Omnishambles Update 39

These are some of the comments from yesterday that struck me as particularly pertinent. Those concerning practice not only serve to highlight the chaos that is evolving, but also the lack of probation knowledge and experience at the top of Napo which makes the issuing of meaningful direction extremely difficult.

A colleague's death has already occurred in my Team from a probable heart attack. TR added immeasurably to the other stresses of life. We are devastated and unable to grieve and support each other properly because we are overwhelmed by the speed of this train crash. I knew that TR would lead to deaths. I didn't expect them to be our own.

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Do you do your FDR's using OASys? We have a really weird anomaly where if an FDR is done at Court it can be handwritten and OASys completely bypassed. If the report comes out to the team, we have to do it through OASys and then unbelievably, an FDR takes longer to do than an SDR!

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'Section 4 of the Act reserves the function of giving assistance to the court to determine the appropriate sentence to pass or making any other decision in respect of an offender, to public bodies' .... I think it's fairly obvious that NPS will struggle to complete volume of reports. Take into account that RSR has not been embedded into oasys which leads to duplication of work, I envisage that in interim period this will mean that CRC staff will prepare reports which will then be signed off by NPS staff. I'm sure CRC staff will not want to be ghost writers and used in this way.

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Sadly everyone at our office is in self preservation mode. Managers who might be in or sympathetic to napo are following trust orders to the letter, directing staff to undertake tasks in crazy timescales - "we do understand and sympathise but we'll be looking at capability if you don't get cases up to scratch..." Plus senior managers are taking advantage of the disarray and confusion to ratchet up the pressure to complete preparation for transfer of cases - perhaps to pocket the alleged Grayling bonuses? There's a malevolent undercurrent when strike action is mentioned, with whispers and glances everywhere. There seem to be considerably more managers than ever before, yet not enough practitioners. Its just a friggin nightmare.

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The role of the Court based PO/PSO needs guidance from NAPO nationally but there is a deafening silence on the topic. It is the key Omnishambles role because allocation, risk assessment and the reports all flow through the role. In other words this is where success/failure of this crap rests. There is no interview space in courts because probation is the poor relation and allocated minimal space but the number of interviews will have to significantly increase. 

For custody cases each prisoner will need an interview in the Bridewell before heading out to prison but computers can not be used there so each doc needs completing in paper form then transferred to computer. Who does this duplicated work? Then there are the reports, Post sentence interviews to provide supervision appointments. Oh, also don't forget provision of information to the courts at any moment they ask for it. All in all the numbers of tasks to be delivered under TR have grown but no thought to the HOW. 

I will be asking for a job evaluation immediately the new process starts.When managers say "just do it" that means more money in my salary because if I have sole responsibility for the delivery of the tasks I expect to be paid for that responsibility.

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Here are two contributions from readers:-

"Mr Brown - a quick revisit of 'Pam' following FOI by an inquisitive soul.

The purchase of 'Pam' was not subject to public scrutiny by competitive tender because the project budget was below the OEJU threshold (EU set target) of £113k. The 3 year contract cost £75k after which it will be decommissioned at end March 2014."

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"Given the new OR ACT, there are provisions for drug testing as part of the Licence. Now, I work in the IOM and regularly conduct drug tests. I normally test and tick for the majority of drugs to be tested, reducing this to what I feel that are more prone to use (based on my experience of them). Occasionally I will tick for a full screen of all drugs, just to make sure they have not found/use alternatives.
 
Now, the drug testing can range from £8 to £20, depending on the amount of screening needed. Now we know that MANY habitual criminals offend to fund drug habits, and they normally attract short sentences. It is not implausible that these will be many of our future clients.
 
Now the latest reports are that around 50,000 people per year are released after serving less than 12 months custody. Imagine if we only drug test 10% of these people, at £10 per time. That's £50k per annum out of any CRC's budget! Now imagine it's 50%, or 100%. At £20 per time!
 
I'm not sure that the CRC's have the money 'spare' to do this and this is a concern! It may be worthwhile, if you do expand on this post, to ask your readers to ensure that ANY directions from CRC management NOT to test people, for whatever reason, is immediately flagged up to NAPO. It might just be something else which puts off prospective buyers!"

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And finally this interesting email sent out in London:-

The competition for sale of the CRCs is progressing and recently approaches have been made to some ACOs by Capita to set up meetings to find out more about the workings of Probation in London.  Typically, a request might include something along the following lines:- 

• It would be great if we could talk to you for a strategic level chat and to pick your brains on: 
• the Transforming Rehabilitation Programme – and how it might practically at a borough level – your hopes and fears for the new world 
• any new opportunities that you could see might arise from the introduction of new thinking and different investment into the area 
• your experiences/ expectations/benefits/challenges in terms of joint activity – planning/commissioning/service supply at the moment. 

The question of bidder contact has been raised with Martin Blake who advises that bidders have been notified that they should not be approaching Trusts at this time, regardless of whether NPS or CRC designates.  All probation staff are therefore instructed not to talk to bidders.  If approached, they should politely inform the bidder to use the MoJ's usual procurement portal to make any requests for information or to ask their questions.

In due course bidders will have the option to meet CRC Chiefs and their SMT for a 1-2-1 discussion.  It is understood that the arrangements for this are currently in progress, commencing with the CEO briefing days at the end of this month.  The TR programme believes this is sufficient engagement, at this time, and it is not intending to arrange bidder meetings with the NPS at this stage - any bidder queries relating to NPS (e.g. general interface issues and operational queries) would likely be sufficiently picked up by CRC Chiefs and  SMTs. 
Please could you pass this information to your staff.