Sunday 26 October 2014

TR Week Twenty One 1

A (very) rough guide to low and medium risk of harm for non probation blog followers: Low = no indicators of risk of serious harm (ie the potential to seriously harm or kill) a child, a member of the public, a member of staff, or a known individual. Medium = there ARE indicators of the potential for serious harm if something CHANGES.

Are CRCs, broken away from court teams and other colleagues, being able to access only part of the probation database, carrying high caseloads, people being shunted off into groups (where they can simply share and collude with pro criminal associates if they so choose), and monitored by telephone - with the best will in the world - going to spot those changes that might indicate increasing risk? 


PLEASE SAVE PROBATION from this ill-conceived dangerous experiment which is nothing to do with reducing re-offending and everything to do with the artificial creation of profit and the professional jealousy of a certain type of privileged, petulant career politicians who do not understand those who wish to contribute to a fair and just society by working not for profit but with good will, a belief in the value of their aims, with integrity and without dumb, meaningless, time consuming bureaucratic diktat which prevents them from getting on with the job of protecting the public. 


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Post Sentence Assessment - PSA was a bit like OASys. Supposed to be sophisticated and flexible, and so the designers went into the market place and found that nobody wanted to buy it, because it was in fact, rubbish and complex. A type of PSA is indeed what new providers will have to use, and God help them and us. It was and is a total disaster in West Yorkshire.

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I concur with above. ....PSA is an omWYshambles and any notion of coherence has now fallen apart!

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PSA in WY is I agree pants, POINTLESS, STUPID, ARSEHOLES invented it. The bloke who put it through fucked off ages ago and is probably sunning himself on his pay off.

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I agree. I am so limited on what I can propose to the Courts with PSA in West Yorks. No supervision unless high risk, pointless putting down an activity (formerly known as Accredited programmes) cos they are so over whelmed since PSA kicked in they can't fit everyone in and they are knocking folk back cos they don't have the OGRE's score anyway.

No anger management activity running for the foreseeable future. A year or more before sex offenders get put on the SOTP, that's if they don't knock them back cos the shitty RM2000 says no. (HAPPENING MORE AND MORE THESE DAYS.) Can't propose a DRR for those over the RSR threshold as no NPS STAFF in DRR team. DOH! I find myself investigating, assessing for PSR's, working out why they did the offence like I am paid to do, then vaguely apologising to the Court that I can't propose bugger all for 'em. It's a travesty and makes a mockery of my training.


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On another note about this disaster are the voices of victims of crime. I am a long serving PO with 17 years experience. My family were a victim of crime this weekend. We rang the police and are still waiting to see if anyone arrives. Fortunately a neighbour witnessed the crime and we have a name. So lets see what happens. The person in question may be arrested depending on whether the CPS sees it as an offence worthy of the criminal justice system. The person may go to court and then see an overworked Court officer undertake an FDR. 

The report will be rushed together with a conclusion bordering on a fine possibly or some other sentence relating to their drug dependency. Off they go to the CRC or NPS depending on their risk and bingo, never seen much again due to the chaos of case management and this ridiculous TR agenda. Thanks Mr Grayling our bill for the damage is on the way to your office!!!! Give a thought in your TOM 3 or 4 or 5 version, of the victims perspective because as we know not much will happen if you are a victim of crime in this appalling agenda.


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I have sat in a magistrates court and heard on several occasions District Judges complain to CPS that defendants have been 'undercharged' particularly in relation to assaults. This is something else the CRC have to contend with. People who should be in NPS but due to undercharging and/or basis of plea stuff, going to CRC.

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Bidders if u r reading this blog, please get out while you can. I don't think you have any idea of the complexities you will be dealing with. Never mind a system that has been ruined by the split and not fit for purpose IT systems. If you are hoping to make a fast buck, think again.

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Latest from the frontline: client dead, paperwork a priority, PO "in the shit for not completing relevant form", CRC management furious about Kevingate being damaging to share sale, disabled not worthy of £2 a week, NPS have no idea what happened at Crown Court because they're too stressed to give a shit - and my piles are itchy today. Tweet that.

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No, seriously, they are REALLY itchy. I know this ain't "embarrassing bodies" or something but before TR I never knew what itchy stress-related conditions were. Now, well let me tell you I don't sleep well, I sleep in the spare room. I wake every hour with sweats and needing to pee, I ache in the morning, I itch in places I wished I didn't, I yawn all day, and my colleagues have started to not ask me out for drinks, coffee, meals, etc.

Maybe its time to review (a) my meds (b) my career and (c) my choice of shampoo.

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Midlands area NPS have been warned about posting things on social media.

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There's a climate of fear... People chained to their desks too frightened to speak out... SOUND FAMILIAR?

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I was told ages ago 'remember you are a civil servant now .. You can't be seen to criticise the government publicly on social media'.

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A new Trainee Probation Officer joined the NPS in our office today. Its another kick in the teeth that probably in 18 months she will be employed as a PO in the NPS which I'm not able to do. Surely there should be a case for constructive dismissal? I am now unable to under take the role that I trained for, even though they see now advertising for NPS PO's. I know I could apply but none of those sifted had to apply for their jobs.

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I feel the same. If there was a legal challenge to be had, would taking this forward as a group of POs make a difference to TR do you think?

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We have had two new trainees in our office start today too. I know it's not their fault but the government's, but I feel bad for those POs who cos they were put in CRC and didn't want to be there, can't do a lot of the job they were trained to do.

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We got the shittier end of the stick alright. These new entrants will get the nod ahead of us. We can't apply for the new NPS prison jobs and NPS OM's are lining up to get trained in SOTP whilst my 8 years experience goes to waste. Oh, and we'll be expected to train up the newbies when the CRC placements eventually get sorted.

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The thought of training up NPS TPO's makes my blood boil. I'm aware it's not their fault, but why should I spend my time training someone to do a job that I'm no longer allowed to do? If there's a need for new officers in the NPS, then why are CRC PO's not allowed to transfer over?

The trouble is, I see no room for development in a CRC - the vast majority of specialisms are in the NPS and if you're in the CRC and don't want to work in a field team, then you have nowhere to go.

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There are no 'opportunities' in the CRC and that's before share sale. Just imagine what it'll be like post.

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We have the opportunity to see our roles slowly eroded before our eyes.

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Once the multinationals are in then POs in CRC needn't worry about seeing their roles eroded cos they'll be gone; too expensive. Replacements will be recruited for less. HMP Northumberland is the model - expensive prison officers shovelled out the gates within 24 hours of Sodexo taking the reins, then new jobs advertised not many weeks later at 60% of the previous rate of pay. Bye bye experience; hello cost cutting. 

£30k for a PO holding 50 cases or two PSOs holding 100 cases between them for £36k? Economies of scale - 1000 cases now costs £360k, not £600k. Over a ten year contract you've saved £millions. You only need a Team Manager to have 'oversight' of the DV stuff (because as we know everything else is lower end risk, the scary shit's with NPS) & your Poundsaver Service is complete. Ker-ching!


Shareholders - happy; Accountants - happy; Grayling - happy; Spartacus - not best pleased.

30 comments:

  1. http://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Sentinel-Offender-Services-Reviews-E581847.htm

    Here are some reviews for sentinel probation, not for good reading.

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    1. I worked at Sentinel Offender Services full-time (more than an year)

      Pros
      You do get a change to see how private porbation is money driven. Target, targets, targets!!!!
      Cons
      Starting pay is 12.00 an hour until you move up to a team lead or become the office manager.
      Advice to Management
      Listen and value your staff!!! You know there are not enough hours in a day to manage a case load of 250, and prepare cases for court, and direct drug screen, and go to the jail to serve petitions, and see your probationers, while you are preparing warrants, tolling orders and calling those that have failed to report.... while fixing messes from the previous case manager. If any case manager you hires makes it pass 6 months, give them a raise; show appreciation to anyone that can cipher through the disfuntion this company.


      I worked at Sentinel Offender Services full-time

      Pros
      Some nice people work there
      Cons
      Tone at the top is extremely condescending. Too many people have been made to cry here because of the unacceptable yelling that goes on with regular frequency. The culture here has become a cycle of the blame-game and that fosters an "everyone looking out for themselves" type of mentality - the fastest way to ruin company and employee morale.
      Advice to Management
      Support and respect your employees. The more you condescend and disrespect the more you lose good people and the more you de-motivate.


      I worked at Sentinel Offender Services

      Pros
      Nothing! Completely unethical thieves. They want you to do things that aren't normal.
      Cons
      Poor training. Horrendous office settings. If you want law experience, talk to an attorney or police department or another probation service. These guys are going to make you go against your morals.
      Advice to Management
      You're all horrible horrible people.


      I worked at Sentinel Offender Services full-time (more than 3 years)

      Pros
      The people look out for each other like a family.
      Cons
      Very low pay for the amount of work. No replacements for people who have quit. The work load continues to rise. No upward movement what-so-ever. Micromanagement is crazy in this place. Everyone who works here looks for another job because no one has been given a raise since 2010. They focus on the negative and never the positive.
      Advice to Management
      Give these people raises.

      I worked at Sentinel Offender Services

      Pros
      Good people work there and it is a family looking out for one another internally only.
      Cons
      pay not appropriate for everyone only some make good money mostly management
      Advice to Management
      listen to your employees, pay them for what they do.... be fair.


      I worked at Sentinel Offender Services as an intern (less than an year)

      Pros
      Very interesting job to have. Helping people get their lives on track is rewarding.
      Cons
      Watching people make the same mistakes over and over again as if they don't care about their life.
      Advice to Management
      Exceptional Manager!

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  2. Just to point out these people work in the USA and wages quoted are in $

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    1. Far too large an article to cut and paste, but I personally think it's a fantastic read (but also concerning) as it may be the future of the British CJS.

      http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/get-out-of-jail-inc

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    2. On a cold November afternoon, Harriet Cleveland, a forty-nine-year-old mother of three, waved me over from the steps of her pink cottage in Montgomery, Alabama. She was off to her part-time job as a custodian at a local day-care center, looking practical but confectionary: pink lipstick, a pastel yellow-and-pink tunic, and dangly pink earrings. We’d need to start walking soon, she explained. The job, which paid seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour, was the only one she’d been able to find for some time, and was four and a half miles away. As we set off beneath loblolly pines, she recounted the events that had led me to her doorstep: her arrest and jailing for a string of traffic tickets that she was unable to pay. It was, in part, a story of poverty and constraint, but it was also a story of the lucrative and fast-growing “alternatives to incarceration” industry.

      Cleveland’s troubles began in 2008, when a police roadblock went up in her neighborhood. She soon received several tickets for driving without insurance and without a license. “I knew it was wrong,” she told me, but she had to take her son to school and to travel to work. When she was unable to pay her fines, a judge sentenced her to two years of probation with Judicial Correction Services, a for-profit company; she would owe J.C.S. the sum of two hundred dollars a month, with forty of it going toward a “supervision” fee. Cleveland considered the arrangement a reprieve.

      The first year, Cleveland regularly reported to the J.C.S. office with cash in her purse, whatever she could put together, handing it to a woman in a crisp collared shirt, who she assumed was working for the state. But she quickly fell behind on payments, in part because her weekly cash deliveries sometimes went solely to covering the company’s supervision fee. She had lost her full-time day-care job the previous winter, after the local Hyundai plant cut workers’ hours, and employees stopped dropping their kids off each morning. Cleveland was broke. Instead of hiring someone to fix the holes in her bedroom walls, caused by shifting prairie soil beneath the house’s foundation, she stuffed towels in the cracks to keep out the cold. In early 2012, she turned over nearly all her income-tax rebate—some two thousand dollars—to J.C.S. But by that summer her total court costs and fines had soared from hundreds of dollars incurred by the initial tickets to $4,713, including more than a thousand dollars in private-probation fees.

      For much of the previous year, a J.C.S. officer had warned Cleveland that her probation would soon be revoked and her name placed on what Cleveland called the “jail list.” As she looked for full-time work, she rented an empty room in her home to an elderly stranger with dementia, and sifted through neighbors’ trash for soda cans to cash in at the scrap yard. For months, she felt hopeful that she could fend off a reckoning.

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    3. I've just finished reading the whole article, and although very interesting, I find it very disturbing.
      I have no doubt that when the private sector are given carte blanch to develop rehabilitation processes, the British "probation services" will become very much like discussed in that article.

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  3. This Government really takes the biscuit. Tesco over estimate their profits, and are beratted by almost everyone; our Commisioners at the Finance Dept, over estimate our level of economic growth, because it sounds good, and then complain when found out by Europeon Union. It is rather scary -our people with their hands on the public purse cannot send an accurate set of figues to the EU; those figures that determine our fees for membership, and get it so wrong that we are hit with a massive bill, for the underpayments....que our flusterd Prime Minister spitting feathers and blaming the EU for his Government not getting their sums right. Old Cammie seems to be getting some sympathy and support, mostly from other Tories, too bad they cannot extend the same support and sympathy to people who get overpaid by Benefit Offices, as they have their accounts plundered, so as to ensure the DWP get their money back.

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  4. There is a big push at present in DTV to get clients to 'reporting centres' where they will be seen enmasse. What I have found is that the time I am spending with them is less than five minutes each, with most not wanting to discuss any issues as they know I have no time to help resolve them as I have another umpteen people waiting to see me. There is very little in the way of partner agencies at the reporting centre so in the main I/we are 'it'. Now, I'm not 100% sure how we are supposed to monitor risk given this situation, however, I know our Chief Officer reads this blog and maybe she can give me a clue.

    She may have no time as she is busy looking up the words complicit and vicarious liability!!!!!!

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    1. I've just Googled vicarious liability and if I was a manager in Probation then I would be sh*tting myself.

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    2. Was it not 'vicarious liability' that had David Scott CPO in London resign after the Sonnex killings when a former justice minister made public pronouncements?

      That came soon after the Hanson case which I think was involved with more senior probation departures and gained more than usual publicity because a victim was more well known than usual.

      I am surprised that against such a history anyone with intelligence about the reality of probation would now take any job above that of SPO.

      http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/jun/04/ukcrime-justice

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    3. I've googled it and now fucking way do I want a managers job now!!! It'll be arse spraying mayhem at the MM meetings :)

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    4. Use The Force Luke.
      These aren't the RMP's you're looking for.
      You can go about your business.

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    5. @12:47
      'arse spraying mayhem'

      *snorts tea all over keyboard*

      I now have a picture in my head that is going to be VERY difficult to remove.

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  5. They're destroying Probation. One day at a time.

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    1. Destroying!!

      Wrong tense my friend

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  6. West Yorks almost going the same way as Mancs. Workload tool, old one, reveals most NPS on the 200 per cent mark or thereabouts. Expect a minor revolt of some kind this week as unions become involved. All staff to e-mail seniors to discuss unacceptable risks. Seniors shitting them selves. Little they can do however as cavalry being vetted and sickness levels rising.

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  7. CRC's meanwhile very little to do and too many staff in our area. Ripe for the Privateers to make wholesale job cuts. Scary for my friends and colleagues in the CRC.

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    1. Not for some if the offer VER. Three in my office will be off like they've shot out of a cannon!!!!!!

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    2. And of course there will be no cuts in the NPS!!!

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    3. Well, the CRC is very busy in my area and more staff have been taken on. Although it's likely job will go in the CRC's, it's just as likely in the NPS. The civil service is a favourite area for savings for the government and there's no reason why NPS staff will be safe. Plus, it's rare for a service to remain part privatised and more of the service may well be moved into the private sector. Sadly, I dont think there's job security on either side anymore.

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    4. I wish more people would realise this. Instead of presuming that only staff in the CRC are at risk job wise.

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    5. I never implied NPS were safe!! Just stating what it is like in my area. Touchy!

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  8. Totally off topic, but if a client says they've missed their appointment this week because they've not received their benefits they may be telling the truth!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11188298/.html

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    1. Benefit claimants will be forced to wait for one week before receiving their payments under new rules coming into force tomorrow which will save taxpayers more than £2 million a month.
      Unemployed people on Jobseeker’s Allowance currently wait three days before receiving their payments, but this will be extended to seven days from this week. Ministers calculate that the plan will save £125 million over five years.

      Claimants having trouble with their finances during the waiting period will be able to apply for an advance and will be offered help managing their household budgets.

      Ministers believe forcing claimants to wait before they are paid will mean they are more likely to take “personal responsibility” and search for work, rather than becoming dependent on benefits.

      Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said he wanted to change the benefits system to help people “break free of welfare dependency” and move into work.

      The latest figures show that the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance is below a million for the first time since 2008. The number of people in work has also reached a record 30.7 million.

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    2. Once the extra 4 days has elapsed, payments will still be every forthnight???
      Claiments who would normally get their benefit every other Monday will just get it every other Friday instead.
      I fail to see how money can be saved by this policy, I think it's just more persecution of the great "unwashed" by a very sadistic very right wing government that needs ousting as soon as possible.

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    3. Three days? In my experience the Jobcentre has only ever paid someone in three days after they first claimed when the moons of Saturn were in alignment and there was a 'Z' in the month.

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  9. Delay someone 4days to encourage them to find work? What employer pays out after 4 days? Cash in hand opportunists?

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  10. With the Labour vote imploding in Scotland I think there is more chance of another Tory fuck up. Some sort of Tory Liberal, UKIP alliance on the cards; 5 more years of this what will the country be like? In the next 5 years there will 40% of the working population in poverty, the 1% will be living on a gated Island employing Serco, G4S and middle management to ensure that "proles" work till they drop for 50% less then they get now. Its not looking good is it.

    papa

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    1. 4 days mean a lot of sanctions being imposed. Dirty horrible b*****ds.

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