Lets Look at E3 (9)

Chapter 8 Management Structures

8.1 What does the model look like now? 

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) oversees the entire NPS delivery structure. The Director of Probation and the Director of NOMS in Wales report to the NOMS CEO. 

Across the NPS as a whole there are 69 Clusters of Local Delivery Units (LDUs) covering 152 Local Authority areas. This is in line with the expectations of the Transforming Rehabilitation Target Operating Model that LDUs would be aligned with local authority areas and map to other partnership arrangements including Criminal Justice (Police Force) Areas and Community Safety Partnerships. There are some core areas of business that are managed outside of the LDU Cluster Structure such as Approved Premises, Victims Services and NPS seconded prison staff. 

As with other parts of the NPS business, there is a variety of management structures across the country. There are inconsistencies in relation to the tiers of management and in some instances the grades and pay bands of staff undertaking similar roles. In addition, the proposed new models of delivery include changes to existing management structures. This Blueprint addresses some of these with others to be considered in the next phase of the E3 Programme.

At the LDU Cluster level, there is some consistency throughout England and Wales in that there is a Head of each Cluster of LDUs. Within that, however, 26 Clusters have Deputy Heads while 43 do not. This variation is partly due to the different arrangements in former Probation Trusts and subsequently internal Divisional decisions. A review by the NPS Senior Leadership Team has concluded that, when looked at nationally, taking into account caseloads, staff numbers and partnership responsibilities, there is not equity in the provision of Deputy Heads across LDU Clusters. 

In both Offender Management and Approved Premises we currently have middle managers performing similar jobs in different pay bands. E3 provides an opportunity for these to be harmonised through the revision of Job Descriptions and the job evaluation process. 

With regards to the management structure for operational administration, there is a mixture of line management arrangements for Case Administrators. In some parts of the country they are line managed by Senior Probation Officers (SPOs) and in others by Senior Case Administrators (SCAs). E3 has enabled us to review and we propose a common line management structure for Case Administrators. 

8.2 What do we want the future model to look like? 

We want the NPS to have a management structure that provides the clear and effective leadership required to meet our objectives. The management structure must be one that reinforces accountability and enables the implementation of the new operating model. Staff will be supported in continual professional development. 

To achieve this, we propose that the high level NPS Divisional structure will remain unchanged with Deputy Directors leading each Division and reporting directly to the National Directors for England and Wales.

At the LDU Cluster level we want a resource model and management structure that takes into account the local variations in workload and complexities. We want to ensure that there is consistency in relation to pay bands and grading throughout England and Wales where managers are fulfilling similar roles. 

Middle managers play a vital role in probation through supporting and enabling frontline staff to undertake good quality work with service users. Crucially they ensure that national policies are translated into action in local settings. We want middle managers to continue to provide this leadership. In particular we envisage a change in emphasis from a routine countersigning role to more structured quality assurance activities, with the aim that we consistently get things right first time and that there are clear lines of accountability. 

To support operational managers in concentrating on core tasks, we see administrative staff as key to the delivery of the future operating model so it is critical that we have in place a management structure that supports and leads them most effectively. 

8.3 End State Proposals 

The line management structure in Clusters will be that Heads of Clusters directly line manage SPOs. This will ensure clarity of line management and accountability structures across the country.

Heads of Clusters will retain both operational and strategic responsibility for their LDU Clusters. There are a number of partnerships to which the NPS has a statutory duty, which require attendance at Boards and resources to be made available. Nationally there is variation in the grade of staff that attend such meetings. National partnership frameworks are being produced to specify which grade of staff will be required to attend meetings. Of the partnerships that have been reviewed so far, the early indication is that Safeguarding Boards and MAPPA SMBs will require the attendance of Heads of LDU clusters. YOS management boards will be attended by SPO grade. MASH and MARAC are likely to sit at Probation Officer level. The other key partnerships will also be reviewed. 

We acknowledge that there is considerable variation between LDU Clusters in relation to the volume and complexity of cases, geography, partnership and court responsibilities. There is a strategic commitment to maintaining the LDU Cluster alignment with Local Authorities which means that it is not possible to equalise the workloads of LDU Clusters. To mitigate against this a tool has been developed to identify the most complex LDU Clusters. It is proposed that the most complex LDU Clusters should have additional support. The type of additional support that is being considered is twofold: the provision of additional administrative support for ACO/Heads to manage a variety of processes and interfaces, and additional management resource to support performance and quality as well as partnership working. 

As part of the Approved Premises model we propose that an Area Manager with devolved budgetary responsibility will manage clusters of AP. We anticipate clusters will consist of seven or eight Approved Premises. 

Our proposal is that Case Administrators will be line managed by Senior Case Administrators. This will provide specialist administrative oversight while also allowing SPOs to focus on line management of Probation Officers and Probation Service Officers. 

There are a number of options under consideration for the line management of SCAs. We are clear that they will be within the operational line but are still considering who should best line manage them. We are exploring the possibility of establishing a Quality Development Officer role across the NPS as an effective way of supporting managers and front line staff in improving practice. 

8.4 Impact on Service Delivery 

The revised LDU Cluster model will in, some cases, change the responsibilities of LDU Cluster Heads where there are currently Deputy Heads in place. It should be noted, however that not all Clusters have Deputies and therefore this model will bring more consistency. The introduction of a tool to identify the most complex Clusters and the provision of additional resource to support them will mean that there is a more effective and equitable distribution of resources. 

The proposed case administration management model is intended to have a wider positive impact on the quality of case administration which will support improved quality of service delivery overall.

8.5 Impact on staff 

With regards to the proposal to have Heads of LDU Clusters directly line managing SPOs we acknowledge that this will mean that existing Deputy Heads of LDU clusters will cease to undertake this. The process of moving from the current position to the new model will be carefully managed and the staff involved will be consulted appropriately. As already stated compulsory redundancies will not be necessary. 

The Case Administration line management model is intended to positively support CAs in undertaking their role by providing specialist administrative management. It also widens career and professional development opportunities for administrative staff. It will also support more effective line management of POs and PSOs.

(more to follow)

Guest Blog 13

A vision of a Participatory Probation co-operative or an alternative to TR

I will start with revolution and end with probation. In its simplest form arguments on the left of politics have seen two principle classes driving history forward; an “Owning Class” that exploits the “Working Class”. Recently Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel have argued that a key third class exists with an equally pivotal role in making history. They named this class the "Coordinating Class". 

In reality the Coordinator Class are the managers. They are a tier of people who manage their work and the work of others: CEOs, bankers, big lawyers, and politicians at the top level, but managers in the public sector and in the new Third Sector are part of the Coordinator Class. They are the go-betweens for the capitalists and the workers and they have an overwhelming monopoly over empowering work. What they say goes, or you are out on your ear. They are managers of themselves and others. They develop their own economic interests; they compete with workers and one another to continue to hold onto a disproportionate share of empowering/interesting work. Okay that’s the end of the theory bit, lets move on to the Revolution.

In the case of the Russian Revolution, the original Soviets were set up to be open and democratic, to be run by the workers for the workers; full participation of all was to be the basis of the first Soviets. However, as time went on the managers/coordinators started to make the majority of the major/empowering decisions and as always, they made more and more decisions in their own interests and ultimately the Revolution was corrupted. The coordinators became a power elite and the democratic essence of the first Soviets was crushed; in the end this class of managers led to the purges and the death of millions.

The above is an example of the old adage that power corrupts all who hold it and it is part of the narrative that nothing can be done to stop people from being corrupted and nothing can stop the powerful. Indeed in the Probation Service we have our own examples of corruption and power and we have our very own class of coordinators. I’m sure that former NAPO leaders came into post with the best of intentions, but over time they were corrupted by power and started to serve their own interests, the rest is our history.

So if power corrupts is it possible to create a democratic participatory Probation Cooperative?

If a few people hold the decision making powers in any organisation, how can we stop the bastards from turning into a power elite or from serving the existing elite? Probation management is a good example of this phenomenon. Without question we have witnessed probation management doing the bidding of those in the MoJ and NOMS who are driven by a mix of what is know as managerialism and neoliberalism, ideologies that argue that managers and the markets know best. The mantra trotted out on every occasion is that the state is bad and the market is king and if it is said often enough it is accepted. The mantra is taken to heart by the greasy pole climbers when all the evidence from the privatised sections of the state (Transport, Utilities, Banks, education, NHS, the Post Office and all forms of Community Care) is that it is an unmitigated disaster, but the fools press on.

The first thing we need to do in order to create our Probation Cooperative is to dispose of the managers because we know they have been or soon will be corrupted. So who will do the managing you may ask and the answer is we will. We know we can’t ask Jim, Joanna, Netnipper and their mates to make the decisions because in the end they too will turn into lying ruthless bastards. No, Albert and Hahnel argue that Power must be rotated continually. This is the only way to stop the corrupting process. 

Many will say this is idealist clap-trap, you need managers to free others from the bureaucracy, or they may say that many people will not make good managers. To this I say that one hundred years ago all doctors were male; today over fifty per cent and increasing are female. In the Probation Service and in society at large, we share very similar abilities and given the chance most of us could do most jobs. Indeed eighty per cent of the working class would make good or excellent brain surgeons. They don’t because they don't get the chance, not because they do not have the ability and as Probation staff we know this.

The rotation of power can be achieved by limiting the time any person can be  part of the decision making body of the cooperative or better, by all people making the decisions together. Fridays could be set out as a time for debate and voting or the last three days in the month could or the last three weeks in the year, there are endless combinations. The  fully participating membership would decide; real democracy, because this is what we are talking about. It isn’t easy, we will have to work at it, but it's got to be better than what we have now.

Democracy at work means we all have a voice in how and what we do in the workplace. Democracy at work means the end of hierarchical structures, to be replaced by horizontal that are by dint democratic structures and processes. However, to be truly democratic, the probation cooperative would need to be fully participatory. What I mean by this is that each person would need to as involved in the organisation as much as he/she can possibly be. Hierarchy would be replaced by community and fear of the boss by support for our fellow workers. The Probation Service would be a perfect pilot for such an organisation, ether as a cooperative or within the Public Sector. We know that cognitively  probation staff are similar and we know from the last fifteen years that we would be able to rotate most tasks with ease. PSOs become POs and clerical staff become PSOs and Probation Officers and all of us can undertake management tasks with little effort. By sharing and rotating decision making, we keep hierarchy and corruption at bay.

Albert and Hahnel go on to talk about “Shared Job Complexes”. What they mean by this is that each persons job should be a mix of good and not so good tasks and we do this all the time in Probation. Each of us would have turns: “acting up” and cleaning the bog, writing reports, court duty, home visits and so on. There would be no hierarchical division of labour, no SPOs clerical workers or Probation Officers, importantly we would decide how its done in the workplace. Nothing would be foisted on us by the brutes at NOMS or the MoJ, this is why I think this type of working lends itself better to a cooperative organisation rather than the Public Sector. However, it could work in the Public Sector if they gave us enough freedom, but that ain't going to happen anytime soon.

We will all have to do the horrible parts of the job too, telling people that they need to improve certain skills or put a little more effort into the job. This would be achieved in solidarity and with genuine support not via fear or greasy pole climbing. Because we all share the same tasks, we will be much better placed than current management to see who is not pulling their weight or when someone needs more support.

Remuneration in a Probation Cooperative could be set this way. Workers who work longer or harder or at more onerous conditions (cleaning the toilet, working with difficult clients) would earn proportionally more for doing so. And others who wanted to work part time or do less onerous tasks would be paid less. Again we the members would decide exactly how.

There are millions of people currently employed in varying forms of cooperatives: over eighty thousand work in Mondragon in Spain, thousands work in cooperative movement in the UK and thousands are employed in radical cooperatives in South America. Perhaps it's an idea whose time has come. 

On a personal note and I need to be a little coy here lest I blow my cover, in my place of work we have had little management input for six years and three of us have had a free hand in designing the work we do and we have had much success. So much so that a report has been written on our model of work and it was suggested that others in the area should adopt it. However, when Grayling entered the fray, that was the end of that. 

The three people involved had different ideas of how to work, but because no one was senior to the other, the way we worked was borne out consensus. There was no power imbalance, we all had an equal say in decision making; the way we worked developed organically because we had no managers dictating the way it must be done in order to feather their own nests or doing the bidding of their ideologically driven “betters”. The work we did developed from the needs of the people we worked with and from the bottom up. Indeed, the men were interviewed when the report was written on our “model” and they were fully supportive of our methods. It was “Effective Practice” in action.

Finally, I think working in this horizontal participatory way has implications for unions. Horizontalism and full participation necessitates that the hierarchical structures of unions are reduced. People fully involved in their work will simply be more aware and will want to have a greater say in the political direction of their union. I think people would want to be more involved in union activities and we would vote for more time to discuss and vote on issues. Again this could be done on every Friday afternoon each week and if there was some sort of higher decision making body needed we would not send Jim, or Netnipper every time because we know how corrupt they can be. No, we would mix it up to stop power coalescing in a stinking, putrid elite.

We need to break out of the dominant narrative of TINA (there is no alternative). There are millions of ways to organise work, most of them better than the nightmare we currently toil under - TR my arse.

Papa

Where Did It All Go Wrong?

It's a sobering thought to reflect that it all started to go wrong for probation just as I arrived on the scene as a fresh-faced 'unconfirmed' officer. I qualified with a degree and CQSW in 1985, a year after the government published their Statement of National Objectives and Priorities (SNOP) for the Service. It took the Thatcher government a long time to get around to us, but looking back on it now and with the benefit of hindsight, it signalled the beginning of our demise. Haven't we done well to last this long?

Sadly SNOP represented a brand new way of doing government and it's continued ever since. As this Hansard report of proceedings in the House of Lords demonstrates, a number of wise Peers could see trouble ahead for us and in effect began the campaign to try and preserve the integrity of the Probation Service that continues to this day. Opening proceedings was Lord Wells-Pestell, a former probation officer, and reading the transcript some 30 years later, it contains some ominously familiar themes:- 

"I am concerned—and I want to say this as nicely as I can: I do not want to be considered offensive in any way—about the competence of those at the Home Office who are responsible for the statement of objectives and priorities, who probably have had no practical experience at all of being a probation officer. 
I know that the noble Lord the Minister is going to tell me that they had the experience of probation inspectors. They had that experience, but it is a very different thing, when you come to prepare and write a memorandum, to do it after discussion with some people who have worked in the field if you yourself have had no practical experience."

The debate is well worth reading in full as it canters over all the main issues of the time ranging from the lack of a plan, training, report writing, salaries, management and much more. There is even a contribution from the great Lord Longford before the Under Secretary of State rises and amongst other things introduces this very familiar sounding notion:-  

"In future we shall be expecting the probation service to concentrate on making the most effective use of the resources which it has already. It must expect to meet increased demand for its services by more efficient and economical use of its existing manpower and facilities. In addition, a basis was needed for the application to the probation service of the Government's financial management initiative. The intention is to ensure that the 80 per cent. grant we pay on the probation service is related to clear objectives and is securing value for money. There can be no objection to getting more for the same amount of cash."


So what did SNOP bring to the probation party? Why joy of joys, bureaucratisation  and managerialism. Just for a moment allow yourself to daydream as to what your world would be like without these two expensive innovations. I'm fortunate in that I can remember. Happily it all took a long time to reach my particular probation neck-of-the-woods as my office was both geographically and managerially distant from from Head Office. In fact the joke was that we belonged to a neighbouring Service. 

We just carried on democratically deciding our own local policy for years, with the SPO being an equal participant in lively team discussions. In those days we had almost complete discretion and just followed our nose. This is from recent correspondence and utterly typical in my experience:-

"he was a Programme manager and when we had a treatment manager appointed to the team - she commented that he often did not stick to the rule book - I replied that he did not know there was a rule book!!! He just did what he thought was right - a really old style senior rather than a manager."

As usual the internet has thrown up an interesting essay on the subject by author unknown, but I hope they will forgive my quoting from it:- 

According to McWilliams (1992) the arrival of management into the NPS is a recent concept within the organisations development. Up until then he believed that the service had operated under a ‘professional-administrative model,’ yet the recommendations of the Butterworth report (1972) included the need for planning and control – and thus the era of management began. This shift largely occurred through Martinson’s proclamation that Nothing Works (1974). However it is important at this stage to differentiate between the concepts of management and managerialism. The former, in the traditional sense, refers to the ‘balancing and direction of resources to achieve certain intents.’ Managerialism on the other hand refers to the ‘implementation of a variety of techniques…..within a culture of cost efficiency and service effectiveness.’ (James & Raine 1998). It is therefore the concept of managerialism which, under the guise that public services including the NPS, should be run like a business (Clarke 1994) became the transformational force for reform.

So, the inexorable march of management, ably assisted by that essential tool for any command and control structure, the bloody computer, has got us to where we are now. Just a few months away from privatisation and ultimate demise.

Sign the No10 petition here. 

Social Policy - My Arse!

A glance at the stats shows that another blog has flagged up a post I wrote last week about payment by results entitled Smoke and Mirrors. As is invariably the case with the internet, I found myself inexorably drawn into what this other blog Guerilla Policy is all about. It turns out that it's an initiative to try and stimulate a different way of designing social policy by the novel method of asking people that might be affected, or are in some way involved professionally.

I have to say my immediate reaction is one of immense scepticism, and especially when I learn that 'open policy' is officially endorsed by the current coalition government. You see the track record isn't good and I'm getting older and grumpier all the time. Despite having a strong belief that everyone has the capacity to change, in probation we also have a mantra that says past behaviour is a strong indicator of future behaviour.

Actually, when considerably younger and greener, I held onto the naive belief that because the probation service was so close to the 'frontline', we were able to act as an invaluable conduit straight back to government via the Home Office as to what social policies were and were not working. Clearly I was naive enough to believe that it was a two-way dialogue and not simply a command and control system that has got steadily more powerful under successive governments.

It's quite ironic really as I can't help noticing what store the people behind Guerilla Policy place on the computer as it was precisely the widespread introduction of this device that enabled central control by management to flourish so completely, turning our formerly small and benign Head Office into a vast and sprawling micro-managing command bunker.

Before I get too excited about this supposed new way of developing social policy, I feel I need a few answers to some questions that have been nagging away at me for years. How is it that I can go to the pub with some of my mates and over several pints of the landlords finest we can solve most of this country's pressing social problems? How does knocking down hundreds of thousands of homes do anything for a chronic housing shortage? How does withholding money from a 'failing' school help make things better? How does closing youth clubs assist with teenage delinquency? 

You get the gist. On the day when former housing minister Grant Shapps admits he 'made a mistake' in signing-off thousands of house demolitions in Liverpool illegally, I want to hear some more real explanations and grovelling apologies before I can begin to believe in a better way of making social policy.     
          

What's It All About?

"An understanding of the ethos and underlying procedures and culture of the Probation Service is to me and many colleagues almost beyond understanding."  So writes the Justice of the Peace on his blog recently and I thank him warmly for giving this blog a welcome plug.

I am not at all surprised by the sentiment expressed because I think it is one widely held by the public generally. It was one of the reasons that made me decide to start a blog and try and shed some light on this most mysterious of occupations. But I still find it immensely sad to hear such comments from the Magistracy because historically there used to be such very close ties between the Probation Service and local Bench. As such it would be unthinkable only a few years ago that any magistrate felt that they did not fully understand what probation was all about. But then probation has undergone a not entirely painless revolution in recent years with some of us believing it has has lost its way and more recent recruits left disillusioned and confused.

Just by way of recap, some readers will probably recall that Probation Officers used to be appointed as Officers of the Court and indeed my interview panel was made up entirely of local magistrates. They knew what the Service was all about. They asked the awkward questions and they appointed a person whom they felt could do the job and could command the respect of the whole Bench. Of course these were the days of independent Court Administrations and all officers were appointed to a particular Petty Sessional Division. I remember that on appointment the first person I was officially introduced to was the Clerk to the Justices. As probation officers we 'belonged' to our local Bench and we used to meet with them at least four times a year to discuss developments, concerns and to conduct sentencing exercises. These were the days when magistrates would sometimes be more likely to follow a report recommendation when they knew who the author was.

Just by way of illustrating further how far things have changed, when I joined in 1985 it was only a few years after it was the custom and practice for a magistrate to be delegated to attend the probation office for the specific purpose of looking at the files and checking up on clients progress. Each officer in turn went in with a stack of files to explain what had been happening. This may seem extraordinary now, but remember that before each individual Probation Service was nationalised, a majority of members who made up the governing Probation Committee were magistrates. Currently we have a situation whereby magistrates are actually prohibited from sitting on Probation Trust Boards. Even so, it is still not uncommon for an experienced magistrate to approach me in the street for a quiet word because they are interested in someones welfare.

Given what has happened, it should not really be that surprising that a significant knowledge gap now exists between probation and magistrates. But of course it has been exacerbated by the enforced cultural change within the Service from social work agency to law enforcement agency. Not only do many old-timers like myself refuse to accept this change, but significant numbers of the new breed of officer are becoming hungry to learn about the ways of the past. They are becoming increasingly disillusioned by the formulaic approach to 'treating' offenders as opposed to trying to understand people as individuals and provide each with a tailored response through supervision. But of course this requires people with experience, training, support and permission so that judgement, discretion and innovation can be deployed - precisely the opposite direction to the command and control path the Service is currently going in.

I will end this piece by commenting on the example of new Probation management-speak quoted on the Magistrates Blog:


Specified Activity Requirements…….we are encouraging sentencers to consider SARs particularly as a more challenging alternative to stand alone supervision. This can have its place……but the standards to which we work specify that after 16 weeks all except high risk offenders are expected to report on a monthly basis only. This means that many stand alone orders tend to lack focus once the initial sixteen weeks have passed. By contrast the expectation with SARs is that we work with offenders more intensively, a structured hourly session every week, but for a shorter period of time, namely the duration of the activity. Once the specified hours are completed the work is completed; contact then ends at least for those cases that do not also have supervision attached to them. SARs have been traditionally confined to offenders with employment and training needs. We are now offering three other sentencing options that fall within the SAR orbit. First is the Structured Supervision Programme and is for male offenders assessed as having a medium to high risk of re-offending. It is aimed at those who meet the criteria for the Thinking Skills Programme but are unsuited to it…….perhaps because of their working hours or because they are unsuited to a groupwork setting……those sentenced to SSP are expected to attend twelve structured hour long sessions………Second is the Engage and Change Activity Requirement and has been in place for two months and is a shorter version of SSP; ten sessions not twelve. It is for males whose offending risk is low to medium – not high enough to warrant SSP or Thinking Skills. ECAR and SSP……..are designed to focus on the way offenders think and behave, on their lifestyles, attitudes and relationships. Third is Structured Supervision for Women – sixteen sessions in all for women who meet the criteria for the Women`s Programme but who for practical reasons are unsuitable.

This is the sort of stuff that makes most old-style Probation Officers cringe. The all-so-confident-sounding alphabet soup treatment model. It's simple, you do x,y and z to somebody and the implication is that change will be effected, almost by magic. Readers will not be surprised to learn that invariably it doesn't work and the reason is quite straight forward. It fails to address an individual and their unique needs. The dead giveaway as to how the Service approaches things now is the bit at the beginning that says the problem with standalone supervision is that after 16 weeks, unless the client is judged as high risk, they are only seen monthly.

Well I can say categorically that whatever the standards say, if a person has needs I carry on seeing them weekly or as required. Can you imagine how a client feels if they are still homeless, or unemployed, or have continuing drug and alcohol issues and are told 'come back in four weeks.'  The Service has become process-driven rather than client-centred. This does not aid rehabilitation and it's issues like this that both make me angry and spur me on. We need a grown up discussion and debate about probation urgently or as I've said, sadly we're finished.  

Coping is More Difficult

Following on from my recent piece about 'burnout', a couple of comments from newish colleagues has spurred me on to think about coping and why I think it's much more difficult nowadays.

Having proudly gained my degree and Certificate of Qualification in Social Work, I was absolutely delighted to get a sessional post as a PO quite quickly. Initially I was to cover for a colleagues absence on a temporary secondment to a maximum secure prison. I guess it should have felt more daunting at the time to be given an office, full caseload and responsibility from day one, but I just thought this was how it was done. The team of five colleagues were very supportive and I just got stuck in. I clearly made an impression because six months later when the permanent post was advertised, I sailed through the interview and was duly appointed to the substantive post as a Main Grade officer, complete with nameplate, Jarvis and a pleasant personal note from the Chief.

Appointment signalled the start of my 'confirmation' year. Effectively each newly qualified officer was on probation and had to be confirmed in post. But in those days there was an area-wide first year officers support group. We met monthly and were able to discuss in confidence with an experienced officer issues that were of concern. It was always good to know others were experiencing and feeling the same as you and as a group we could bring those concerns to the attention of management. It served myself and my other new colleagues well, but sadly it seems management became suspicious of it and some years later it was quietly abandoned. I suspect it was about the time that the paternalistic Personnel Department was transformed into a rather more malign Human Resources Department. 

I have said before that I feel the role of a probation officer back in 1985 was very much a vocation rather than a career. This was certainly how I perceived it and for that reason never harboured thoughts of promotion that would take me away from client contact, the very essence of the job. I realised the work would be stressful, but there were numerous ways in which you were supported and could gain strength. It seems hard to comprehend now but in those days we had authority, discretion and exercised judgement pretty much unhindered either by the Senior or the system. Team meetings made decisions based on discussion and democratic process, they were not opportunities for the boss to tell you what you would be doing! Of course the strength of the team, including the Senior, was one of the key support mechanisms in caring for each other and being able to avoid 'burnout.' 

Back then 'burnout'  was only likely to come about because of the work with clients. But the system formed part of the means of coping. There were all sorts of groups and opportunities for career development. I remember going to a Family Therapy Support Group, a Forensic Psychiatric Group and a Drug Interest Group to name just a few. Sadly the situation we have today is that the system is part of the problem and therefore affords little if any help in coping with the work. Managements command and control fetish through the computer has seen to that. In essence the clients are exactly the same. Their problems are not that different from when the Service started, but it seems to me that all the coping mechanisms officers had in the past in having sufficient capacity to undertake the work have been removed one by one. 

I'm afraid this is not going to be a post that ends happily. The really sad conclusion I've arrived at from bitter experience is that a PO can only last about five years in a field team doing the core role as a generic officer. For their own health and sanity I think they must do what so many of my former colleagues have done and move on to one of those less stressful specialist posts either in prison, a drug team or programmes even. Management don't see this as a problem of course. They applaud such moves as career development, but in reality that disguises the fact that front-line probation work is fast becoming an impossible job. Managers delude themselves into thinking that hundreds of applicants for a prison post means people are really keen on working in a prison. In fact it serves as a graphic indication of just how bad things are in field offices, but they won't have it of course.           

DIY Probation

The announcement that the government is keen to encourage public sector workers to band together, form John Lewis style co-operatives and bid to manage their organisation at first sounds barmy, but how many of us have said in the pub that we could indeed run things better? I know I have. 

However I find the John Lewis analogy a little unfortunate given its obvious middle class exclusive nature, its unhappy connections with the parliamentary expenses scandal (remember all claims were measured against the so-called John Lewis list) and its sheer arrogance in the way it demands certain planning criteria to be met before deigning to plant any branch in a city. I digress, but anyone familiar with the new store in Liverpool couldn't get a better illustration of the John Lewis attitude to society. The rear end of the store backs onto the bus station, but there are no doors, whilst overhead a bridge delivers the middle classes direct from their 4x4's safely parked in the multi-storey. I hear the same is planned for Leeds, only with the rear to the market and bridge over the Headrow linking a new car park. 

Having got that off my chest, the John Lewis ownership model, with no employees but 'partners' instead is an interesting one. Is it so fanciful in this new climate of voluntarism, Big Society, reduction in bureaucracy and encouragement of innovation to think that at least one group of probation managers might have a go at something different? Ideologically I am as much attracted to the notions of mutuality, co-ownership and co-operation as I am to public ownership. It's private companies entering the field of the Criminal Justice System that I have problems with. But then I have problems with bloated Head Offices, too many managers and tiers of management with command and control agenda's.

I think it behoves some part of our profession to prove that it need not be like this. That another model and method of operation is possible with a root and branch examination of all practices. This could be the opportunity to prove that a return to small community-based provision is better and cheaper. That a massive Head Office bureaucracy is unnecessary. That responsibility and discretion could be returned to practitioners. That the focus could return to front line activity in partnership with other agencies, but probation with it's ethical and professional base in control.

Let me give just one concrete example of how I would change things. For many years I was a volunteer with the Samaritans and found that their ethos and method of operation dovetailed neatly with my professional work as a probation officer. Like all organisations it had a management structure and bureaucracy, but the impressive thing was that everyone, from the Chairman, National Officers, Directors downwards all had to do the same amount of duty and face to face contact with the public. This meant that not only was there not an air of hierarchy but also that management never got distanced from the core business of the organisation. I would insist on something similar with all probation managers having to write some PSR's, fill in the damned OASys and actually see clients. I think that would lead to a very different culture with less command and control directives from a distanced management. Come on then - who's up for this?