newcastle, Leeds or Bristol, and not just the whole of the south-west or the whole of the north-east. That will be important to the public, so there will be more transparency to the public. I will be able to go on the radio and tell Radio Leeds listeners, “Here is how your local probation service is operating.” I find that difficult to do at the moment when I am reporting on the whole of Yorkshire and Humberside. That is important. 

Another key thing is that I have always been keen to look at the outcomes of the probation service. Is it making a real difference to the people being supervised? Are they getting into accommodation? Are they getting off drugs? Are they getting into employment and training? Is their health improving? We will be looking at how we can measure those outcomes, as well as process, in our inspections. We are doing some pilots in Wales this autumn to see how we can measure those sorts of things in practice in a local service. 

Maria Eagle: Thank you very much. 

Q29 Dr Mullan: While we have you here, I want to ask you about the proposals in the new White Paper around probation, particularly the use of more tagging and home detention. I don’t know if you have seen anything about them and I know it is perhaps not strictly under this remit, but have you had any initial thoughts as to whether you think that is going to work and what you think the challenges might be? Do you think the probation services will be in a position to monitor and go after people who breach their tagging, in collaboration with the police? Do you think it is going to make a difference to people’s compliance? What would your thoughts be?

Justin Russell: There was a whole range of proposals in the White Paper around community supervision, many of which I think the probation service will welcome. There is obviously the tagging stuff. There is improving the quality of pre-sentence reports, community sentence treatment requirements and the courts to supervise people— problem-solving courts. There is plenty there. 

On electronic monitoring, I think the GPS technology is potentially a game changer in being able to monitor people’s movements, as well as whether they are just at home or not. We will need to see what difference that makes. There has been a new systematic review of the evidence on electronic monitoring published, and I was reading it last night. It varies according to who is being supervised, so there is good evidence that sex offender reoffending rates reduce under electronic monitoring, and there are certain other groups of offender where it has a positive effect. 

For others, it may not have such a positive effect. It partly depends on how you manage it, but there are signs that it has an impact on reoffending rates, and that is a positive thing, but it needs to be used in the right way. When it is used for people coming out of prison for home detention curfew, you have a very strong stick for people to stick to their curfew because they will be called back to prison if they do not. If it is a condition of a community sentence, the breach proceedings may be a bit longer, so part of the success of it will be how quickly you can act on that, and people realise that there are real consequences from breaking the tag.

The longer you have someone on a tag, the more, potentially, they could breach and, therefore, the implications on the Prison Service downstream start to flow from that, but I am sure they will have done the modelling on that going forward. 

Q30 Dr Mullan: Do you think people being in their homes and confined in that way is going to make it easier for probation supervisors to meet them and engage with them, or does that not tend to be a challenge in their engagement with the people they are supervising? 

Justin Russell: At the moment, the static electronic monitoring tends to be about curfewing people at night-time, which is not when you would be having an appointment anyway. One of the interesting proposals in the White Paper is that you would have variable curfew hours, maybe longer at weekends than during the week, and that probation would have more control, potentially. There is some very interesting language in the White Paper about giving the probation service more discretion, and more flexibility to vary the conditions and requirements relating to supervision. I would certainly welcome that and think it would be a positive development. 

Chair: Mr Russell, thank you very much indeed. It has been very helpful and informative, as always. We look forward to hearing from you again with the updates that you so helpfully give us. Thank you for your time and for your evidence to us today. We are grateful to you.

Ballot Background

Yesterday's Napo mailout gave news of a ballot being held for CRC staff on the Collective Agreement to support the transfer of staff to the NPS or a provider of Dynamic Services. This is the supporting material referred to in that communication:-

A ballot for Napo CRC members
10th - 30th September 2020

Probation Reform -the story so far

Napo members have been at the forefront of their unions long running campaign to restore all Probation services to public ownership and control. The historic U-turn in Government policy announced by the Secretary of State for Justice on 11TH June followed the previous decision last year that 80% of probation work would transfer to the National Probation Service.

While the 2019 announcement of partial unification was welcomed at the time, Napo have maintained pressure in and outside of Parliament to press for the total reunification of Probation to bring certainty over the future of the service. Ministers have taken a courageous decision to fully reverse the disastrous Transforming Rehabilitation reforms that were implemented in 2014 and which we opposed from the start. These have also been widely and continuously criticised by politicians, the Justice Select Committee and HM Inspector of Probation. Reunification of the service also signals the early termination date for the existing Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) contracts in June 2021. These contracts were expected to last for at least a decade and despite the best efforts of staff working within the system they have failed to deliver the promised service improvements and innovations.

This has been an immensely difficult time for all Probation staff, and especially those who have been working tirelessly against the odds to maintain services in the private sector. Our members have had to contend with unrealistic workloads, a fragmentation of services and, in some cases, seriously dangerous operational models which contributed to the demise of the former Working Links CRC in February 2019.

The new plans will see the National Probation Service take full responsibility for Sentence Management, Unpaid Work and Programme delivery with Dynamic Framework (DF) Providers being commissioned to offer additional support services. This is similar to the arrangements that existed under many of the former Probation Trusts prior to the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms.

Why this ballot is taking place - an overview of the Probation Reform negotiations

Napo negotiators were quick to move to the next stage in our campaign and engage with senior HMPPS and NPS leaders on the immediate challenges before us. These included the transfer of staff in June next year, the need to start to repair the massive damage suffered by the service and the need to achieve some short term stability. Just as important has been the re-opening of the debate about the long term future of probation where over the recent years we have mapped out our vision for the future of Probation:

• Fully unified service provision delivered within the public sector and never for profit
• Removal of Probation from the civil service and release from the prison dominated culture which means that Probation is the forgotten ‘P’ in HMPPS
• A service built on evidence based practice
• A service rooted in the local community and partnering with local specialist providers

Negotiations on the Probation Reform programme have actually been taking place for just over a year. The talks have covered the earlier decision to transfer Sentence Management work and staff from the Wales CRC to the NPS (which took place last December), the announcement in May 2019 that all Sentence Management would transfer to the NPS, and the subsequent decision in 2020 that Unpaid Work and Programmes would also be brought back into public control and ownership in June 2021.

Our most recent work has included finalising a new Staff Transfer and Protections Agreement to support the transition, a new Voluntary Redundancy /Voluntary Severance scheme, and the terms and conditions for staff transferring into the NPS. Napo’s ideal outcome would have been to see all directly employed CRC staff transferred into the NPS especially in light of the continuing staff shortages but this is not possible because in legal terms the principle is that the workers transfer with the work they do. We have been consulted on the assignment process that is being used to ensure this principle is adhered to.

Assignment

The CRCs have until the end of September to complete the assignment process which includes an appeal stage. All directly employed CRC staff will transfer to either NPS or a Dynamic Framework (DF) provider. They can object to the transfer but this will have the effect of ending their employment. Numbers are not yet certain but early estimates suggest that there are likely to be a very small number of staff transferring to DF providers. This will apply to those staff where their current role entails 50% or more of their time providing services such as Education, Training and Employment (ETE), accommodation and wellbeing support.

It is the role and not the person which is assigned, if a member of CRC staff moves to a new role before the date of transfer, that can change their assignment. For example, if they are currently in a role assigned to DF and they move to a role assigned to NPS they will transfer to NPS. Each CRC will (on HMPPS instruction) set a date after which no more recruitment (or level moves) is allowable. This is usually around 6 months prior to the transfer.

Napo Officials are encouraging CRC owners to do all that they can to enable their staff to move to their preferred future employer. This is especially important if their current CRC employer is successful in bidding for DF services and need staff who are sufficiently motivated to work for them. Napo are also maintaining pressure on CRC employers to ensure that their staff are paid the equivalent of existing NPS pay bands by the time of transfer to the NPS or DF provider.

The Framework for Transfer to the NPS or a DF provider

There is an important distinction between the transfer processes to the NPS or a DF provider. The CRC to NPS transfer is a Staff Transfer Scheme under COSOP (the code of practice governing transfers of staff into the public sector). The staff transfer scheme will include the Staff Transfer and Protections Agreement (STAP) and if CRC members agree to it then transferees to the NPS will be harmonised to new terms and conditions and the NPS pay scales that exist at date of their transfer. If the agreement is rejected, then staff transferring into the NPS (and those staff in NPS Wales who transferred prior to the end of the STAP negotiations) will do so with their existing CRC terms.

In the case of a CRC staff transfer to a DF provider, this will take place under the TUPE regulations because it is a transfer of a private sector employee to a third sector or private sector employer. There is case law to support this position. This means that those transferring to a DF provider will have their existing CRC terms and conditions protected.

Employment protections

Napo and our sister unions have secured a commitment from HMPPS to no compulsory redundancies for two years from the date of transfer and enhanced voluntary redundancy/severance terms if these should be necessary for the same period of time.

Napo at Work in the South West 29

As always, thanks to the reader for sharing the following:-

Dear Colleague, 

PAY NEGOTIATIONS LATEST..... 

Union members to be balloted on pay offer from SEETEC 

At long last and after months of hard work by your trade union representatives across the two regions of SEETEC KSS CRC, a pay offer has emerged. This follows an earlier joint pay claim and the declaration of a pay dispute. 

It is fair to say that the improvement in industrial relations between senior SEETEC Management and the Unions since SEETEC took over the CRC contracts in Wales and the South West from the dreadful Working Links, has been a major factor in this pay offer being made. Whilst there will always be issues where it is not always possible to reach an accord, we have seen a tangible improvement in the working relationship over several months between SEETEC and the Probation trade unions. 

Last week’s news that SEETEC are to become an employee owned enterprise and news of this pay offer are both positive developments and are in marked contrast to the ineptitude and contempt for their staff that was demonstrated by the previous CRC provider. 

The offer and what happens next 

The Unions believe that this pay offer from SEETEC sends a strong signal to its competitors and all interested parties who may be contemplating bids to become Probation Providers following the termination of CRC Contracts in June 2021. 

SEETEC KSS CRC are the first employer to declare that they are prepared to match the current NPS pay rates, which is a signal achievement by the unions in our long running campaigns to achieve pay parity across both arms of the Probation service.

The offer and the two options on which union members will be balloted, also demonstrates that the employer tacitly recognises the need to motivate its existing staff and also make the company more attractive to potential employees. 

Whilst the offer is a major step forward the unions are not yet in a position to make a recommendation to members as we have immediately raised a number of questions with senior management to which we hope to obtain early answers. Our questions and managements response will be included in a more comprehensive pay ballot briefing that we will be issuing at the earliest opportunity, Our aim is to ballot our respective members in good time to allow for payment of the offer (subject to acceptance) from 1st April 2020. Please look out for more details of the ballot arrangements from your union over the next week or so. Please note that the ballot will only be open to trade union members. 

The following offer for the 2020/2021 pay year has followed some very constructive dialogue with the recognised Trade Unions. 

The following options have been put to us: - 

Option 1 – Apply a 3% increase to base salaries 

Option 2 – Realignment of all salary bands to the NPS Pay bandings (if this results in less than a 3% increase for any employee, Seetec will apply an unconsolidated payment for the % differential) 

Note: All Options above would be inclusive of the contractual incremental increase and result in unconsolidated payments for those at the top of their pay band. 

Aligning Salary Bands to NPS Bands (Option 2) 

In 2018 the NPS introduced new pay bands increasing the minima and maxima and consolidating the number of points within the Band and proposed a move to this position over a two-year period. 

Option 2 proposes moving directly to the 2019 NPS position. Increasing the maxima of the band enables employees at the top of the current pay band to receive an actual increase on their base pay, KSS CRC does not apply salaries below Band 2 salary scale point 35, (currently £18,654) and the employer proposes that this will remain the case. This would mean that the new minimum salary for any employee will be £19,977.

Mirroring the NPS bandings would result in 74% of the workforce receiving an increase of 4% or above, 52% of the workforce receiving an increase of 5% or above. 

If this option is accepted, the percentage increases would be as follows:

Increase (%) No of Employees      Increase (%) No of Employees

2% - 2.99%* 33                               7% - 7.99% 105
3% - 3.99% 264                              8% - 8.99% 20
4% - 4.99% 259                              9% - 9.99% 29  
5% - 5.99% 223                             10% -10.99% 43
6% - 6.99% 179                             11% -11.99% 7 

*An additional unconsolidated award will be applied for these individuals 

The above Data has been presented as being accurate as at 30.11.2019, but the unions are seeking verification of this together with assurances about future pay arrangements prior to the termination of the existing CRC Contracts next year. 

It’s time to join a trade union 

The pay offer and the work that has gone on in trying to secure improved working conditions and employee engagement is testimony to the value of trade union membership. Please engage with colleagues who may not be members of one of the recognised trade unions and encourage them to consider joining. 

Ian Lawrence                       Siobhan Brown                           Helen Coley

General Secretary Napo      Regional Organiser UNISON     Regional Organiser GMB

   

Pick of the Week 56

The biggest reason for the lack of diverse representation is the change to the qualifying route under PQiP. Recruitment is organised nationally, most of those who get on PQiP have criminology and/or psychology degrees courses which attract a disproportionate number of white young females as opposed to other groups. We need a new training route which can be accessed by other staff already working in probation (PSOs, admin) - it has become incredibly hard for existing staff to get on the training, yet we have more diverse staff especially at lower grades already in the service with valuable experience. 

Targeted recruitment campaigns, advertise in publications and websites which attract male, black and disabled viewers, outreach activity, have a presence at community events,  look at how other organisations improved diversity and follow similar strategies. All of these options are possible (even under civil service control) but we really need to address this imbalance. I think it is actually a form of indirect discrimination not to have a training route which recognises educational disadvantage faced by black people, the barriers to getting a degree are much greater if you are black or poor. We can be more representative of the communities we serve but it takes recognition and analysis of the problem first, then a strategy to address it.

*****
JB nails it viz-'probation is dead' with that simple exchange. NPS & those who perpetuate it are completely happy with the current situation, albeit they add the odd caveat here & there, e.g. "I haven’t got the figures to hand but we have got a way to go." But then they say "We’ve been working on it for as long as I’ve being involved with trainees in 2005."

Perhaps the 'awkward question' should be... Q: So you clearly haven't got it right yet, even though you've been involved in that aspect for 15 years? So why the fuck are you still in the job? Either someone should have booted you out or you should have walked years ago. Perhaps YOU are the problem?

*****
I'm no fan of NPS senior management but even I think you're all being unreasonable here. AC acknowledged that a lack of gender diversity was an issue and asked for suggestions on how that could be tackled. JB mentioned things like research, innovation, salary erosion, etc, which whilst all important issues, don't seem to be directly linked to a lack of gender diversity. Unless you're all suggesting that women are attracted to professions where research isn't carried out, where there is little innovations and where salaries have declined?

*****
It would help if AC actually appeared to have some direction or knowledge and researched base for the feminised recruitment process. If men are wanted but do not apply for roles perhaps they realise they are not actually wanted. The structure of this women dominated profession says it all to would-be applicants.

*****
The image says it all. Amongst the abundance of females, the first apparent male is hiding at the back and the second is billy-no-mates with daylight between him and the rest of the group. It’s a surprise this did not compute to Angela Cossins, Deputy Director National Probation Service South West, South Central, but the gender minority worker is not featured on diversity training.

All Senior Management, including Angela Cossins, know very well what the recruitment issues are. Some of the bigger issues are; The main wage earners in most households are still men – probation jobs simply don’t pay enough and there are many other justice and graduate jobs that pay better.

Except for negative media, not much is known about probation, and both it’s roles and progression opportunities are limited - it needs to raise awareness of the roles in the profession. There are no government-set targets to ensure that sufficient funds are allocated to recruitment drives, including to recruit more men. With a female dominated workforce, male role models in the sector are limited but essential to recruit more young men and males into probation.

There are other potential issues too which require research; Males are more likely than females to be ineligible to apply due to previous convictions. This may be more of an issue in the NPS due to vetting. Probation previously tended to attract administrative staff who wanted to train as probation officers - usually female. Probation training programmes now tend to attract graduates - predominantly those with criminology degrees. Similar to care professions, is it possible the more female dominated probation is the more difficult it will be to recruit males?

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But don't despair - "We’ve been working on it for as long as I’ve being involved with trainees in 2005."

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Clearly probation still tends “to attract mainly female and mainly white graduates in their twenties (NOMS 2013)”. So we have a white and ethnic diversity of male hardened criminals aged 18-100 years old that will continue to be mostly supervised by young white girls who know more about hair and nails, university and living with mum and dad, rather than having any real life skills, experience and common sense. This problem has been building since 1993 and the article about suggests it is intentional. As probation senior management bury their heads in the sand (or smile and carry on as it is dominated by now middle-aged white women who have helped create the problem), it is unlikely probation recruiters will acknowledge they’ve got it very wrong.

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Those bloody women hey! Surely we can agree a more diverse workforce would be a positive thing without having to degrade female staff! Your misogyny is showing.

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Most probation officers I’ve seen either look like grungy teenage girls or Essex girls readying for a night out, and do not really have much of a clue what they are doing. When people on probation say “my probation officer knows nothing about me and cannot help me”, they are right? Are male offenders asked whether they want to work with women probation workers.

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As a middle aged, middle class, white female who has been in probation since the mid 80s I can assure the collective this problem has been building a long time; especially in London. The main structural problem is the very poor pay; looks good whilst you are footloose and fancy free but you cannot build a professional life style on the public sector pay scale. Historically this has meant the men have left to take better paying work. Due to dreadful property prices this has been a bigger problem for longer in London than anywhere else, but other parts of the country are now experiencing the same problem. Just do something about our dreadful pay!

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There is a notable shift in culture following what above is described as a change to a ‘feminised’ Service. The number of conversations I have had trying to convince colleagues that they should take an interest in male issues such as mental health and the appalling male suicide rate which is often linked to separation and family matters. There’s little interest with a common retort that the ‘patricarchy’ in fact privileges all men so they shouldn’t complain. If you have no interest in the needs of over 90% of your client base perhaps this isn’t the right job for you.

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For the past decade the whole CJS has suffered from shambolic Conservative policies and ideology. Their coalition with the Lib Dems was really in name only. The Conservatives have been at the helm since 2010. They've opted for a DIY approach, ignoring professional knowledge, advice and research, and allowed a string of incompetent Ministers to make whatever unqualified decisions they feel like. It's now all a total mess with no aspect of the CJS fit for purpose and costing far more to achieve far less.

I personally see no way back anymore, it's to broken. It's all going to have to be torn down, and a 'newbuild' is required. As much as the previous decade is to be lamented so too is the next decade to be very concerned about. No doubt our 'special' relationship with the USA will see a lot of CJ imports coming across the pond post Brexit, but America's CJS is in a worse state then ours. It's hard to work out whether to be shocked by the last decade or frightened by what's to come.

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The complete demise of the Probation profession is but one example of the ease with which the nameless, faceless powers that-be can manipulate & engineer whatever outcome they want, regardless. It shows how readily & easily those who are offered a taste of honey will sell themselves out for a slightly bigger pot of honey.

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I have just read the revisionist nonsense from Napo & it leaves me irritated, uninspired & concerned. "On May 16th 2019, a date which must surely feature forever in the annuals [sic] of Napo history; we saw a remarkable U-turn in the form of an announcement that 80% of the roles associated with OM work would be transferred to the NPS from the private sector along with the staff undertaking these functions, once the termination of CRC contracts had taken place."

What about the date when Napo silently but firmly held the privateers' cutlass while hundreds of Probation staff were made to walk the plank into professional oblivion? The date when Napo signed off on TR, transferring thousands of staff to the private sector on the most flimsy of terms & conditions in the knowledge it would lead to inevitable & PRE-PLANNED job losses. Oh, and of course there's TR2...

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How could we never forget the Napo signing of our demise. That the transfer measures in 2015 that should have secured members pensions, terms and conditions would be so instrumentally sold off later by an ignorant narcissistic Trade Union leader purposefully failing to ensure members had legal representation when agreeing the measures at the time and thereafter to protect them. The demise of Working Links was the work of Dino. Napo's achievements are the demise of their members terms and conditions, employment status and pensions.

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It's absolute nonsense for NAPO to claim the credit for any of this. They did nothing.

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Is that entirely fair ? They attend meetings or some I am told. They have produced some reports although not very good or useful. They are amateurishly gaming around the membership and employers pretending they know what they are doing but when all is considered Napo is only potentially effective if their combined abilities and talents in the leadership is able. When examined more closely the standard of reporting their self indulged in crowd gravy train wanna bees and their inept response to anything important we must start to realise Napo are just not relevant anymore are they?

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It is the performance of the private companies and inability to make Probation work from the hemorrhaging effects of TR that has led to the contracts terminating and transferring to NPS. It's hysterical to think Napo believes it was their work. Government had no time for Napo, that was very clear when they walked away from national collective bargaining in the knowledge Napo would never take that fight on.

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"In intensive and complex negotiations around the transfer of Offender Management work to NPS Wales and beyond." Spell it out. What are you talking about Complex? Rocket science is it? This is a short hand report to keep readers off the detail of Napo doing nothing.

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Methinks Napo's paid "elite" live in the same distorted, Stalinesque universe as Trump where the 'truth' is whatever you say it is in press releases, blogs or on twitter.

"our impressive campaign which has exposed the folly of the Transforming Rehabilitation disaster"
"Gauke & Stewart sent some important signals that they wanted to do some serious business with Napo"
"Ministerial top cover had been approved for senior MOJ/HMPPS leaders to engage in exploratory discussions with the unions"
"a date which must surely feature forever in the annuals of Napo history"
"a significant victory"
"the most remarkable media engagement that this union and professional association has ever seen in our history"

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Napo is in intensive care, on a life support machine. The disease is within and can only be cut out by removing the current leadership who can only claim apocalyptic disaster for its members.

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"Attacks on staff, false allegations, inappropriate and failing disciplinary procedures. Sickness absences and Grievances at record highs in my 36 years service. Staff leaving in volume and dissatisfaction across the board. Favouritism, nepotism and cronyism the centre of the Working Links way and those enablers... We disagreed within the union internal national ranks many times as their weak and short sighted agents wanted to form inappropriate agreements. This included most other union officials. I have been complained about from all sides and many times over from them... It is a tough role and at one point I had to take my own national union to the Certifications Officer for their gross incompetence... In my view we are now travelling a different journey and at the least a renewed direction. The General Election outcome will have sealed the future contractual plans for TR2 and a further split for interventions."

As ever Dino provides a warts-&-all account of events which is far more palatable than rainbows & unicorns.

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Dino is an amazing rep and been working hard for many never giving up on issues our branch could not have done a fraction without his leadership.

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Dino has been an amazing unyielding force in achieving the best for his members. His resilience has seen off the most unbelievable and undeserving nasty attacks not just from the employer but from Lomas, Lawrence, Rogers and the rest of the leadership team of 2018/19. They should feel ashamed as should others for attacking their own colleagues in the workplace for self rewards.

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A warts-&-all account I think that should read WARS with what is said in this report. It was once said this branch was led by a controversial character. Courting trouble perhaps? However, their accomplishments in the SW branch has remained the go to place for information strategy and can do approaches than those of the can't do or won't do brigade. Not heard the SW saying the best that can be achieved as an excuse for failing. 

Controversial perhaps but they do appear to achieve in that branch. They have not let up in the years of TR. I did a search and this blog is prolific with vitriolic reports and assertion of their trade union position. That has to be a good thing when you read the awful account of the several Murders. Those SFOs happening while the known failing Working Links exposé by that chair has been on-going. These tragedies and failings of the privatised management of services are clearly to blame and this branch had the foresight it seems to have registered their formal dispute. 

It is clear no one in authority was prepared to heed the NAPO branch chairs warnings. It might also be a record in running a dispute for the years Working links tried to hold onto government funding. It would have been a phenomenal fight against TR had this confidence or tenacity with the strategic outlook. Had that been deployed nationally to all branches what might have been?

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What an astonishingly hard working and resilient NAPO SW Branch Chair! Perhaps National Officials should take a leaf out of his book. I am proud to have witnessed the incessant work rate and the torture endured by this shining light for the rights of SW NAPO employees. Despicably attacked by the hierarchy of NAPO (alleged colleagues) who were then to their cost found wanting by the Certification Officer. Despised and alienated by the Working Links Company who then collapsed into administration. Countless representations for NPS and CRC members amid unprecedented grievances, disciplinaries, overwork, sickness absences.

Tirelessly travelling across all corners of the south to support the needs of members.
Instrumental in now repairing the damage caused by the incompetent previous contract holder and its unable and wanting senior management (some still present) to provide a forward thinking and innovative system to support and protect the needs of the employees in TR2. To you Dino Peros and the SW Exec Branch which you have led with passion and integrity, I hold you in high esteem for what you have achieved and for the advice and information you give.

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You'd really like to hope that the family of the victim and the officer are all being appropriately supported! Reading the evidence by the officer made me realise I made the right decision to resign as I had many sleepless nights worrying about what I might have missed that day and if I would be walking into an SFO the following - I constantly felt we were not effectively managing risk with ridiculously high case loads and ridiculous unproductive models/targets that we were expected to meet regardless of extremely low staffing levels. I hope the officers' strategic management team and office level management take responsibility as we've seen far too many case managers (PSO/ PO) thrown under buses to save the skins of those who have been complicit in TR/TR2.

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These are the observations of a worker in crisis:

“Some days I wouldn’t leave my chair all day. One week I was seeing 15 to 20 people all day. Sometimes I worked until 12 at night. It was very difficult to keep a tab on things. Sometimes I didn’t have time to sit down or even have lunch..."

And now we have the comments of a very modern manager:

"Her caseload of around 60 offenders was appropriate for her level of experience... [she] required support and confidence building... I was aware from the data there was enough items outstanding to be concerned and tools were put in place to help officers... in my view she was well supported".

Can somebody please help me out here & clarify who had what role? Everybody seems to be a 'probation officer'. Is that right?

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Does it matter. The buck belongs and stops with the complacent Chief Officer team who supported the failings of the Working Links programme for case management. They allowed the abusive unmanageable cases. The lack of training, failure to support, recognise and do anything about work pressures. They take a salary, yet failed in all aspects of public safety and yet somehow absent from account. Wales senior management did this as they helped Working Links damage the service they must have known could only fail. Working Links need to be held to account. They know what they did and who they are.

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Totally agree. This Officer and many others are left out to dry when SFOs occur with Seniors shifting the blame and trying to come out looking like the efficient Manager only doing their job. The reality is the same stuff time and time again on this blog highlighting Officers being overworked, not enough staff and Seniors passing the buck. This profession needs 100's of more staff, but strip the qualifications needed to apply and get more people with life experience, critical thinkers and staff who know what life is like. 

These people are not stupid because they don't have relevant degrees it's the other way round. There are thousands of people out there who could wipe the floor with obnoxious staff who think they are better than others in this service. This poor Officer and all the Officers who go through SFOs have our sympathy, because no one else is going to support them in the CRC or NPS due to job worth's in Senior Management.

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My heart goes out to you Kathryn. It feels like you are the scapegoat and I would hope if I had been your manager I would not have said your caseload was 'appropriate' and would have supported you. As been said, the CRC culture has been to be over lenient with enforcement as money talks! I am not the first person to comment that you can't make money out of peoples misery! Of course those senior managers and politicians will not be held to account as to do so would fuel further debate on the CRC/NPS split. Yes, SFOs happen and individuals should not be singularly held to account for systemic failure. No other criminal justice organisation would expect an employee to manage 60 cases and get it right all the time. Best wishes and take care of yourself.

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I would not wish this so-called career on anyone in the current climate. The reality for many is to consistently work unpaid overtime to avoid poor performance by trying to meet the ridiculous workloads and targets. Staff being exempt from the values they spout in relation to diversity issues and safety issues. A lack of professional respect and experience not valued as you are just a disposable number to them. Huge impacts on your mental health, family relationships, quality of life with stress and burnout and constantly justifying your every move to protect yourself. Scapegoating and a culture of blame. The list goes on and yes you could leave if you don't like it, but quite frankly it should not be allowed to go on and this treatment and attitude leads to high staff turnover. I feel for that poor PSO as per usual blame is aimed at her rather than the organisation or business as they like to be called. It's shameful. Where is the duty of care to staff and acknowledgement that the workload and lack of proper training and support [are] huge factors.

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Oh how I agree with what you say.  As an experienced PO my practice is mainly focused on covering my back. This is not what I joined for and I have personally witnessed wonderful professional colleagues being thrown under the bus by managers. We have not had a consistent manager for the past year. I am actively seeking an out for sure and it makes me weep with frustration and despair for a job I am good at, those whom I try to help better their lives and the loss of a gold standard service. I am tired of attaining meaningless targets set by civil servants who have no clue and ineffectual management.