Tuesday 30 July 2013

Some Observations 17

I always find it's good to kick off a post by kicking G4S. I'm grateful to the commentator who pointed me in the direction of the embarrassing position the BBC finds itself in by seemingly being about to enter into a large security contract with said company. As this piece on the brilliantly named blogsite 'STOP G4S' outlines, a whole host of the rich and famous are on the case, but we await the Beeb's decision with interest. 

The 'STOP G4S' site is well worth a good root around and I love their style in having produced a wonderful spoof chairman's letter which was handed out to shareholders at the AGM in June. It begins:-

"This has been something of a roller coaster year for us. The publicity we gained from our Olympics failure may have been mostly negative. But it's important we remember that G4S is now a household brand and that our business model of zero-hours contracts, limited communication and maximal outsourcing is now widely understood."

My recent mention of concerns over our sacred NHS finds yet more news of contractors pulling out of the disastrous 111 telephone service that replaced the former NHS Direct one. Apparently, the reason given is 'financial unsustainability' or in laymans terms shit money, a situation with an increasingly familiar ring to it. Coincidentally, my attention has been drawn to this piece on the Guerilla Policy website and a disturbing new book NHS SOS just published.

Also on the Guerilla Policy website is this fascinating post written by founder Michael Harris on the subject of 'shadow politics' and an explanation of 'how outsourcing and privatisation have got their teeth into public services'. Definitely worth reading in full, here's just a couple of tasters:- 

One of the smoke and mirrors twists common in the shadow politics is the nationalisation of private failure, and the privatisation of public success – witness the public bailing out the banks, and the privatisation of the income-generating Royal Mail. To wit: if companies like G4S can’t be trusted to do their job with competence and integrity, it must ultimately be the fault of the state – so further undermining the legitimacy of the latter to the ultimate benefit of the former. 

So – a policy no-one voted for, which the political class itself acknowledges lacks evidence, doesn’t work in practice and which raises significant issues of public accountability, but which carries on regardless, propelled by private interests, lobbying and donations. It’s the shadow politics in action. 

With ever more people finding themselves working for dodgy employers, from Monday it's not going to be as easy to go to an Industrial Tribunal because fees have been introduced by the government in order to discourage vexatious claims. An utterly cynical move by government, I notice that at least one trade union, Unite, intend to pay the upfront fees on behalf of members.

We don't often hear what clients or former clients feel about things, but this powerful piece
'Making Good : The Comodification of Offenders' by Raymond Lunn is quite a damning indictment that should make very sobering reading both by prospective bidders for probation contracts, and Chris Grayling himself. Read it in full, but here's a taster:- 

Over the last few years I’ve been engaging, some things have changed in terms of looking at the rehabilitation of offenders, the crock of shit the government call ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ is now a main stay in terms of the present governments agenda. I don’t feel the opposition are thinking of anything much different either. The ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ agenda and changes are all about opening up the the public services dedicated to protection of the public and reform of offenders to private and charitable ‘enterprise’. This is a red flag if ever there was one! It petrifies the life out of me that people who might be as naive as I was will be taken in, mentors and volunteers to assist some enterprise in their creation of a business in the guise of ‘doing good’. Even though we ex-offenders have important knowledge in terms of experiences and qualified more than any ‘professional’ to understand why we desisted, we are not considered as equals in terms of knowledge and expertise. They want it, they want to use it, they even want to sell it. But not as an equal in terms of being considered valuable enough to pay for.

I’ve never wanted to mentor, I’ve always being about challenging policy, the inequalities and discrimination faced by those who wish to integrate and ‘make good’ – the problem is and my warning to any would-be ex-offender who wants to make good  is to be careful, be wise, value yourself, your knowledge and your narrative. Don’t let anyone make you think you owe them or society. You’ve paid your debt, you owe jack shit, other than yourself. Make good, but on your terms. Check out why they want you, what is their history, I advise anyone getting involved with any organisation, especially if new to check out who the directors of the enterprise are, what do their financial reports say. Some of the ‘enterprises’ will scream and say ‘We’re not for profit’ – you don’t have to be, check the wage structure and shareholder dividends. Look for independent reviews by people who worked there or were service users. Don’t follow the crowd, the ‘in’ crowd. Some, if not all great services are often the quietest, they just get on with it, rather than odiously celebrating their ‘good news’ on social media and ignore the probing and relevant questions!

Finally, here's a wonderful article in The Sun about a TripAdvisor-style website for prisons. One respondent describes HMP Wormwood Scrubs thus:-

"The view from the room was poor and obscured by iron bars. Facilities were rudimentary to say the least - no television, mini bar or ensuite facilities. Due to overbooking I was forced to share with a rather charmless individual by the name of 'Mike the Hatchet' who was keen to know why my stay was so short. I sought out the shower facilities in the morning and had to queue and was then told 'not to bend down for the soap' by a surly member of staff. 

When I went to check out I was interviewed by a panel of three people who asked a lot of strange questions. For some reason my departure was met with unruliness by the other guests who banged their mugs against the iron bars and shouted obscenities. The only plus point was that after checkout I discovered that reception had forgotten to charge me for my stay." 

21 comments:

  1. I expect you also saw John Harris' excellent piece in the Guardian on Serco (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jul/29/serco-biggest-company-never-heard-of), who seem less noisily incompetent than G4S but still preside over significant failures of service without any apparent danger of losing their contracts. I would like to have seen the article (indeed any article) looking more deeply into the UPW contract in London where, I understand, there are similar failures to provide enough staff, and the contract doesn't require them to do things as simple as enforcement.

    On the subject of mentoring, I'm usually encouraged when someone I'm supervising starts talking about wanting to "give back" and "stop others making the mistakes I made" through mentoring. At that point someone says this, they've realised how the choices they've made have harmed someone else, and are starting to think about how they can make it better. But the key word there is "starting" - if I could italicise and put it in bold, I would - because this is about a process that will take a long time to complete. To use a 12-step analogy, this is somewhere around step 9, and there's much potential for deviation along the way. Someone at that stage is optimistic and full of good intentions, and that makes them vulnerable (or naive as Raymond Lunn puts it).

    TR is a massive gamble that enough goodwill can be harnessed on the cheap. In fact, it's not a gamble at all - it's going to fail, and it's going to put staff, volunteers and clients at risk.

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    1. Tim,

      Thanks for flagging up the Guardian Serco article - I hadn't seen it - just so much to try and get a grip on guys! I really appreciate everyone contributing.

      Cheers,

      Jim

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  2. Mentoring? Sounds great! But having thought about it and applying it to a buisness model I'm not that convinced. What it really equates to is this.
    Once the big companies have squeezed every penny they can from the supervision of the offender by risk manipulation and breaching them to keep the cycle going, they then want them to become part of that process and work for free!
    Mentoring only sounds good, it's complicated, frought with legal issues, and can be dangerous.
    But it's not the worst idea I've ever heard.
    At one stage, because of the high volume of gun crime on Merseyside, and in particular drug related shootings, Merseyside police were considering a programme called Urban Surgeon. The Intention was that a number of training courses be set up to teach teenagers how to assist anyone who had been shot with the things they had around them. Maybe a biro? A shopping bag? Penknife? Whatever.
    The scheme was never put into opperation when it was pointed out that some poor kid trying to help may not only end up facing a manslaughter or murder charge, but in turn may be targeted by the family of the person who's been shoot .
    The ministry of Thinking should be aware, the wheel exists already there's no need to try to reinvent it.

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    1. I agree entirely about the dangers of mentoring - great when it works but takes time and effort - trouble is the politicians latch onto it as a 'silver bullet'.

      Cheers,

      Jim

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  3. Good link with the stop G4S site Jim. Just read G4S and Mitie use untrained guards to break up strike. Good reading if you haven't read that particular article.
    No doubt these are the same staff that will be given the job of looking after offenders?

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    1. Mitie - now there's another dodgy company - I seem to remember they had the probation cleaning contract for a period after we sacked our long-serving and wonderful cleaning ladies. Will check it the site you mention.

      Cheers,

      Jim

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  4. I very much like the analogy of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

    Step 9 says "Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others."

    In other words doing our best to put right the harms we have done as long as we don't do anymore harm.

    Steps 10 and 11 reinforce our recovery thus far and give us a structure to deal with as yet unmet difficulties of our or others making.

    It is not until we get to step 12, according to the experiences of the authors of these 12 steps in the late 1930's who after much discussion and discernment wrote down what they had actually done to find a way of living well without repeatedly harming themselves and others as a consequence of their addictive use of alcohol.

    Step 12 says "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs."

    In other words we are not properly ready to support others until we are well sorted ourselves with a daily support system in place, that we can use if we begin to slide back.

    It is very humbling for me to be prompted to consider the twelve steps today, because I have been way off track for a long while. So thanks to Tim at 07.40 - he knows about that which he writes!

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  5. Google "Audio: Sheffield stop G4S meeting - UK Indymedia".
    Download the tape. Speakers include South Yorkshire NAPO rep. Interesting!

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  6. You seem to have forgotten to mention that the only contractor pulling out of 111 is the bloated and wasteful NHS Direct. They're pulling because they're no longer getting the jaw dropping £20 a call they got under the previous system.

    Personally I really don't see the need for 111 or its predecessor NHS Direct, flip a switch and turn them off i doubt anyone would notice a difference. The same goes for the probation service.

    Rather than rewriting your young socialist essays maybe you could give some examples of why a service, that 99.999% of the country wouldn't miss, should be saved ?

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    1. I would be interested to know what evidence Peter King uses to support his assertion that "99.999% of the country wouldn't miss" a probation service.

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    2. Peter King,

      Welcome aboard. I don't know if you've just joined us or have simply been a little remiss in not reading previous blog posts that explain in some detail why the Probation Service is quite important and would be very much missed.

      Just because most members of the public are not aware of how the sewage system works, does not mean the facility wouldn't be missed if it suddenly stopped functioning.

      As to NHS Direct, you neglect to mention that they employed a large number of qualified nurses to staff the phones, unlike the 111 service which uses non-medically trained call centre staff.

      Cheers,

      Jim

      PS I'm rather enjoying writing socialist essays for the first time. I used to be young conservative but grew up.

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    3. There are far more "bloated" companies in todays market then NHS Direct. There are many making a few quid more then the "jaw dropping" £20 a call paid for the 111 service too!
      99.999% is an interesting statistic, and not one I'm familiar with. Perhaps it's one of Graylings, or perhaps it's just the percentage of the population that G4S, Serco and the like are squabling over ownership of. Or maybe it's just made up?

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    4. I suspect Peter King is the 'bloated and wasteful' one – with his assertions and childish use of time. If anyone watched Dispatches last night you would have seen the worrying practices that go on at another provider Harmoni who, unlike the Nurse-led NHS Direct, employ non- clinical advisers, who can be trained up in two weeks. We also heard a Harmoni manager saying he could not be confident that a safe service was being provided at weekends. This is a service that at times will be dealing with individuals with life threatening conditions – at weekends too. It does stretch credulity that statements such as these can be heard by those in government and there is no urgent response.

      Thus another cheap, cheerful and potentially deadly service. Mr King, remember the 'bloated and wasteful' NHS Direct should you have the misfortune to be living in Harmoni's catchment and you suddenly feel overcome one weekend.

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    5. £20 may seem a lot at first glance. But when you have to sit there and let the phone ring out for 2 hours before you answer it you'll realise just how tough a job it really is!

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    6. netnipper,

      Not got around to Dispatches yet, but I gather as you say, a complete dangerous shambles.

      Cheers,

      Jim

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  7. Peter (King) have you had a hair cut recently - could take 20 minutes - cost - an easy £50 - cos it'll dry itself. I'd happily pay £20 - to an NHS direct worker, if they can reassure me, with some degreee of knowledge that my child's high temperature, is not life threatening and guide me though the treatement process - could take 30 mins - compared to a hair cut - priceless.

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  8. Peter (King)...oh to live in a world with no sickness or crime...no time to say more, got a deadline on a 'socialist essay'...

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  9. Grayling is sure the voluntary "ex offender" mentors are going to be a success, listen to him here for twenty minutes last week.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDWZVonOIfo

    I have Tweeted some reactions & will not give anymore here now except I hope EVERY probation worker and prospective person involved in TR listens to it with a critical ear and doesn't go into it in any way naively - I fear many folk will be disappointed and quite a few hurt and/or harmed.

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    1. Tolkny,

      The shmoozing speech to the voluntary and third sector trying to reassure them this is no Work Programme 2. Well worth a watch as you suggest.

      Cheers,

      Jim

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