TR Week Fourteen

Here goes - another day of crushing anxiety; of processing forms on a crap IT system; of facing accusations of being a dinosaur, a Luddite, a whinger; of grinding my way through innumerable tedious emails full of ersatz enthusiasm for a lost cause, or "instructions", or warnings about IT being "down" or how to "work around" another fuck up (i.e. it don't work properly so we've come up with yet another Heath Robinson solution - "hold your breath, turn around twice, switch it off & on again, do a handstand and it should be okay").

Twenty years so far - I'm now counting the days to any possible exit that might present itself. Its a disgraceful state of affairs when such a critical public service is reduced to a circus clown show by a blinkered government.

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We've lost 5 SPOs over the past year plus 2 x ACO - it has to be said these had all hit 60 but TR put the final nail in the coffin. A recent SPO has resigned in protest at TR and their poor view of our current management.

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As an SPO, we have noted that staff have stopped volunteering for roles like Fire Marshalls, First Aiders, NAPO roles, task and finish groups etc. Goodwill gone, many waiting to see which bidder gets their area and what their proposals are before looking to leave, others waiting for redundancy. Probation, both NPS and CRCs, are watching and waiting to see what the end state is before deciding their intentions. Bidders have an insurmountable barrier to re-engaging staff. 'Motivational speeches' from the CEO of a multi-national will fail to bring most on board and it will be decades before the damage to morale is repaired.

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I work in Manchester, and believe me nothing in the garden is rosy. In the city our cases have still not been reallocated from CRC to NPS. Its horrible beyond words, and I heard that the chief continues to tell lies about how it's just teething problems and so on. Half the service is agency staff and only a handful of people applied for the NPS vacancies, and I heard from a man in the pub that in one office all the CRC staff are off sick, doesn't sound too rosy to me. ITS A MONUMENTAL MELT DOWN ONLY MANAGEMENT DON'T WANT TO ADMIT IT TO SAVE THEIR OWN REPUTATIONS.

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Bullying is probably too strong a word for it but senior management coercion is alive and well in Manchester but then again, listening to their 'Connect' blogs everything in the garden is rosy - there's no delusion like management delusion...

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I still enjoy the craziness - reports on cases from my CRC caseload involve them being given interview appointments with NPS staff. Sometimes (depending on individual staff member) they'll ring me or email for update or discussion; one NPS body asked if I'd (effectively) write the report & email it to them; often there's no consultation. The NPS assessments rarely make it to my desk (a management issue, I do declare); and the proposals have often been unhelpful, even a hindrance, in terms of making progress with my cases.

Recently I had a solicitor ring me from court asking the questions the NPS hadn't asked. They then used the information verbally shared to persuade a District Judge to go with a fine as opposed to the 100 hours unpaid work proposed by NPS.

TR = Totally Rubbish.

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Northumbria CRC have been offered overtime reports, and have been taken up. Hypocrisy from Noms for offering and also the staff completing them. Simply papering over cracks. Maybe if judges and magistrates were aware important deadlines are getting missed it might be highlighted in the media. Sad times.

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Like many others who post here, I get a real sense of a shared struggle, and support, so you can imagine my annoyance when today a Probation colleague from Lancashire, shared the lengths his service is willing to go to cover the cracks. Lancs are asking for volunteers to work over time to write PSR's at £150 a throw, and it is a matter for the author to decide on an SDR/FDR - same price. He went on to say he has booked a week off and has taken 10 reports; he seemed pleased with himself. I did suggest it is people like him willing to paper over the cracks that allow Mr Graylng to spin his lies, about the size of caseloads and the pressure on staff..people like him, and all those who opted for retirement or redundancy, that have popped up covering hostel shifts, for programmes or training, are complicit in the demise of the service and I find it hard to disguise my contempt.

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Hang on, the Lancs body will get a week's leave (paid; lets say £100/day) + £1500 for the 10 reports... £2k for the week. What's not to like about that?

1. Its presumably for NPS PO grade staff only?
2. It screws over any workload calculation
3. It skews any notion of what is achievable by NPS

Okay, there's three fairly good reasons for starters. But at least one PO will see the benefit of market forces. In Lancs' newly found sibling county a fair few POs have (according to gossip) taken several pieces of silver for reports, IT updates and other corporate clean-up tasks.

For those with hefty mortgages, heftier childcare bills and even more demanding credit card debts (cars, holidays, weddings) the attraction is obvious. There's no "bigger picture" when you can clear your own debt.

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Agreed. My area offered overtime yesterday and, 10 mins later, they had enough takers. Complicit is the word. Conversely, no volunteers for fire marshals, first aiders etc. It's all about the money now. Tragic.

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I suspect this isn't quite the 'market' in probation that Grayling envisaged... You simply can't put a price on goodwill, and all those officers papering over the cracks with overtime are going to have a big shock when the money taps get turned off.

For any bidders reading: this is the equivalent of a dodgy car dealer doing a shiny new coat of paint and desperately hoping that you don't look under the bonnet, cos the engine isn't there any more.

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Merseyside are also offering £125 a throw for SDR's... they are being snapped up.

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In Northumbria CRC we are 'assisting' in a workload measurement tool. For the next 4 weeks we have to time how long every task in the day takes, including lunch and breaks. We have been assured that this is not a time sheet, so one wonders why lunch and breaks are included. The cynical side of me thinks that this could be used against us post share sale, given it will be easy to differentiate between PO and PSO work from the data collected. 

Whilst it is supposedly anonymised, it won't take a genius to determine if it's PO or PSO work, given Delius numbers are to be included in any timed work with offenders. To my surprise NAPO have endorsed it! I completely agree a workload formula tool is needed, but why do breaks and lunch need to be in this and surely it can't be properly anonymised if Delius numbers are included? On the subject of Northumbria CRC, we have a new name for the staff magazine "Northumbria Crack" I kid you not! I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn't April Fools!

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The most ridiculous aspect of the current Northumbria Work load activity is that it's being done at a time when the new supervision framework introduced post split has not been fully implemented and is therefore a complete waste of time and will no doubt require another such exercise in a few months time.

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I would be concerned about having to record lunch breaks, for unless everyone puts down what they are contractually entitled to (ie in this area it is one hour), you are likely to see the eventual erosion of breaks brought about by those who choose not to take them (and thereby skew the data on 'efficiency'). I always take my lunch break ( away from my desk) just as I only work my hours and don't clock up TOIL. It's not about being holier than thou - I just stick to my contract and in doing so do not create an unrealistic expectation about what I can do whilst at the same time preserving my sanity. In fact, the more I think about colleagues being asked to assist with this WMT exercise the more worried I am becoming for all our futures.

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We have completed time sheets for several years in our former trust. 30 mins for lunch is all people take. Lots of staff work over and above their hours and staff in NPS appear demoralised, CRC appears to be a better option at present. If only VR was a real option. Appears to be targeted at corporate staff only. It's an incredibly sad state of affairs and at the end of the day it increases the risk to the general public. Chris Grayling et al forget they are also members of the public in their ivory towers. Sad,sad,sad.

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Northumbria CRC has descended into complete mayhem with the workload measurement exercise. Nobody has the slightest clue what they want us to do. We have to record manually everything we do all day; these are called activities. We then have to put this into Excel everyday summarising all the 'activities' into 'actions' and linking them to a Delius number. If an activity rolls into an action that finishes on the following, or subsequent day; you have to carry it over and summarise the whole action on the day you complete it. 

Confused? Yes us too. Ridiculously long incomprehensible daily e-mails telling us where we're doing it wrong, about 2 hours a day spent trying to do the activity logs (which we've been instructed we can't count as an activity), and the air is blue with swearing frustration. Truly, truly awful.

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Workload weightings seem to have been doing the rounds in probation for years and it never leads to improvements. It is a cousin of Benchmarking and we all know that mischief. Napo supports it because it's supposed to set limits on workloads and protect H&S. In my experience it has never worked. It is time and motion whatever lying management say. Subvert it, inflate it, don't be enslaved by it. And as it has achieved nothing positive in over a decade, Napo should disown it.