Here's a good example of the new wonderful command and control world of NPS. I seem to remember all this kind of stuff got dealt with satisfactorily before under the general aegis of 'goodwill', not diktat:-
1 All NPS employees have a contractual obligation to attend for duty at their place of work at the appointed time for the full period of contracted hours. However, it is recognised that staff may at times experience severe difficulties getting to and from work as a result of adverse weather conditions or disruption to travel services. In these circumstances, staff are expected to make all reasonable attempts to attend work, even if this means they arrive late.
2 Managers are required to ensure that robust plans are in place to ensure that essential services are maintained in the event of any disruption that means staff are unable to get into work.
3 Where staff are unable to attend their normal work location, they should attend at the nearest office to their home address. If staff are unable to get into work, they must inform their Line Manager, or in their absence another Manager, if they are delayed or unable to attend for duty. Failure to inform your Line Manager may count as unauthorised absence. Staff may choose to attend at a location nearer to their home or can apply to take time off as Annual Leave.
4 Where severe weather continues, or major travel disruption develop during the working day, then, subject to essential services being maintained, Managers should allow staff to go home early. Where necessary, arrangements may be made for essential staff to be accommodated near work at the organisation’s expense. NOMS / NPS will reimburse extra expenditure which staff have reasonable incurred because of travel disruption.
5 In circumstances where extreme weather conditions prevent staff from attending work because their normal care responsibilities break down, eg, schools or care centres unexpectedly close, in these circumstances, staff must make reasonable efforts to make alternative arrangements. Where this is not possible and the staff member cannot attend work, they may be eligible for special leave.
No doubt the CRCs will introduce a 'clocking on' card that will have to be punched on arrival and leaving at night.
ReplyDeleteI do not jest either! There in it for the money- nothing else- and 10 minutes pay from a few hundred staff each week will be viewed as another source of revenue.
Goodwill has gone. It's pounds, shillings and pence now!
Interesting you mention that in CRC Manchester there is already talk of this.
DeleteSurely that would go against them, most staff I know work much more than their contracted hours
DeleteI've been told that we are to be surgically attached to a commode and drip fed nutrients. That way no time is lost or wasted inputting data into Delius to ensure targets are hit.
DeleteOur right eyes are to be removed and replaced with a photo type lens and this will allow video calls to the variety of booths in and around the towns that clients can attend and have their barcode scanned.
As we will be working longer, it's likely that our relationships will break down. To prevent this heartbreak and distraction, all of your children under 11 will be rented out to Apple in order to increase the profits they make (£11.8b last year). Spouses will be farmed for organs and/or sold for medical research.
Finally, due to the complete breakdown of the family unit, it's obvious you will no longer need your home. This will be given to recently released inmates who only have £46 in their pocket.
And THAT ladies and gents, is how it was all planned :)
Only 2 flaws with your post - I have no working right eye & Apple's profits were for 3 months, not a year. Otherwise, spot on!!
DeleteO for goodness sake get a grip. You are supposed to be professionals. Behave accordingly.
DeleteAnon 21:48 - I am blind in my right eye & Apple's profits were for the last qtr of 2014 - factually correct on both counts, so fuck off with your assumptions.
DeleteAny word of what is happening with RAR and ORA on monday, ive heard that no one has a clue and its all a mess.
ReplyDeleteWe are not getting 'trained' until mid February, but it's only a 2 hour briefing. I saw the 'spec' today, and it is full of holes seemingly written by people who have never set foot in a Probation office.
DeleteThe thing that is strangest is that when it goes wrong it will be Sodexo (in our area) who the finger will be pointing at - not the Probation Service. The NPS in Court aren't ready, and the CRC are going to have all sorts of shit to contend with.
What is strange is the atmosphere in our office. Because no-one has been briefed or trained, the heads are rather in the sand. We really have absolutely no idea of what will happen, but as yet not much to get stressed about either.
In February it could really hit the fan!! But my guess is that very few of the under 12 months cases will turn up anyway. They'll just stick two fingers up. Those that do turn up will be the time consuming ones who tie up resources.
My other guess is that despite the chaos that will ensue, it won't really get much better. One huge expensive fuck up at Sodexo's expense.
Clocking in and out would be hard to impose if working in the community with an ipad......
ReplyDeleteApps to track where you are, what you are doing, when you take a poop and piss.
DeleteEasier, friend, far easier via logging in/out & 'wheres my ipad'.
DeleteAlternatively, there's always a tag!!
DeleteInteresting that during the last bout of bad weather one of our LDU managers 'worked from home' . This doesn't seem to be offered as an option for the grunts.......
ReplyDeleteI've worked hundreds of hours in the past with no pay....but no more. My 'goodwill' was used up by last June. What good did it do....we got sold off anyway.
Given what has happened I suggest you work your contracted hours only. Goodwill under this new system in my opinion is anon starter. In my CRC we use time sheets. They are very helpful and I use them to ensure I have the right work life balance. The changes have had a n significant effect by taking away the concept of public service and replacing it with profit.
DeleteIt is an established fact that people who are monitored by clocking in and out offer less hours to their employer and are less productive than those who are trusted to manage their own workloads. That is why it has never been used in Probation before. Any CRC that introduces it will be guilty of a massive own goal.
ReplyDeleteChannel 4 news now...
ReplyDeletewhat is happening?
DeleteWhat is happening is a bunch of decent competent people who think you do a decent job with crap systems and awful support are taking over.
DeleteHello again, 21:48
Deletehttp://www.channel4.com/news/prisoners-on-instagram-reveal-security-crisis-behind-bars-contraband-drugs-knives
ReplyDeleteKrishnan, I love you!!
ReplyDeleteHe gave Spurr his just deserts. Spurr was so tongue tied and rattled, I won't be surprised if tomorrow he's spending more time with his children! Another poor decision Mr Grayling. You are a coward to decline to be interviewed and force Spurr to take your place! Big mistake!
DeleteI posted some weeks ago about hearing Spurr on Radio 4 and being really shocked by his poor performance. He has done his masters bidding so will he be dispensed with now?
DeleteKubrick got it spookily right in 2001: A Space Odyssey - "what are you doing, Dave?"
ReplyDeleteLove that Grayling told C4 he was throwing Spurr to the lions, yet Spurr tried to claim he jumped. Michael, you must adore Chris very, very much. But has anyone ever briefed you about abusive relayionships?
Off topic, but isn't it amazing that crime has been falling year upon year the Torys tell us, yet just days before private companies get the keys to probation, the MoJ publish stats like these?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/nearly-quarter-young-criminals-st-8545082
Nearly a quarter of young criminals in St Helens go on to reoffend within just three months.
DeleteShocking statistics released by the Ministry of Justice show a three-month re-offending rate of 23.0% in the area - the fourth highest in the country .
In Wirral the figure is 21.0%, in Sefton 19.1% and in Liverpool 18.6%.
Its neighbouring borough, Knowsley, has a rate of just 12.8% - meaning nearly half as many juvenile criminals there went on to reoffend in three months, compared to St Helens.
St Helens MP Dave Watts said he was going to probe the figures further to find out the reasons behind the stark contrast.
He said: “They seem, on the face of it, to be high. And that then raises the question, why are they high and whether people in one area are doing something different to tackle it? I don’t know whether that is the case until I get more information on it.”
He also made the point that figures may well change from year to year and that St Helens’ figures could be a “blip” on more successful years.
“That’s the problem with statistics,” he added. “They can change from year to year and you can get blips. But, obviously, it’s not good news to be at the top of the list where people are re-offending. Could it be professionals are doing something different in St Helens than other areas which have been more successful? Without going into the figures further, it’s difficult to know.”
Off topic but can anyone tell me what this means from the ORA training pack?
ReplyDelete"Section 1 of the act extends release on licence to custodial sentences of less than 12 months.
It does it, not by extending the cases have licences, but by reducing the cases that DON'T have licences"
I'm afraid I'm not fluent enough in MOJ double speak for it to make any sense to me :-/
It would seem to be based on the notion of the benefits of being supervised...offered the chance and all associated support and assistance that was not previously available....
Deleteextends ...hold (something) out towards someone.
"I nod and extend my hand"
synonyms: hold out, put out, stick out, hold forth, put forth, reach out; offer, give, outstretch, proffer
But ..... but... how do you not increase the number of people with licences whilst reducing the number of people without licences? That's what's confusing me. ....plain English award for NOMS I think.
Deletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31027549
ReplyDeleteIf you read the PI it makes reference to having made all reasonable efforts to attend a base. Should you have made these efforts, but been driven back by the ferocious conditions, you will be paid. I am sure that this sentence was left out accidentally.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/purplefutures
ReplyDeleteFor all your Purple future tweets
I hope you have wonderful things to say about it
http://naponewsonline.org/2015/01/29/criminal-justice-and-courts-bill/
ReplyDeletehttp://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/a-day-in-the-life-of-an-inner-city-social-worker
ReplyDeleteProbation staff forced to try and get to work in bad weather or not getting paid/forced to take leave, like most other workers? Being forced to clock in and out, like most other workers? Expected to be accountable in their jobs, like most other workers? I've worked on Probation for almost ten years, and am sorry to say a good proportion of the staff (at all grades) seem to have developed a strange mentality of chest-puffing 'I'm a Defender of the Public' (as though they were feckin Batman or something) along with a whiny sense of entitlement, for doing basically what amounted to bean-counting for a computer system. Face facts - look around your office and ask yourself, how many people here are resenting the coming changes merely as it throws their shortcomings into sharp focus. If Probation worked that well, it wouldn't have been touched in the first place. Feel free to disagree, but you are self evidently wrong, as the current situation shows!
ReplyDeleteYou make some reasonable points, but the probation service was changed already by the time you joined 9 years ago.
DeleteThe service you joined is not the service I joined, and because it had changed it attracted a different type of person. Thats evident from just reading this blog, and I doubt very much that anyone about when I joined would have considered themselves defenders of the public, although I do agree with you that their does seem to be more and more of that way of thinking around nowadays. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know- its just different to the service when I joined. I was a social worker that worked with offenders, not like now where I'm an offender manager, supervising and managing public protection and licence conditions.
The reality is that the 'probation service' died years ago, and the current model bears no resembelence to its original design or purpose.
The extreme weather policies have not been any different than that presented above since I can remember. I remember working to those principles decades ago. The clocking in bit relates to the nature of the work. Historically, POs were not as desk bound as they are now but were out and about attending all sorts of meetings in all sorts of places. Nowadays, we don't move from the main office for days at a time. It's a different gig now.
DeleteTo be fair clocking on would stop people strolling in at 10am
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, 1993 was the year flexi was brought in to, as the director in charge of admin put it - to stop 100 different interpretations of flexi time being carried on, unofficially. Be honest. You cannot have worked for the service without getting het up by someone taking the piss. All these 'I'm only working to rule from now on' posts are a bit disingenuous. Do not get me started about smoke breaks!.. Tony
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