Summing It All Up

I thought this was so good and succinct, I'd republish without delay! Many thanks to the contributor:-

So, we have reached Week 22 and far from systems "bedding in" and adjustment to the new working way, everything just gets worse!

1. IT moves from weakness to weakness with "workarounds" hastily brought in to at least get some semblance of process working now being removed progressively and staff again having to figure out what to do. Still no definitive tried and tested systems but rather bodge jobs that someone must have been paid an awful lot of tax payers money to develop.

2. Courts now progressively moving to majority of reports being done by tick box orals, yes even High Risk, read the PI, it is the national system. Court staff instructed to do this against their professional judgement and OMs becoming increasingly angry at the hasty assessment done by court staff and the absence of information to complete Initial Supervision Plans with. Knock on effect is of course ISP targets being missed and very many likely to be of poor quality due to errr, lack of information. Best not mention that lack of information leads to poor risk assessment eh? 

3. Case Allocation and RSR (Risk of Serious Recidivism) tools proving to be a disaster with most areas having paid scant heed to the detail required and very many having been done incorrectly in the absence of clear guidance and training and of course, appropriate staffing levels. Three line whip on this I hear now with NOMS panicking and sending staff around the country to talk to court based case allocators trying to figure out why everyone is doing this differently.

4. Risk Escalation - the Jewel in the TR Crown - takes 3 hours easily the first time anyone tries to use it (that's CRC 3 hours plus NPS 3 hours) to replace a simple line management discussion. Official timing on this is 24 hours for a decision, previously took perhaps half an hour max? Now takes two PO/PSO grade staff and two managers (CRC/NPS side) so double the staff just to make the decision!

5. Staff split - chickens are really coming home to roost - numbers wrong, locations wrong, roles changing without any discussion or agreement or even consideration of Equality issues. A great example is an NPS colleague trying to use Shared Services who has hearing issues and is told to email rather than phone (yes this has happened) but email will only get a response in 7 days as opposed to hearing colleagues who can get a response instantly on the phone.

6. Breach processes - CRC staff having cases rejected by NPS enforcement officers but not told why and only discover this by a delius entry because NPS staff told not to communicate directly with their former colleagues, there is no time. 

7. Cases still unallocated or being warehoused and held by managers so NOMS can say they have been allocated, but really they are held until a resource (that's PSO/PO) becomes available. So remember for 'case' we really mean a person with complex needs and risks to be assessed. Perhaps sexual offending, perhaps domestic abuse, perhaps mental health, perhaps child protection...perhaps SFO???

8. Duty of care...to service users and to staff being totally disregarded. Truly an Omnishambles of Epic proportions!

Postscript

Don't forget the never ending amount of emails that we keep getting telling us what processes we are now supposed to be following, what changes have happened, the latest instruction etc. Who has time to read them?!