TR Week Twenty Eight

Branch meeting and JNCC last week. Staff and management agree it is unsafe to proceed and yet MoJ see it differently. Well they would, wouldn't they? Their inspector has been compromised and he was SUPPOSED to be the independent arbiter, along with Brennan who has a record of colluding with incompetence and non-evidenced based risk taking. The MoJ under Grayling are a disgrace and an insult to democracy.

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I have never hated phrases so much as 'innovative' and 'stubbonly high reoffending rates' as I do now. I feel positively sick about all of it. 

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I can't sleep and am aware I am failing: I operate now in a curious hinterland between knowing nearly everything has changed and being unable to remember and process precisely what the changes are. Sounds ridiculous I know but the constant IT changes and frustration at the poor systems we now have together with the sheer volume of Probation Instructions issued, mean I operate in a constant state of confusion. 

Previously change was always coupled with adequate training. That is all gone now, we have our trainers themselves inadequately trained and the constant mantra is "I don't know, I will refer that query back to the centre". The work with my offenders continues as it always has, to what my managers previously assessed as being a high standard. It is just the recording, with systems going down then changing again and finally having IT support removed locally to work through NPS centralisation. 

This last issue is not economy of scale but truly a disaster. Even after all this time it can be a nightmare to use My Services. MoJ forgets that moving from systems that work to systems that do not, brings an inherent resistance to the change because we know it is poor quality and has improved nothing. I wish all my colleagues a good week ahead and the hope of JR is all that keeps me going.

This is not resistance to change - it is the utter failure of MoJ to win the hearts and minds of practitioners. It is the utter failure to deliver the safe service we used to deliver to the communities we serve. It is genuine concern for public safety and service user welfare. It is the utter lack of employer duty of care to staff. It is despair.

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Hello my friend. I truly understand what you say and I suspect many of us across the country do. I have been racking my brains and saying to myself "What are we going to do about this?" I have been on strike, I have lobbied Parliament, written to my MP, other MP's, written to the press etc etc. We have JR - and what after that is all a bit nebulous - it seems to me if Grayling is going to steam roller ahead irrespective of any Judicial Review. 

As far as he is concerned there is too much hanging on all of this for his mates and multi nationals. Managers might care but have to tow the MoJ dictate and have become complicit. I too am struggling as the situation as it stands is untenable. I do not want to go into work. For now (and I hope I am wrong) I see no immediate end to it. Take care my friend and all of my colleagues out there. In adversity we have each other and this blog which is my central point of reference in all of this utter chaos.

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If the signing of contracts goes ahead before the new year that's not good. Grayling has been found to lie to Parliament, the public, Napo and most probably charities and bidders - the wise charities and bidders have got out. Grayling is an unchecked mad man who will lie, promise anything and appear to give people what they want to get his way with TR.

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In DTV today an email asking for EOI for vetting to work with Through the Gate. The general response in my office was to tell them to f*** off, be as stubborn as possible and wait until we are actually directed to do something. It will be interesting to see who in DTV embraces the changes and is willing to be the first to try to climb the new CRC ladder. I bet that makes them very popular with anyone anti-TR in their office, which will be most of their colleagues.

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I think someone once described Probation as the grease that ran the wheels of justice. You may not notice us, but without us things will grind to a halt. Lets have a strike, ALL OF US. This is our Rosa Parks moment. We can stand firm or forever be resigned to domination by those who think they are better than us.

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The human staff cost of all this debacle is heartbreaking. The long-serving staff who've been in the fortunate position to leave have done so and this final twist in the tale will push a few more over the edge. They just do not have to hang around to deal with this shit. Maybe, just maybe this latest turn of events will anger enough people to call a strike - it would be better represented now the reality is tangible - unlike last time.

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Having given it some thought, whilst it's going to hurt my bank balance, I'd be up for a prolonged period of strike action. God knows I could do with a break from the incessant amount of PSRs that I've been writing lately. I think a prolonged, and by that I mean weeks, is going to be necessary to demonstrate the depth of our feelings and the impact of what things will look like without a NPS or CRCs. Lets hit the fuckers hard :)

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Not a chance in hell of a full out strike. When will people realise we are dealing here with Thatchers bastard offspring. She broke the back of the working man and woman years ago. The Tories are doing what the Tories have always done, privatise everything and fuck em all! If I go on strike for 2 weeks I lose my home probably. If I lose my job I lose my home. I will take my chances alone and clearly shows why I stopped paying subs years ago. The unions are a joke and I am sad to say this. 

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The most dangerous part of TR is moving an offender when they are at their riskiest. I did a witness statement for JR and the legal team commented on my evidence in this area saying it was strong, and important point to make. How are MoJ going to make this safe? They can't unless they bring the two sides back together. We should have continued to fight on this point alone.

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Just heard that if no increase in Probation Institute sign up it could fold - there's another reason not to join graylings PI.

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The torture never stops... from the published testgates 4/5:

"ICT Delivery Confidence 
• Overall Delivery confidence remains at Amber, reflecting various challenges across workstreams. Additional governance boards have been established and plans are in place to manage Go-Live risks 
• n-Delius: Activity remains on track for Go-Live on 16 December with planned milestones met. Testboards have been put in place to manage this critical activity. 
• OASys: Remains on track for Go-Live on 8 December. User Acceptance Testing [UAT] has completed with no outstanding defects.
• Data Archiving: Work is currently underway to plan and coordinate activity and resources. Risk of delivery due to resource availability and volume of work for CRCs. 
• RSR/RoSH: RSR tool is live and RoSH has successfully passed UAT with a two week pilot now in train."

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I think the HR advice is sound and will rapidly bring MOJ round in a way that all previous action has been unable to. If your job is making you ill see your GP, take guidance and take sick leave if you are too ill for work. Protect your health.

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The HR advice seems sound. If you are unwell don't be a hero. Perhaps retired PO temps should withdraw their labour to help a just cause.

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I think we should lobby the Green Party to put returning the Probation Service to the public sector in to their manifesto; I wish the SNP were south of the border they might do it too. Labour would be the ideal party to reverse TR but they are too far to the right at the moment. This is going to be a long war we must get more probation staff to fight it. Could NAPO book a series of events in big cities and invite all probation staff to attend? Lets radicalise them. I would take part.

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TR will fail, and is already failing, as anyone who continues to work in the field can attest. By the end of this week we lose dual access in the majority of cases, so all those mistakes in allocation, and oh my there are SO many mistakes in allocation, cases, people, being shunted to and fro...all those mistakes can't be rectified. We won't even know what we are missing half the time. And I'm sorry, but unless you actually have to do the day job, as a PO or possibly SPO, you haven't got a clue just how much of a mess all this is. And any idea that this can all be massaged away with spin, CRC managers attempting to blame NPS for all the things that go wrong...ha ha ha. You ain't seen nothing yet. My concern is that this will end up with people being hurt. Spartacus.

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Make no mistake, dual access will be removed. It's been delayed but it will go in January.

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That fact has now been confirmed, no dual access going forward from January 2015. God help us all, especially the public as they will not have been served well in terms of public protection.

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A message to my colleagues: it is time to realise that our years of hard work, dedicated loyalty and personal sacrifice have meant nothing, time to see the role as a PO as just a job with little in the way of future prospects, job satisfaction or acceptable financial remuneration. On that basis don't put your selves out any longer, just go through the motions as we as individuals are not responsible for trying to keep up our previous excellent work. The failures that will without doubt follow, lie firmly at the door of the MoJ.

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The cutting of salaries is becoming a trend in the voluntary sector as are zero hours contracts. The bosses on £100k and rising, while the front-line is urged to examine their consciences and choose between pay cuts, reductions in services and redundancies. The only thing that can ever stop this daylight robbery is industrial action and I note that it was effective in getting St Mungo's to climbdown (to prevent a 10-day strike) after they, too, tried to impose £5,000 pay cuts. 

£5000 seems to be the norm and it won't, I guess, be long before we hear about them in CRCs. If such slashing cuts rain down on probation staff I hope it comes as a surprise to no-one. Napo needs deep roots at branch level so members are prepared when the bells tolls for thee. And whilst I do believe the fight against the imposition of TR is over, the fight to protect conditions of service is about to begin. I do not think 'continuity of service' will be a trusty shield, as goalposts get moved in 'management restructures'. Nor do we want to see two-tier workforces becoming established. 

Had the staff at St Mungo's rolled over, they would have been robbed, but they stood together. Amazing what a bit of solidarity can achieve. And they did it without a Probation Institute – sorry it just sticks in my craw!

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Agreed. I work in a prison and the Shelter staff are really helpful but their management are awful. They are all frightened of 'the big boss' who has publicly chastised them in front of others. I also question their ethics. Their campaigns and ethos behind those are not matched with the same ethics in terms of how they treat their staff. They are target driven and how they meet those targets is questionable. I'm not in a Purple Futures area but when I heard about the contracts I was more worried about Shelter's involvement than that of Interserve.

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There always seems to be one member of staff who seems to be paid the same as you but who float around with little to do? Well today I looked at their OASys and now know why. Suffice to say seeing as their OASys are getting signed off and are half as detailed as mine has made me decide to start making cutbacks of my own. It's made me feel so much less stressed - may even have a lunch break tomorrow.

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Currently, we are being asked to strip back files of general correspondence that was normally kept and to scan reports etc to be stored electronically. This is obviously very time consuming and arguably destroying general correspondence that is not held electronically (ie originally produced via Delius or the previous databases) Could fall foul of the requirement to store data for the prescribed time.

As mentioned in the main post, this is a rushed job and the potential for mistakes to occur is considerable. As for the potential to sue the SoS, whilst your legal rep would be the best person to advise you, I would think the CRC as a separate company would be responsible if they haven't carried it out correctly, or if NPS, then potentially the MoJ.

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It is becoming clearer, but not better. This latest data clearing seems to have just come out of the blue. If it is unlawful to keep NPS stuff in the private sector, why didn't CG inform people months ago? Even if they didn't have to do it before the sell-off, staff would at least have been prepared. I think it is an issue which either CG did not know about and has just been advised, or else it's another clever ruse/punishment to pile on the stress.

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It gets worse. If a CRC case completes, the file is immediately released to the NPS and sent for storage at their central records archive. If the CRC get an enquiry about that offender, they cannot respond as they no longer have access to hard copies or computer records. The operating model has every possible flaw built in. It's genius.

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The way a case terminates eg on 12th Dec and is then erased from view on 13th Dec is awful. I regularly need to look back at case records for addresses to send custody educational certificates to, or to let people know if their SSO has expired or been spent.

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I am concerned about the implications for staff where cases are subject to complaint to the Probation Ombudsman - it can take a considerable time for complaints to be made, investigated, outcome report, appeal then escalation to the ombudsman. Not having original sources has serious implications for staff - for many years information has been consolidated into OASys, with finite number of characters, so what happens when a practitioner is asked where the information came from without the source files to refer to?

To be fair, what happens when a service user wants to challenge information? I can think of a Child Protection case when information contained in the OASys was challenged and Family Court became involved. Fortunately files were retrieved from archives with the original source able to be produced and verified. This is fraught with risks and I wonder what the Information Commissioner would say? There will be breaches, staff do not understand this.

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What about DO NOT DESTROY/RETAIN forms that have to be signed off by SPOs and placed on the front of the case file? If they've got rid of that practice, then it's truly game over. There are some deeply troubling clients and for those in particular, files need to be retained indefinitely... Psych Reports etc.

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Surely all records should be passed to NPS, as all closed case files pass to NPS? And what happens when someone is sentenced and managed by CRC...do NPS pass all records to CRC only for them to be destroyed by CRC at completion or breach of the order? It's bad enough transferring between colleagues in same office let alone Areas, now we will be passing stuff in to BIONIC abyss.

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Thank god for Chris Grayling; practically every practitioner who works with dangerous and difficult individuals every single working day was wrong, yet our Secretary of state just 'knew' that these reforms would help bring down those stubborn re-offending rates and he didnt allow anything as trivial as common sense to stop him...dont worry, we're clearly in good hands.....

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The bitching has already started in my office. CRC staff have refused to see any duty appointments that come in from Court and are not on their Delius. I know allocation is supposed to be within 24 hours, but the reality is that this is not taking place. They've spoke to their SPO about it and it's down to him to resolve, however, until then we have to see them. I really cannot say I blame them and their claims that 'not a CRC case as it's not allocated to CRC' are completely factual. Unfortunately it means that we have to see them which is a pain if their manager is out of the office or off and the case cannot be allocated. Our NPS manager just shrugs. Tensions are running high and I very much doubt that the recent Court NAPO Court case is going to help.

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I said very early on that the best way to prove the plan is ludicrous is to let it happen. Two years from now, Probation will be on the front pages of the papers because of serial cock-ups of the kind that we have seen in other areas of Government policy.

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I think MoJ are running scared. Their press release tells me bidders have been rattled and need assurance.

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What an absolute mess we now find ourselves in. No plan, no direction, no right of appeal, no information, no "significant concessions". Share sale is now right on top of us and Grayling et al state NAPO have backed down. Haven't they wiped the floor enough with us? I think not. They have plenty left in them yet. What next? Cuts, cuts and more cuts including services and jobs. It all looks bleak. When will we turn around and say enough is enough???

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Many have. We are losing good staff almost by the hour. Remember - the new operating models are untested and mistakes are already being made by the truckload. NAPO has not failed, it has been beaten. They are different things.

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What I find offensive is the way that the MoJ /NOMS are rubbishing NAPO. NAPO is the union of the staff, so this is a personal attack on the same staff they want to encourage to make this work! There is no conciliatory language just rubbing all our noses in the piss on the floor.

I feel utter contempt for the shit heads who are pushing this sale forward and especially the lying b***ard Grayling who has blatantly lied to the JSC when he said he had no involvement in the bidding and when he said there was 500 additional PO's and he turned to Spurr who corrected him on operational staff and then he said they are all qualified the same! He is an idiot, but worse he is a dangerous idiot.

I hear senior mandarins are touring the country to see the new shit working - stop telling them its all ok, 'cos that's what they are hearing and start telling them more about the shit that won't work. We should be the most belligerent workforce because of this crap and we should be telling Allars to stick it up his arse if he is leading the contempt. Tonight I am thoroughly fed up with our so called leaders - they read all this stuff or should I say there are people who read this and try to track down the authors for them - sneaky snivelling shits.

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Welcome to the jungle. Now CRCs are owned by the big boys & girls, it gets serious. Pay cuts, loss of terms & conditions, payback for the blog & the inconvenience of delaying, irritating & embarrassing MoJ, NOMS, etc. No amount of academic angst or ideological twittering or whining will change what's coming. You haven't even begun to see what pissed-off CEOs & their flunkies are capable of. Grayling's a pussycat by comparison. Lets hope Santa has enough kevlar flak jackets to go around. A very sad & distressed PO.

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CRC model includes examining individual accountability and performance in reducing recidivism in own caseload! No detail on this yet! However, will measures take account of diversity, complexity, tiering, previous convictions of each case? Possibly not when we consider that the race to the bottom includes taking less into account at the point of conviction with less PSRs and more FDRs and the not fit for purpose RSR tool! 

We are about to see staff hounded for systemic failures which TR has introduced. Some practitioners will be taking a weather eye on case allocations in an effort to protect themselves from potential performance sanctions, with infighting developing between colleagues and middle managers! Grading will become meaningless under such a model! Time to stop papering over the cracks people!

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Man down the pub tells me mass capability on the way for CRC.

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Appraisals. In some organisations, they can get you promoted, demoted or even sacked. In the probation service, they are absolutely pointless. Please put me right if anyone out there has ever had one of their appraisal documents see the light of day once it has been signed off. They are a make work invention by someone at MoJ with not enough work to do. I used to have 9 of them to do and they went to personnel for filing, never to be mentioned again. What a farce.

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Until you are in a redundancy situation. Then they count a lot. The number of points you get directly relates to your appraisal.

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I wish I could say I cared but at this stage I don't. I'm of an age where retirement is a viable option and even without EVR I still have one eye on the door. As a PSO I have nearly 90 cases and when we get the under 12 months, this will likely increase by at least 50%, something completely unmanageable! New Year and new start. My children need an unpaid childminder so I think this will be my new job next year.