Sunday 10 May 2015

Bleak Futures Week 19

We had our updated briefing last week. Basically it was admitted it's a complete mess. No estates sourced yet, but CRC are moving end September. No idea where people will be working whether that be the hub or out in the community. No idea who will deliver services etc. We are now into the first week of May and still NO ONE knows the plan.....

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The facts are, though, that the Prison Service has moved a lot of prisoners to be in resettlement prisons. Almost all of the designated resettlement prisons have 85%+ prisoners from the home CRC and most CRCs have very small numbers of prisoners with 12 weeks or less to serve who are not in resettlement prisons.

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Hmmm this may be the case in the male estate but in the female estate I doubt it very much as women are often held far from home due to the fact there are few female prisons and in some areas none at all so it is highly unlikely that the women will be sent to resettlement prisons in their home areas because there is unlikely to be one. Now if successive governments had actually implemented the recommendations of the Corston report this would have been solved a long time ago.

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I'm a dinosaur and an old git and from what I see it is this exclusive group of officers who are holding things together by just carrying on with things the way they work not the way lickspittle new managers have been told to do things. This is the group that can see through the bullshit and who won't be bullied. From what I see there are quite a lot of 'Sodexo positives' out there who hope that by pushing their masters line they will be spared the coming cull and offered a place at the top table. Eyes open please....they're just using you to do the dirty on your staff before they come for you. Being an old git means that you have seen this before. Who was it that said if you fail to learn from history you're destined to repeat it? Still not too late to tell it like it is.....

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Bloody nightmare week, horrendous IT problems, 6 days no email, had to get admin to do my safeguarding referrals as practitioner colleagues too stressed trying to recover work for court deadlines. Colleague also had the dreaded call case allocation not done (it was) ok then it's blank (it wasn't)...just bizarre. Then told by IT that the upgrade was done last weekend with no-one realising it was not compatible with parts of system (citrix and lotus notes) Just who are these people designing these systems? Or more to the point, just who is commissioning such not fit for purpose crap?

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In some ways from the outside looking in point of view, this is absolutely hilarious. In one way because it was so predictable.

I just wonder how long it will be before some enterprising lag decides to sue the MoJ and the relevant CRC for failing to provide the TTG services promised from May 1, 2015 if they are released with only the £46 and no support. After all, if it is contracted that that is when TTG was due to start and people don't get the promised support, then breach of contract ensues.

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Can you name one prison where there should have been a TTG service in place on Friday but there was not? I know that Purple Futures, Sodexo and Working Links all reported the service in place in all of their prisons on 1 May. So in which ones has it not happened?

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They'll all be claiming payments for TTG services from first of May- whether its operational or not. If they don't claim payment for TTG services from that date, then they risk being accused of contractual failures.

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Although one would like to assume that MoJ contract managers, and prison governors, would notice if a service didn't really exist.

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They lie. End of. As long as the facade is maintained the charade will continue. MoJ contract managers collude because TR failure is their failure. The only way forward is for the bidders to wake up to the enormity of the task and the MASSIVE potential for reputational damage.

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We used to refer to Skills4work and generally clients would report back that they had been offered courses, or voluntary work! However, once on their books they would keep an eye on case and if the client, through their own ingenuity, found work, S4W would call us and ask if client could produce a payslip or other evidence of work, so they could take credit for placing the client in work! I always refused, as it's lying, fraudulently claiming credit for another's endeavour! Shameful!

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No, they pretend they have provided the service to get paid that way they focus on the easy hits to get paid with minimal effort. Just like Shelter used to claim their payment for finding accommodation for prisoners by providing one nights B and B (often in v questionable accommodation) and then they were homeless on night 2 but it didn't matter 'cos they could claim the payment.

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After almost 25 years I'm serving (as it now seems like a sentence) the last month as a probation officer. I still remember the pride I felt when I got my first job but now feel only sadness when I think of leaving. I don't have another job to go to but simply can't face any more. What really pisses me off are those in management (many I remember coming in as new TPOs) who pretend nothing is wrong or they are teething problems. At first I believed them (I knew them to be honourable people or so I thought) but what is happening now & is planned for the future by our CRC bosses is just wrong on all fronts!

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This is ironic but since the privatisation I've never had so many re-offend on my caseload. I've had a CO offend and get 6mths custody, I've just done my first recall in 12 months and I've 3 re-offended. Absolutely nothing I could've done about any of it.

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PbR pilots.....disappointing results. Not sure why anyone who works with our client group finds this a surprise. We told them time and time again yet Mr Grayling, Messrs Spur, Allars et Al all knew better. Please keep your fingers crossed that Mr Grayling is out of a job on Friday..

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Glad I'm not running the Sodexo CRC Contracts! I'd be very concerned and worried if I was in that particular hot-seat at this moment. It doesn't even look as if they did good thorough due diligence. Oh, yes, nearly forgot, they've also pissed off most, if not all, of their CRC workforce.

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Interesting development. As Sodexo's CRCs get rid of 70% of their Band 5 SPOs, Seetec's Kent, Surrey and Sussex CRC is recruiting SPOs at Band 6.

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My friend spends far too much time in pubs in London and he has big ears and he let slip that he's heard that Sodexo is looking to do 'deals' with the likes of those winning bidders who won conurbations and not huge great green grassed shires where their operating model falls apart. He says that they never wanted shire counties and now see them as a bloody great albatross round their corporate necks.

Man in the pub says that all the 'that there London talk' is about how they can ditch the big counties...quick.....watch some underhand deals being done whilst the rest of the country watches the election and stand by for announcements about 'wonderful new innovative partnerships'. You thought they'd been quiet. Not a bit of it....a heady dose of realism has hurt them hard with lots of talk about duplicitous government....surely not..

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Did you see the other day that unpaid work bods are being taxied to projects because of the van situation? I can't be exactly certain but I'm quite confident it would've involved a 40mile round trip. Not cheap but better than sending them home and getting the potential bad publicity.

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I voted but really didn't know who to vote for, I hope the party that gets in will have an effect where I don't have to watch a grown man crying in probation as he hadn't eaten anything for a week, had a disability and had been sanctioned because he couldn't go to an interview due to his mobility scooter having a flat and not having the money to repair it in time. It really upset me today and all we could offer was a food voucher... makes me so sad.

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I was a PO from 2007 - 2015. I didn't leave 'because' of TR but I found a job elsewhere and was feeling tired of how my PO life had become. I feel saddened by the TR mess. So I feel a special happiness this morning that Simon Hughes especially lost his seat and that the LD party in general have been trashed.

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I work in the Court team as a PSO. Over the past two - three months I've seen both a rise in people appearing for Shop Theft (with mitigation being Benefits Sanctions) and the Court mainly sentencing to Conditional Discharges. I think many of the Bench in my area are aware of some of the issue which are now occurring under the Tories and I was wondering if this has been replicated across the country? I fear that with the planned welfare cuts we are going to see a lot more of these cases.

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We had someone in last week on shop theft, he was very miffed that he wasn't put in prison, he was very vocal about why he had done it. Some steal to feed a habit, others are stealing to feed themselves, mostly due to being sanctioned.

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I work in Manchester Mags Court. The number of people who are appearing before the bench for shoplifting must have doubled compared with previous years. People are committing offences simply because of being sanctioned and have no other means so are going out offending.


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Mr Gove called on Britons to say:

We have a new Justice Secretary and whilst not quite going as far as the Howard League in congratulating Michael Gove on his new appointment, this blog wishes him the best of luck in sorting out the comprehensive mess left behind by his psychopathic predecessor. This from the Guardian:-

Michael Gove is to be returned to a major government department as justice secretary in the wake of the Conservative general election victory.

In a second round of senior appointments since the election, the prime minister is reshuffling Gove, who has been his chief whip in charge of party discipline since July last year, to the Ministry of Justice, taking charge of prisons, sentencing and criminal justice.

Gove was removed as education secretary last year to head the whips’ office, reportedly at the behest of the party’s general election strategist Lynton Crosby, who feared that the former journalist’s “toxic image” could be a vote loser. At the time Gove’s wife, the journalist Sarah Vine, made her feelings clear about the cabinet minister’s move out of the limelight by tweeting a link to a Daily Mailarticle that the newspaper headlined “A shabby day’s work which Cameron will live to regret”.

Downing Street sources have always insisted that the move was made merely to bring a key operator into the centre of the election campaign at a crucial time.

Gove’s return to a government department appears to confirm the prime minister’s trust in him, although it will inevitably dismay many outside of the Conservative party who were enraged by his trenchant views and combative style during his time at the Department for Education.

Gove is seen as a genuine radical unafraid of ruffling feathers by many within the Conservative fold, some of whom will be disappointed that he is not returning to the education department.

38 comments:

  1. Gove was born in Edinburgh; at four months old, he was adopted by a Labour-supporting family in Aberdeen, where he was brought up. His adoptive father ran a fish processing business; his adoptive mother was a lab assistant at the University of Aberdeen before working at the Aberdeen School for the Deaf.

    In Aberdeen he was initially educated at a state school, later attending the independent Robert Gordon's College, to which he had won a scholarship. In recent years, Gove has written letters of apology to his former teachers for misbehaving in class.

    From 1985 to 1988 he studied English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where he served as President of the Oxford Union. He was awarded a 2:1-degree.

    Gove became a trainee reporter at the Press and Journal in Aberdeen, where he spent several months on strike in the 1989-1990 dispute over union recognition and representation. He joined the Times in 1996 as a leader writer and has been its comment editor, news editor, Saturday editor and assistant editor. He has also written a weekly column on politics and current affairs for the Times and contributed to the Times Literary Supplement, Prospect magazine and the Spectator. He remains on good terms with Rupert Murdoch, whom Gove described in evidence before the Leveson Inquiry as "one of the most impressive and significant figures of the last 50 years". He has also written a sympathetic biography of Michael Portillo and a critical study of the Northern Ireland peace process, The Price of Peace, for which he won the Charles Douglas-Home Prize. He has worked for the BBC's Today programme, On The Record, Scottish Television and the Channel 4 monologue programme A Stab in the Dark, alongside David Baddiel and Tracey MacLeod, and was a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze and Newsnight Review on BBC Two.

    Thank you, Wikipedia

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  2. At least he's not a psychopath and therefore possibly open to reason.....?

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    1. Yes, he has all the relevant traits and credentials, a psychopath in sheep's clothing!

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    2. Probation Officer10 May 2015 at 11:38

      Maybe not a psychopath but possibly a Thatcherite moron carefully chosen because he's callus enough to finish the job. This is the same Michael Gove that wanted to dismantle the NHS and issue personal health accounts instead. He then moved on to bullying and intimidating the teaching profession. The end result was receiving a public vote of no confidence by the entire teaching profession. It's worth noting that while this was happening our probation leaders were cosying up to Chris Grayling just like they'll cosy up to Gove. The only plus is that he's not bff's with the PM.

      Prepare for the swarm of introductory and congratulatory emails about this Tory appointment when you open Lotus Notes on Monday morning. I'd like to optimistic or believe that nothing can be worse than Grayling, but alas I'm struggling with that. With a Justice Minister and Lord Chancellor at the helm with no education or experience of the CJS I doubt the next 5 years will be positive for any of us.

      Anybody taking bets on long will it be until probation officers issue a vote of no confidence in Gove?

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    3. From gov.uk

      "The Lord Chancellor is one of the most ancient offices of state, dating back many centuries. The Lord Chancellor is appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister and is a senior member of the Cabinet. They head the Ministry of Justice as the Secretary of State for Justice. Previously the Lord Chancellor also acted as Speaker of the House of Lords and therefore sat on the Woolsack. The Lord Chancellor was also head of the judiciary and the senior judge of the House of Lords in its judicial capacity. However, under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, the Lord Chancellor ceased to be the Speaker of the Lords, and was replaced by the Lord Speaker. In addition, the Lord Chief Justice is now head of the judiciary, and the Lord Chancellor may no longer sit as a judge."

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  3. Ask a teacher ... You may be disappointed.

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  4. I have re-read the posts and comments across the last week, a week in which we have all been stuck with a long 5 years of a Conservative government , where. I fear we will regret that they are no longer Condems. And what is everyone on about? NPS vs CRC Young vs old social work vs crim justice training client vs probation office. If we carry on in fighting and winging like this ( oh, I forgot, PO vs manager) we will just disappear in a puff of Delius outage . Do something stop effing banging on about what someone else hasn't done. Join something, get out, speak out, work with your clients , do what you can, please just stop fighting each other.

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    1. I work in an office with a young female manager who seeks to rule by isolating the majority of her team and surrounding herself with yes men......this seems to pass for 'management' these days....so this in fighting as you say whilst being divisive is actually encouraged in some quarters.......better to have a few quislings than be at odds with an entire team..........

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    2. When are NOMS going to look at the link between long term stress and particular managers?
      Say for example someone gains a temporary appointment and suddenly staff stress related sickness increases then that person is then appointed as a manager and staff stress sickness increases, would it not be prudent for SOMEONE to make the correlation???
      Use grievance procedures I hear you cry.....but what if that person is such a bully that no-one dare??? What if that new manager is merely doing the bidding of a senior manager and so has no sanctions to his/her behaviour since they would be the person to hear the grievance...yup, no point at all.
      I think whistleblowing to the HSE can't be far away in terms of staff stress levels and the management of this.

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    3. Repeatedly I have suggested that grievances are monitored and managers questioned and penalised over excessive rates. How else do you detect discrimination for example ? Instead the managers are promoted.

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    4. I have been in a situation where the entire team bar one was bullied by a new SPO. I was the only one who pursued a grievance. We were labelled as trouble makers and the manager had arse covered by senior management all the way. I eventually escaped to another office. You can have all the bullshit policies in the world, snr management don't want to know. That which didn't kill me made me stronger. I can laugh about it now but it's a nightmare when it happens. A tip for statements. Keep it factual and evidence based. Keep notes on a daily basis. Keep opinions to yourself and adopt a neutral tone. Good luck.

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  5. Totally agree with the above. We have enough to worry about with this next pillock in charge of us. Off to walk the rabbit thats just jumped out of my hat.

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  6. I believe that people are venting on here as it's better than doing it in an open office. I have had to standup for myself in an open office on two separate occassions, not nice. However, back off and do your job and leave me to do mine has worked. I don't want to say this but the sooner everyone knows where they stand the better.

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  7. The thing is that the horrors of a newly-elected Tory majority government and our troubles as a newly-privatised, disintegrating public service are intextricably linked. We should all stand together because worse is on its way for the public services, welfare benefits and further attacks on Trade Unions. Those of you who aren't in Napo or left Napo should really consider joining again. This is where we could make ourselves stronger and more able to face the onslaught of the Tories scorched earth policy towards the state and its vital functions.

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  8. Trade unionism in the UK is under threat. The irony is that trade unionism started in the UK because of the ways in which people were treated by employers. The threats to the movement come from all areas of society but the biggest threat is undoubtedly ambivalence. I understand that 28% of the UK workforce are union members. The issue is that only about a quarter of these are willing to stand up and be counted. The idea is to stand together. Without that collective consciousness, we will be unable to fight the powers that wish to use us at their whim and discard us without concern. Trust in your leaders and your employers will bring you nothing but disappointment.

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  9. Surely Grayling cannot walk away from the mess that he has created totally unscathed? Just like the Sodexo Watch perhaps we should have a Grayling watch to make sure that the can is being firmly carried by him and no one else.....

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  10. Looks like the Teachers are not the only ones who have no faith in Gove.
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CEl-L3NW8AEF99F.jpg:large

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  11. Off topic, but I found this quite moving.

    http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpool-mum-writes-powerful-open-9226137

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  12. Very interesting article about Gove and Grayling to be read here. The author obviously shares the nations 'love' for the outgoing justice secetary!

    https://uk.news.yahoo.com/comment/talking-politics/how-dangerous-will-michael-gove-be-at-the-ministry-105437297.html

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  13. Give Goves a chance before giving him a hammering before he has even started his role. For people who are supposed to be non judgemental a lot of judgements are being made on here.. If your unhappy then find a new job. Whether your CRC or NPS, it is what it is and nothing can chance things so whatever your grade or role, get on with the job you are paid to do!!!

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    1. Do you mean JFDI?

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    2. Most who comment on here have a sense of social conscience. Whether it's Gove, Grayling or any other 'officer' of our neolibreral right wing government is almost irrelevent.
      The issue is ideology plain and simple. It's not the person charged with the 'enforcement' of that ideology that rankles people most, it's the ideolgy itself that most people find abhorent.
      These next five years of ideological doctrine will no doubt spell out the Tory parties 'final solution' for public services.
      Gove, Grayling who cares, they're just figureheads in different offices, delivering an ideological paradigm that 80% of the population don't actually agree with or want.

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    3. How do we assess risk of recommending, risk of harm? On previous behaviour. Look at Gove's recent history and we have an idea of what's coming. Ask a teacher.

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    4. Should be reoffending.

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    5. We look at past performance ,,,,Gove has been Education Secretary in the previous Con-Dem gov and in my role as a School Governor I know exactly what is he is capable of .
      There is much to worry about with his appointment , he is equally unsuitable as his predecessor ....there is little I would look forward to in his appointment.

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    6. Sorry but have to applaud the JFDI response because that is the message we get daily - it does not matter that on a daily basis its falling apart, teams are being depleted in one way or another JFDI. Going to quote that at SFO hearing

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  14. Ross Lawson @Ross_Lawson "Michael Gove's first act will be to create Free Jails, where anyone who has a shed with a lock on it can start their own prison." 10:19 AM - 10 May 2015

    The above tweet published in the Independent (online) made me chuckle. It may well come true!

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  15. to anon 13:10 that is all we want to do "get on with the job we are paid to do" but therein lies the problem. The processes seem to change by the week, the tools we are using are woefully not fit for purposes (specifically IT and constant workarounds that change then change again) ....so perhaps what we really need is for leadership to be shown by those paid to do so. This is NOT a practitioner problem - we are working amazingly well to deliver the work we do. It is a serious senior management failing.

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  16. From the Daily Telegraph: -

    "
    Michael Gove, new Justice Secretary, wanted to bring back hanging
    As a Times columnist, Michael Gove called for return of the noose and criticised Stephen Lawrence inquiry
    Tory MPs are delighted by the return to the front line of Michael Gove

    By Matthew Holehouse, Political Correspondent

    3:17PM BST 10 May 2015

    Michael Gove, the new Justice Secretary, called for the return of the death penalty as a newspaper columnist.

    Mr Gove said he supported the return of the noose out of “respect for democracy”, and because it would force the courts to act with “scrupulous fairness”.

    Writing in the late nineties as a Times columnist, Mr Gove also strongly criticised the Stephen Lawrence inquiry for being marred by “McCarthyism” and bearing the “whiff of Salem”. The inquiry accused the Metropolitan Police of institutionalised racism.

    Mr Gove has not repeated the comments in nearly twenty years.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11595776/Michael-Gove-new-Justice-Secretary-wanted-to-bring-back-hanging.html "

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  17. Jim, any chance you could add this in after your picture of Gove? Ta

    https://vine.co/v/Mz3nAKXEtmt

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  18. I wonder if this youtube video (obviously Mr Goves CJS research), was the reason the PM gave him the job at the MoJ????

    Young Michael Gove MP is the Weirdest Thing We've…: http://youtu.be/5F212quQ1KI

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  19. From the Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/our-new-justice-secretary-michael-gove-wanted-to-bring-back-hanging-10239681.html

    Not as though we needed reminding but the stark warning at the end indicating that whether you are NPS or CRC, no one is safe: "Justice is one of the unprotected departments and with the promise of five years of tax cuts and a £8 billion spending spree on the NHS, its budget is likely to be hit hard."

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  20. I too am very concerned about Gove but any Tory they'd give us would be a disaster. We know what's coming, a long hard 5 years. We thought the last five had been tough!!
    I want to talk about the probation training, slightly off topic I know. I fear that our professional qualification is being watered down too much for the sake of getting some newly qualified PO's through the door. Within two months we had one trainee writing a report for Crown Court. How did that happen? I was so shocked. Even worse she wasn't even observed conducting the interview with the offender. How can this be a professional service? Really? Same with NPS PSO's, they can't hold any cases so they are thrown into Court with little training. Its just awful. I care about my profession deeply and feel its being torn apart. Long term it will do us no favours!

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    1. Part of me is wishing I went into the CRC as I feel that I now at greater risk of being made redundant once the cuts start. Of equal concern is how our TPO's must be feeling knowing that they are doing nearly 2 years training and most likely not guaranteed a job at the end. I know Gove left Education following the Teachers passing a vote of no confidence, can we do this with this Tory Government??????

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    2. TPO's are cut price staff to fill in the gaps, then there is no prospects of a job after training.

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    3. I thought we did put a vote of no confidence in Grayling, he responded with a 'big gone peasants!' I have nothing against these trainee's, many are talented and committed to doing the job but I'm concerned that they are all under 25 and female. I saw one on twitter complaining about having to clean her room. If that's all that worries her in her life, how can she relate to the cases she's supervising. I know lots of PO's who entered the service years ago as new graduates but to recruit so many on block isn't healthy for the service. I imagine they will be kept and we will be made redundant for standing up for the true values of probation.

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  21. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/10/iain-duncan-smith-conservative-cabinet-david-cameron-welfare-cuts

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  22. The problem is that too many people don't want work......arounds.

    Ian Duncan Smith tells me.

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