Latest From Napo 11

Following on from the long-awaited blog from the General Secretary Ian Lawrence, here's that e-mail commented on yesterday and sent to all members:-

Dear All

In so far as one can ever tell “how the land lies” in the world of Transforming Rehabilitation, here’s how it appears at present*

The Costs are Getting Out of Control

The Secretary of State has said there will be no reduction in the overall probation budget and that the savings made from competition will free up money for supervising short sentence prisoners.  The economic model is essentially as follows:  if probation costs £100 and you tender it out for £80, you have £20 left to supervise the under 12 months cohort.  Hurrah!  More for less.  The problem is that TR is creating so much fragmentation that the bureaucratic glue needed to hold it together has already raised the costs to over the original £100.  The only way to achieve the same savings are to reduce staff, go for a cheaper bidder, or skimp on service delivery.  Whatever way you look at it, the government is wasting time and resources and diverting money away from service delivery.

Staff Shortages and Training

As a result of the staff sift, many trusts are finding that CRCs, NPS and different geographical areas are seriously over or understaffed.  After the first of June 2014, one of the new organisations will be short of just over 280 staff members.  Probation is struggling to recruit and retain staff because of the incompetence and interference of NOMS and the MoJ.  The NPS will need 300 Probation Officers joining every year just to stand still.  There is still no sufficient plan about training coming from the government.  Where will the new recruits come from?  The temp agencies are coming up blank.  Probation Officer training is becoming so narrowly focused on a tiny band of graduates that the talent pool will practically shrink itself out of existence.    

Workloads

Our fear is that the chaos injected into an already difficult job will lead to the NPS and CRC to haemorrhage staff.  In the NPS, caseloads of victims, high risk cases, sex offender programmes will all balloon if staff numbers start to dwindle.  Remember that the NPS will be unattractive to staff in CRCs as they lose continuity.  In the CRC, community payback is at risk of following the disaster of Serco in London.  Case managers and programme tutors will have higher numbers of cases/groups and PSO grades risk being pressured into holding higher risk cases than reflected in either their training or pay.  PO grades may lose access to high risk training.  Managers and administrators in both organisations will have more staff to manage or administrate for.  ACOs (or equivalent grades) will have to be in about 4 places at once and everybody, literally everybody, will be cursing the new, and completely unnecessary, bureaucracy and duplication of work. 

The Potential Bidders

In a nutshell, the bidders are asking: “What exactly are we buying, what is the cost, can I profit and will it all be ready?”  The MoJ still cannot produce an answer.  Senior managers in CRCs are being asked to prepare a “prospectus” for the bidders but their questions are not being answered either.  We’re asking the same questions too and as yet have not received an adequate response.  The list of bidders is a fairly mixed bag.  Some bidding organisations like Carillion have been involved in the blacklisting of trade unionists.  GEO have been found to keep prisoners in insanitary conditions in the US.  Yet the Secretary of State says he is ‘excited’ by the list of bidders. 

Supervision of Short Term Prisoners

Jeremy Wright MP is fond of saying, “you may not agree with our method [privatisation] but we all want to supervise the under 12 months.”  We have to admit this is something of a government trump card.  But it’s the only one left.  Remember when George Osborne said that Probation had failed therefore it had to be privatised?  That argument shrivelled in the face of the evidence and the government changed its tune.   What the government does not say is that Probation already had great success with this group as non-statutory IOM cases and with other projects with EU funding.  Mr Wright was never interested in a public sector model of supervision for this group.  However, Napo and the Probation Chiefs Association have jointly commissioned research which will provide an alternative model to supervise the under 12 months led by the public sector in partnership with other providers.  With an alternative, we think there is a stronger anti-privatisation route for parliamentarians.  The research project is due to be completed later this month.

The Probation Institute

At the National Executive Committee yesterday, there was an overwhelming vote in favour of Napo formalising its position as one of the founder members of the Institute including taking up one of the interim director posts.  The Institute (despite being announced repeatedly by MoJ officials) is entirely independent and will bring together the best from practice and academia as a way of developing our profession and safeguarding standards.  Check out the article in Napo News Online and the Probation Institute website.

Best wishes,

TOM RENDON                   IAN LAWRENCE
National Chair                   General Secretary

*as with anything TR related, it could all change again tomorrow.

Maybe they are at last realising down at Chivalry Road that the troops need very regular updates, especially in the face of so much disquiet and with a Special General Meeting looming on March 5th and the need to ensure quoracy. I'm not alone in being concerned at the content and message though as neatly summed up by this yesterday:-

I see no encouragement at all. All Napo is saying is that it's an omnishambles - but this blog has already said that 34 times.

Meanwhile, this is the MoJ professional spin doctor's at work, cunningly designed to make everyone think it's all going just swimmingly and potential bidders have no concerns at all:-

The competition winners will provide targeted support to offenders across England and Wales. They will also help lead a new approach that will see, for the first time, every offender released from prison receive at least 12 months supervision and rehabilitation in the community to help them turn their backs on crime.

This will be crucial in tackling our stubbornly high reoffending rates that currently see more than half a million crimes committed each year by those who have broken the law before.

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said:

“We are finally addressing the glaring gap that sees 50,000 short sentenced prisoners released every year with no support, free to go back to their criminal ways.

“By bringing together the skills of a much wider range of organisations - who can make greater use of methods like mentoring to turn offenders’ lives around - we can at long last begin to crack our sky high reoffending rates.

“This unacceptable problem has dogged successive governments for decades and our plans will finally allow us to tackle it.”

An updated operating model for the reforms will also be published shortly explaining how the new system will work on the ground. It will include more detail on how:

• providers will start working with all prisoners on reception into custody to address their needs and set out a clear plan for resettlement into the community
• providers will be expected to work closely with a wide range of partners to crack reoffending, including the police, local authorities, the Youth Justice Board and Youth Offending Teams, and how Police and Crime Commissioners in particular will be able to commission services such as Restorative Justice from providers
• the system will be governed, including role of the probation and prisons inspectorates and the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman in driving up standards and holding the system to account; and
• providers will be required to offer targeted support to meet the specific needs of female offenders.

Thirty bidders are currently competing for the work to rehabilitate low and medium risk offenders. The bids are from a diverse mix of partnerships with around 50 organisations represented. Private firms, charities experienced in tackling a range of issues affecting offenders, small and large British businesses and experienced multinationals have joined together to bid for the work that will help turn offenders’ lives around.

All bidders have received detailed information on the competition process, how their bids will be scored and what they will need to demonstrate to win the contracts.

A revised payment method has also been given to providers setting out the reductions in reoffending they will be required to achieve in order to be paid in full. This will focus them solely on turning offenders’ lives around and ensure hardworking taxpayers get maximum value for money.

The Justice Secretary has also today awarded a grant of almost £200,000 to the charity Clinks so they can provide legal support to voluntary organisations who are planning to play a role in the reforms. It is the final part of a voluntary sector support package from the Ministry of Justice worth half a million pounds.