Guest Blog 52

TR, E3 & the death of the probation officer

A recent Twitter conversation between an anonymous Probation Officer and Sally Lewis, former Chief Probation Officer, went like this;

@PoOfficer: Well the boss has said that the number of PO's will soon decrease as they hire more PSO's in NPS. PSO's will manage all low / med risk.

@CEOLewis: I don't think Courts, etc know that PSO's are not qualified officers. PO's won't sign with their prof qualifications #BigMistake

@PoOfficer: PSO's now writing the bulk of reports on templates which restrict the amount of text. They are shockingly bad. I'm embarrassed.

I'm going to start and finish by agreeing with Sally Lewis because probation officers should be stating their credentials. Every other professional completing formal reports and assessments states their qualifications as standard. I couldn't imagine reading a letter, assessment or report from a psychologist, medical practitioner or legal representative without reference to their professional qualifications and authority. I think our omission in doing this is partly because our report and letter formats are not designed for us to state BSc, MSc, DipSW, DipPS and DipPP, but also because the culture forced upon us doesn't encourage it.

I read a lot of reports completed by colleagues as we gate-keep each others work to check for errors missed. This mostly includes reports for court sentencing, parole hearings and other formal settings, but only the parole report asks for qualifications and even then many don't state their professional qualifications. Of the others, never do I find these signed "Mr or Mrs Smith BSc, DipSW". Even our letters and emails omit any record of professional qualifications. It's as if we are not professionally qualified or fear stating it, when in fact we have probation officers who have a wealth of formal qualifications. Off the top of my head this includes those with the Certificate of Qualification in Social Work (CQSW), Diploma in Social Work (DipSW), Diploma in Probation Studies (DipPS), Diploma in Probation Practice (DipPP), etc. Most already held formal qualifications and degrees at varying levels before they began probation officer training. I once read a survey that canvassed staff qualifications in a probation trust (when we were trusts) and found the vast majority of staff at all levels held university degrees right up to PhD, but they only stated these when asked.

TR, E3 and the Diploma in Probation Deprofessionalisation

In my humble opinion the probation qualification and professionalism has been slowly eroded over the past two decades. Even our union has omitted "probation" from its title and went from calling itself the National Association of Probation Officers to adopting the acronym Napo! The Probation Institute has gone in a different direction by wanting to sell everyone working in probation, qualified and unqualified, the title of MPInst. I think this problem of hiding our qualifications started when probation began employing huge numbers of Probation Service Officers (PSO's) to do our work, who were not professionally qualified and in many places had poor access to training. 

The government also separated probation from social work in the mid 1990's which was really the beginning of the end for us. The Diploma in Probation Studies that followed was adequate, even considered to be a "gold standard" of professional education/training by some academics. It did, however, help push probation into an identity crisis about whether it was an enforcement agency or a social work agency. Unfortunately before probation could figure it out our training was morphed into the Diploma in Probation Practice under the Probation Qualifications Framework (PQF). This seemed to disproportionately attract young graduates (mostly female) with no experience and then qualified these recruits in about 15 months. 

Never have I seen so much tears and anxiety amongst probation trainees as in this period, which I think is now reflected in their varying levels of competence/incompetence upon qualification. The newest edition of our training commencing this year is the Probation Qualification in Probation (PQiP), which costs £75 just to check eligibility to apply. So far we don't know if there's any improvement on the PQF but I doubt it and there must be a reason why the word "diploma" is removed from the final award, which is the "equivalent" of an honours degree rather than an actual one. It doesn't take an idiot to parallel the erosion of our qualifications with the deprofessionalisation of probation officers, the privatisation of probation work and the governments Transforming Rehabilitation policy.

For years probation leaders have been implicit in downgrading the role of probation officers. For starters I blame the Probation Chiefs Association, the Probation Association and now the Probation Institute. These organisations are inter-related, and their actions have been self-serving to preserve their positions. Under what I call the "judas watch" of most of our former Probation Chiefs (they received a lot more than 30 pieces of silver) we've witnessed the probation service and the status of the probation officer reduced to nothing. We've become subservient to the agencies of the community and criminal justice, and even within probation our roles have been handed to unqualified PSO's, volunteers and mentors. Not content with selling 70% of probation to private companies, the current "E3" drive by the Ministry of Justice and the National Probation Service is now replacing qualified Probation Officers with unqualified Probation Service Officers.

I am a Probation Officer, DipSW, DipPS, DipPP, PQiP

In the new world of probation we are called by names most of us never use, "responsible officers", "offender managers" (and sometimes b*stards and c*nts) which can be applied to nearly anybody. This is very different to probation under social work training arrangements up until the mid 1990's when probation officers were Probation Officers and would generally include their professional qualifications as an indication of authority, expertise and competence. CEO Sally Lewis is right to question whether "courts, etc know that PSO's are not qualified officers", and to state that PO's not signing with their professional qualifications is a big mistake. Likewise the Ministry of Justice and the National Probation Service are wrong to replace qualified Probation Officers with unqualified Probation Service Officers. We should distinguish ourselves from the inexperienced, the untrained and the unprofessional, and I believe we can start doing this by signing our emails, letters and reports to state BSc, MSc, DipSW, DipPS and DipPP, etc. When we are asked our role at Court, Parole Boards and other formal settings to state our professional qualifications as standard.

If you're a qualified probation officer and agree with the above then you know what you need to do. It is our professional qualifications and experience that gives us the authority to do our jobs and sets us apart from the untrained, unqualified and inexperienced staff currently being recruited to replace qualified probation officers in the National Probation Service, Community Rehabilitation Companies and other organisations. If nobody knows what we are professionally then how will the Courts, Parole Boards and others, including offenders and their families, know the differences between qualified and unqualified. More importantly, how else will they know to request their preference for a "qualified officer" because of all that comes with it. 

I've no doubt the time will come when we'll witness a reversal of E3, TR and probation privatisation (probably not under Dodgy Dave's Conservatives). I'm not wishing bad tidings on myself or anybody, but sadly I fear there'll be no constructive change by any government to reverse probation privatisation and deprofessionalisation until too many of our probation staff have been implicated for misconduct and corruption, until too many of our prisons are rioting and on fire, and until too many of our supervised offenders are raping, maiming and killing members of the public.

Probation Officer
15 years to retire