Wednesday 14 October 2015

Latest From Napo 82

Before setting off for the seaside, I notice the General Secretary has treated us all to a bumper blog. These are my selections from it:-

INTERSERVE LAUNCH THEIR PURPLE FUTURE

Today sees a number of staff briefings taking place across the Purple Futures (Interserve) CRC’s where the audience will get the opportunity to hear from Senior Managers and watch a corporate video about the Operating Model that has been designed to make the contract a success.


The Trade Unions were invited to a preview yesterday which I attended along with a good number of Napo and Unison reps. Credit is due to Interserve for being as open and transparent about their objectives as they could be at this stage in comparison with the shoddy way in which one of their competitors recently went about announcing their transitional plans.

Any Purple Futures CRC employees looking for a clear idea on their future employment or exit prospects will be disappointed though, as the plan, while full of content about Interserve’s strategic direction of travel and the intended operational and delivery mechanisms that they wish to put in place, has clearly had a good deal of thought put into it. But it does not, as yet, give any indication of how many staff will be required to deliver them.

In an uncertain world everybody understandably wants answers, but the offer of genuine consultation with the unions about how all of this hangs together, and how it will impact on jobs and how those jobs will be structured using the established Job Evaluation process, (a good advert as to how NNC benchmarks are still relevant and useful by the way,) is a process that will run until January.

Of course we are now entering a crucial Autumn period where no doubt other CRC owners will similarly start to unveil their intentions (news reaches me that Working Links are another one) . I won’t pretend that we are not going to have some very difficult discussions but the crucial fact is this; being in a trade union is the best opportunity that all employees have to try and shape future outcomes. Napo intends to be part of those discussions, working alongside your locally elected representatives and consulting with our members to hear what you want us to do to support you.

It’s a message I will be repeating at our AGM in Eastbourne this week; and it’s one that we intend to take out to every workplace over the next few months.


The Rehabilitation Revolution still isn’t working!

Two more examples from Napo members showing that the post-TR world is still a shambles.

‘I have a new case, X. The client was originally allocated to the CRC as they are medium risk but they rejected the case as the client is technically MAPPA eligible so should be NPS. Hence I got the allocation only a month before their release. The sentence was under the ORA meaning that they should have got "through the gate" support with accommodation and employment. Release will take place this week and I've been told that they have been put on a waiting list for a telephone assessment with the local housing office but will need to present at housing on the day of release as homeless. So in reality the service user has got less support than they would have had if they had engaged with the previous voluntary scheme run by the probation trust at no additional cost, which offered far more intensive support joined up with other agencies.’

Nothing like diversity…

‘The CRC local to me launched the T2A guidance with much fanfare only to become severely embarrassed when it was pointed out that a picture of a man on page 6 depicts him wearing what can only be described as a Pornographic T-shirt which was seriously degrading to women. The Chief apparently got involved and representations have been made about it to the authors and the partner providers. Maybe the PI might want to consider this unfortunate situation as well since they no doubt mistakenly automatically replicated the link to the CRC publicity?’

EM review on the cards, or so it seems

This notice came the way of NOMS Trade Unions last week.

‘This is a notification to NOMS Trade Unions of the intention to engage staff in discussions about the shape and future of the Electronic Monitoring Group. The SMT are writing to you for information to highlight the intent to engage staff and the approach we will be adopting.

The Electronic Monitoring team are looking to develop existing structures to examine how we can best work together across the group to deliver against a background of programme uncertainty and developing policy ambition. This work is being undertaken in order to clarify reporting structures and job descriptions in the first instance, to ensure that the programme is properly resourced, that mobilisation of the contracts delivers effective change into the service and that the strategic objectives of Ministers, MoJ and NOMS are appropriately served, and in doing so, looking to minimise reliance on consultants. As part of this we will be running a whole team meeting to discuss the current operating environment with staff and to ask for their input on how we can best work together.

The meeting will set out recent developments in response to Ministerial ambition for tagging and concerns at delays within the programme, the current thinking of the SMT on the group’s structure and how this needs to address these issues and will provide an update on the Electronic Monitoring programme and the role of the group moving forward.

Having shared these initial thoughts SMT members will run a world café exercise, facilitating discussion with staff around the best structure moving forward to feed into discussions. At this point in time we are unable to advise on how the detailed structure will look and what this means in terms of job numbers and grades but we wanted to inform you of these discussions and our engagement with staff. This will be one of a series of engagement events with staff over coming months.

After this staff engagement has taken place we would welcome your contributions and once we have a confirmed structure we will begin formal Trade Union engagement and consultation in line with the restructuring toolkit. Any comments you have at this early stage are welcome and we will keep you informed of the outcomes of the engagement sessions.’

Whilst not quite written in Enigma, it still takes some deciphering but seems to suggest:

1. EM is a rip off to the taxpayer and has made shed loads of money for the contractors which in these times of austerity we can no longer afford

2. We really would appreciate staff and Unions telling us where it all went wrong

3. We know you told us so but...
4. We await our call up to the World Café with much enthusiasm

#Napo 15

Ok that’s it for now, off to help load the AGM bound van here at Chivalry Road. Look out for the AGM Blog from Eastbourne and the above hashtag on twitter feeds.

43 comments:

  1. Credit is due to interserve for being as open as they can be? Were caviar and chips on the menu for Ian and his mates yesterday? They are dealing with a rapacious capitalist corporation with an appalling track record of cutting terms, conditions and jobs when they buy up public sector organisations. A slick presentation and weasel words should not be fooling anyone, especially not our famously tough talking GS. I wonder what he'll say when they come for people's jobs and replace them with biometric kiosks?

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    1. You're obviously one of those people who subscribes to the notion that all private companies are inherently evil. I completely disagree with you about that. Purple Futures could have chosen to go down the Sodexo route, but haven't. It's right to credit them for that. The view that a private company must automatically be evil may be one shared by you and Jeremy Corbyn but is not shared by the wider population as a whole.

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    2. 8.04 said nothing about Interserve being evil and yet words are twisted by 8.47 who makes two references to evil! You should make a proper argument instead of such hyperbole. All 8.04 said is that capitalist corporations have a record of cutting terms and conditions when they take over the running of public services. There is ample evidence in support of this claim, as those who earn 25% less in the private prison sector will tell you and closer to home, Sodexo's failure to honour enhanced EVR payments. As for Purple Futures, it's early days. I see, though, that they have a Twitter feed on their webpage, with tweets about Jack and Jill winning awards, fences being being fixed by community service, Bob being met at the prison gate and lovely pictures of cakes made to raise funds at a Macmillan coffee morning. The cakes were made by CRC and NPS staff, which I guess is a fine example of the private and public sector working together.

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  2. Its worth finding the parliament.tv clip from yesterday's justice committee where (about 7 mins in?) Spurr is desperately pleased with himself for cutting 11,000 jobs in NOMS - "if we ignore the probation staff we've recently acquired". Why change the habit of a lifetime, Michael?

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  3. TR has been a rocky road setting up but now the CRCs are in full swing, we are now starting to see the benefits. Look at TTG. TR is a god send but it's not all plain sailing depending on what CRC your in I guess though it depends on how you look at things. I'd love to work for NOMS as that is where real change cab happen.

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    1. I am inclined to agree with you. Things are looking up with their being better outcomes for clients ☺

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    2. I have no doubts that the CRCs will prove successful in the long run. The UK is a free market economy and history has shown that private industry is superior to the state (regardless of what those ideological clowns Corbyn and McDonnell may otherwise say). My concern is the NPS, which appears to be taken over by the Prison Service and losing its own identity within the bureaucratic monster that is the Civil Service.

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    3. The free market is a myth. In a free market the banks would have crashed in 2008, but they were bailed out by the State. Unlike public services, private companies can walk away from their responsibilities – it happened with ATOS and on the railways. Private is not more efficient than public – in the USA health care costs are twice UK costs and outcomes are worse. The free market is predisposed to monopolistic practices and cartels, so it has to be publicly regulated. And when private companies do not pay their workers enough to live in, the state steps in with subsidies.

      But you free marketeers don't want to hear this, as it would mean Corbyn is no more ideological that you are.

      Ha-Joon Chang: 'Singapore is usually touted as the model student of free-market capitalism, given its free-trade policy and welcoming attitude towards multinational companies. Yet in other ways it is a very socialist country. All land is owned by the government, 85% of housing is supplied by the government-owned housing corporation, and a staggering 22% of national output is produced by state-owned enterprises. (The international average is around 10%.) Would you say that Singapore is capitalist or socialist?'


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  4. 12.32 you write so clearly and I agree with everything you say. I am all for a free market economy that promotes competition which in turn promotes choice resulting in better end products. We're on the same page.

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    1. 12.51 why are you writing lits of pro-free market rubbish and then writing lots of comments to yourself? Which one of the rubbish companies do you represent? Go Jeremy Corbyn I say. Corporates are the clowns, as you'll discover once you have gotten rid of all the genuine and trained probation staff and you fall on your arose.

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    2. 22.19 corporations pay tax to keep public services going so I would suggest your a clown for rejecting a free economy

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    3. 22.19 if corporations didn't take all the land and resources, and create an artificial consumer society, we could all be self-sufficent and wouldn't need a state or crappy corporate bosses. I will never submit.

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  5. Corbyn is a clown and a rude one to boot. He has no business in politics. He comes across very poorly. He was on TV the other refusing to speak to sky news. He is a very poor leader but us conservatives are not complaining

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    1. You will complain when you lose the next election.

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  6. Which CRC has it's PR team working on the blog...10:56 and so called tories et al...of course PR people think everyone other than themselves are fools to be manipulated but really PR people , nice try but very poor show

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    1. As head of comms for Purple Futures I can confirm that no 'PR people' post here unless it's to correct errors of fact.

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  7. Another milestone for the JB blog. Now considered important enough for Tory trolling. Vermin.

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    1. It really irks me when people assume that anybody offering a different view to their own is automatically a troll. And throwing insults such as 'vermin' about is just childish. Some of the socialists on here react to an alternative viewpoint in the same way some service users react to being challenged about their offending behaviour!

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    2. Do you really not see the hypocrisy in your comment? Anon 12:32 refers to "ideological clowns", which is echoed by Anon 12:59 whilst you label anyone who doesn't agree with you as a "socialist" - which you clearly regard as a dirty word.

      I think Anon 15:15's use of "vermin" is unacceptable, but it's pretty plain that some of the comments above are posted with the deliberate, mischievous intention of winding other commenters up - that fits many a definition of trolling.

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  8. Boom.16.25 you just destroyed 14.34 and 16.25. Could not have said it better myself. Clearly 14.34 and 16.25 are not probation staff but tolls trying to wind us up. Nice try you too.

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    1. Can we just leave alone the sniping at each other.If your views are different then in my book thats healthy. Up and down the country there are many of us who may read this blog and disagree with the comments made on here. Lots of us either work for NPS or CRC's and are entitled to give their points of view without being accused of being Vermin or Trolls. I thought in our work we worked with people and their varying views, maybe some of you don't do that and your opinion is the only opinion your interested in!!!!

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    2. I really wanted to join in with the playground shit & torment napo members for going to the seaside, just for the hell of it. Then 17:07 showed up again, the immature boy with a bomb fixation who was chastised for skipping school last week. After any number of recent murderous acts of bombing anything vaguely ironic or humorous was forgotten.

      Is this what the once proud profession has become?

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    3. Mate what you on? Enjoy the conference and don't worry about my phrases!!

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    4. Clearly I'm not "on" the same medication as you, dear boy. I shall try hard not to worry about your "phrases", but I doubt we will ever be "mates".

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    5. True. Your judgemental. I am not. You also assume I'm a boy so il assume you also stereotype. Good night. Enjoy the seaside :)

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  9. VIA Google News Alerts - Andrew Selous

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------

    I am not sure if this directly relates to Probation and the MOJ and note that it comes from a source with which I am unfamiliar.

    However, I think it could very well relate to the dealings of companies who contract with the MOJ (and others also) and I have in mind SERCO & G4S and the Tagging SFO enquiry - has that been resolved or quietly forgotten? (probably that is yet another topic again) - anyway I shall post the headline opening and a link - JB may remove it & it is not compulsory that YOU look it up. Personally I regret I do not understand the legalities of corporate corruption though feel there is probably a lot of it about even though according to the article linked the MOJ is NOT now going to legislate in ways that were under consideration.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------

    " MOJ quietly halts work on new economic crime offence – what does the announcement tell US?

    United Kingdom October 13 2015


    Recently the Justice minister Andrew Selous MP stated in an answer to a written question submitted by Byron Davies MP, that the Ministry of Justice has decided not to take forward the proposal for a new offence of a corporate failure to prevent economic crime offence. "

    http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=06a7bde9-e929-4d3e-a443-406f3c7a51cc

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    1. Byron Davies MP:
      "To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress he has made on Action 36 of the UK Anti-Corruption Plan; and when he expects corporate criminal liability to be introduced."
      Hansard source
      (Citation: HC Deb, 28 September 2015, cW)
      The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice:
      "The UK has corporate criminal liability and commercial organisations can be, and are, prosecuted for wrongdoing. The UK Anti-Corruption Plan tasked the Ministry of Justice to examine the case for a new offence of a corporate failure to prevent economic crime and the rules on establishing corporate criminal liability more widely. Ministers have decided not to carry out further work at this stage as there have been no prosecutions under the model Bribery Act offence and there is little evidence of corporate economic wrongdoing going unpunished."

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    2. Which is where Andrew's post is highly relevant, i.e. his reference to G4S & Serco, both of whom have been shown to have committed corporate economic wrongdoing, and both of whom have since paid back £Millions of public monies which were acquired through corporate wrongdoing.

      Well spotted Andrew.

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    3. But the point is that the Government are NOT going to make such dubious behaviour criminal so it is unlikely those responsible will ever be probation clients and there is not a thing we can do other than perhaps consider whether it is worth some sort of campaign to introduce such a law.

      It seems to come out of the same 'box' that prevents there being an offence of corporate manslaughter framed in such a way that individuals get to answer for it rather than companies!

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  10. Anyone else having problems with through the gate? I keep getting told prisoners have accommodation when they don't.

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    1. No evidence of TTG in my office things have only got worse! More HR prisoners coming out with no accommodation and no help from providers its all gone to pot!

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    2. I haven't had any under 12 month custody high risk ORA people just yet. Wondering where they all are... are they coming through anywhere yet?

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    3. 21:22 I'd prefer that than having to deal with their lies/mistakes and the confusion and extra work it brings.

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    4. Anon at 21:44

      I think you might be un the wrong job.

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    5. Andrew it's the TTG staff causing the confusion and extra work, not the high risk cases ☺

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    6. Some of these basic custody screenings are a joke, people with 'no problems with accomodation' when it is blatantly not true. I think they are cut and paste jobs or written up by people with zero interviewing skills...

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  11. You take that back 7.15. TTG and staff are not the problem! TTG is a world class service!

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    1. Really? So how do you account for the TTG provider releasing a prisoner with a letter that told him to report to his CRC as they have sorted out his accommodation? This was news to his Officer!
      Deb

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    2. @ Anon 07:29 I'm delighted that you're pleased with the "world class service" being provided by TTG. Could you indulge me, just a little, and provide some kind of evidence to explain why you're so happy with it? The name of your local area, CRC provider and/or prisons would be a fine start - I'm sure they would be thrilled to have such a public endorsement.

      On the other hand if you can't, or won't, give this information, I hope you understand that you just look a little bit silly.

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    3. What TTG? Nothing in SWA1.

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  12. All this TTG sniping is just propaganda..from what I've seen, TTG is working lovely

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  13. Well one of my chaps was released with '£46 in his pocket' and has had nothing else in his pocket since for going on six weeks. Perhaps lovely Through the Gate need to stuff a few food vouchers and some clothing that still fits in the pocket too in anticipation for the harsh realities. In our area they are offered an appointment with the council who won't house them anyway. Job done. (As an aside, another one of my guys has been waiting 8 months for his police check to come through before they can formally reject his application. )

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