Pick of the Week 33

Right now, I feel like I have had enough. Underpaid and undervalued by senior management, qualified as a PO for 16 years, but will be another 12 till I hit the top of the pay scale (which can't be right). None of the IT works properly, currently at over 150% of capacity and raising as I get more allocations, in a crumbling building with stained walls. Just something from on high to say "yes, we appreciate you" would be welcome. Anything.

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I know just how you feel. Squalid offices, undervalued and impossible to do a decent job anymore. What has happened to CRC upper management? Are they in hiding or taken hostage by the owners? Never hear a peek out of them. The only positive comments I get these days are from service users, but expect those to dry up as workload increases. Still, not long before it folds and see what plan B is then. What is the unions stance on that? What happens when CRC's start to fold?

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I’ve had enough. I left a good job private sector to join Probation that seemed to offer an interesting and worthwhile career. Since the split I was sorted into the CRC and it is extremely badly run compared to private companies I have worked for. They certainly wouldn’t make the top 1000 employers. The fact is I don’t know anyone who would choose to work for a CRC whatever the money. Working for this lot is damaging my career.

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I suppose you would [argue] against anyone thinking of joining the probation service's new training programme, the PQiP? I was thinking of applying, but now I'm not so sure. I assumed the trainees would be working for the NPS, where I thought the conditions would be better than with a CRC, but I don't know if in reality new hires would be farmed out to the CRCs. The whole thing looks like a sinking ship.

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We are all mugs! WTF are we doing? Working ourselves to death to please the slave masters. Start standing up for ourselves. Refuse to do over your hours, miss targets in order to see offenders, complain about poor working conditions, refuse to supervise offenders in booths. Be bolshy and a thorn in their sides because they sure as hell don't give a shite about us. What's the worst thing that can happen? They can't sack us all as they have hardly anyone left anyway. Take out grievances and join a union. Don't stand beneath the crumbling wall trying to hold it up. It is futile. Work to rule. Let it fail. It's inevitable now in most areas. Or leave and do something else. Or leave and do agency work, more control. Fuck em!

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I note how NPS are commenting today as their wages are effected. They never normally comment nothing to moan about, at least they still have a voice and an office, on the flip side CRC staff are treated like shit and seem like the ones fighting for the Service, it's a shame they didn't have the same amount of anger at the splitting of the Service, things could have been different.

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I agree. But what I have found when I tentatively stick my neck out is insufficient support from my colleagues. People are scared and they have forgotten or don't appreciate the power of united action.

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I do agree but have noticed that when one person speaks out it can inspire others to do the same. That said, I will soon depart as you get weary of it over time. I just want to do what I trained do do. I didn't sign up to be a number crunching private sector stooge, manipulating stats whilst ignoring the people we are supposed to be helping ie. Offenders and their potential victims. t is broken and I don't want to be part of it anymore. Majority of my colleagues are looking to get out asap. If there is an SFO on your watch they will hang you out to dry, they do not deserve our loyalty (private owners) so time to move on. Don't think they will reward you for being a yes person either, they won't. They will milk you dry and move on and send you to the knackers yard when you are exhausted. Be warned!

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Speaking of SFO's, how many DV cases and MAPPA cases are being held by CP Case Managers with no supervision whatsoever. It beggars belief.

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There are offenders getting minimal supervision even waiting for BBR. If there are no staff left that is inevitable. Know of many but nothing is done about it! Still waiting for the inspectors to turn up so I can pin them in a corner, tell the line manager to leave and spill the beans. I will not hold back to save someones skin and keep them creaming off the profits.

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I guess it's true to say that NPS are lucky enough to have an office. You're very much mistaken if you think we have a voice. 150 - 175 on the workload management tool, endless parole reports, oral hearings and ARMS assessments, I could go on.... I have the greatest respect for my friends and colleagues that landed up allocated to the CRC, it never was and isn't them and us as far as I'm concerned. We're all in it together.

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They will never be short of Pquippers, not when they can leave Uni with no life experience often and earn nearly 30K within 15 months off the bat. Just 3k less than I with 12 years post qualification experience. My wife is a nurse and when she qualified she had to be on probation for 2 years at a measly 20k. After 2 years they paid her full whack. Should do the same with newly qualifieds if you ask me and reward the long stayers.

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Problem is, those with a Criminology degree, Probation is the go to job for the money initially. More than all the other CJS jobs to begin with. But then twenty years plus to get the top whack, as opposed to the Police which can be done in 5-7 years.

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SFO enquiries should not be done in house. This is scandalous. How many cover ups have their been?.They need to be done by an independent body with no link to CRC or NPS. Shocking that this is being allowed. Do the victims/their families know?

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Selous: "The key point is that we would not have had the money to introduce supervision for the under-12-month group without the reforms."

It was never about money according to Grayling, Brennan & Romeo. Their argument was about the fabled '£46 in yer pocket', cutting reoffending rates & neutering left-leaning probation. The fact it has cost many many £m's more than leaving things as they were makes me ask the question - on what basis, and from where, was the extra money released because of TR? From the salaries & withheld payments of the hundreds made unemployed by TR reforms, perhaps?

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Austerity is just a mask for a very right wing ideological experiment that's gone very wrong. The police now are not just fighting crime, but dealing with social issues such as homelessness, drug addiction, and mental health. They're dealing with problems that belong in other areas like health, social services and addiction services, but Austerity and private enterprise has displaced everything. It's all fallen into the gap between 'we can't afford it' and 'we can't make a profit from it.' So who's problem is it? Those on the front line such as the police, pick up some of the pieces but don't necessarily get the pieces in the right place, but moving problems doesn't by itself solve them. 7 years of austerity has created a right royal mess, it's been expensive, and it'll take more then 7 years to pull it all back together again.

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I am an ex-SPO who is now working as a manager in Child Protection. I met an old PO colleague yesterday, 30 year man. He is now a free-lance gardener as is another mutual ex-SPO colleague. They are happy but we all agreed that we missed what was without in any way wanting to go back to what is. Such a waste. A total clusterfuck of epic proportions perpetuated by a Ministry that has no direction and no understanding of what is required of it. We have all moved on in different ways but looking back on what we left behind is deeply sad for all of us. Like walking past your old school and finding it boarded up, covered in graffiti and rot, stinking of urine. Thanks, Grayling. Thanks for everything.

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Just a moment please, 'austerity' shouldn't really be described as a right wing ideological experiment as I seem to remember ALL our failed mainstream political parties lined up to bail out the banksters! Especially fake Labour, one G Brown seemed happy to facilitate it. Politics aside it was financial deregulation by both sides of the house what lead to it in the first place, MT/Regan and GB.

Whilst most of you seem to be involved in or ex probation officers in one form or another, how about sparing a thought for the 'service users'? Ok your lives are affected in a big way but how about those people whose lives are in their very hands? the very hands of the 'clusterfuck'. Ok yes they have made a mistake but are now in a position where essentially they have no rights at all and are being dealt with by an unprofessional incompetent shower of SH** (CRCs I mean). Imagine you actually wanted a bit of rehabilitation, do you think you are going to get it = NO. Or just wanted to comply with the terms of your order = NO, no you cant sonny jim oh no not so fast, its not as easy as that.

So most are left in a swirl of not knowing what the hell is going on being blamed/threatened left right n centre if they don't do something that the privateering CRCs can invoice or tick box. Would you fancy that? A situation where everything you were told is a lie? To be honest, if it were a choice of that or a few weeks in an open prison I think jail would be easier. Easier to get it done and out the way rather than face months of what is effectively a kind of pervasive bullying and harassment. OK, (if you are still reading), I imagine not much sympathy coming through (cough) but for some who wish to take responsibility and move on positively its not easy when you have a parasite cloud following you around.

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I think the point made was that the services that used to be in place were offered by a well staffed and professional service. The loss of hundreds (thousands?) of experienced Probation Officers and Probation Managers has undermined the credibility of the service for all of it's users including offenders (one arm) and sentencers (another, who, by default, make decisions that impact upon service users). It is not a whinge about losing one's job (we are able perfectly content with out respective lots), it is regret at the watering down of a credible service that had a chance of making a difference and it's replacement by a 'clusterfuck' which represents a shadow of it's former self.

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Police spend 40% of their time dealing with mental health crisis. Was told it was more than that recently. How much of PO/PSO time is spent on supporting service users with mental health issues or crisis? I would say similar figure. I have people at risk of suicide and that is priority for me. Calling GP's, making referrals and doing basic assessment to ensure they have some support when waiting for services to kick in. Crisis management when suicidal or experiencing psychosis. How many of us also assisting with physical health issues when people come in with symptoms and can't get appointment with their GP? Good job I am first aid trained. Have seen my fair share of leg ulcers, fungal toenails, self harm wounds or chest pains. Drove someone to A&E once with infected ulcers from injecting and likely septicaemia. It is par for the course. No point blabbering on about RAR days and SAQ's if someone is delusional or in agony with constipation! Multi-tasking. More of our time will be taken up with basic mental health, housing and standard social work practice as austerity bites.

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It's notable that in this potted history of the deconstruction of probation, the unions are absent. The TR bang was met with a whimper. The raison d'etre of through the gate has been shown to have been a chimera – or con trick – such that if this poor service was removed its impact would be negligible. But we must ignore the true motivation for these changes: ideology. All the various quangos will flatter to deceive us with their prescriptions: some tinkering here, some tweaking there – but all refusing to accept that you cannot teach a crab to walk straight.

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The Tory Lib Dem coalition should also be reminded that they used a vulnerable disadvantaged and damaged population with no voice at all as they're USP. £46 isn't good enough, they need resettlement prisons, TTG services, housing, mentors, all sorts of services to assist them getting on the right tracks. TR in fact reduced the services available. It was never going to be the all kicking and dancing service promised. They all knew that too. The needs of service users were exploited for political ideology, and that in my book is simply abuse of power.

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All good above and no one disagrees. We must focus on those doing the day job. Overwork, under resourced, no meaningful contributions to offending behaviour. Tired old packages still being deployed as the innovations of the draining privateers - saw an opportunity to exploit more cash through complaining than delivering innovations. The government have been had through poor procurement and fiddled contracts with friends of large investors. Connections through marriages both real and the secrets. The attempts to convince what is clear rotten is in fact good are all part of the stuck in this until 2021. However we are not. All the government have to do is recognise anyone in a CRC should be redeployed to the NPS as they are recruiting 800plus. Or wholesale reintegration as trusts as we were and rid the profit element. Contract managers can retain a job managing more effectively the old national standards and make those resources linked to incentivise the staff and management deliver more with more in rewards. 

What we do not need is any more of the robbing profiteers take public money to offshoots in Germany Aurelius, France Sodexo and still give them another pay day in Brexit. Is there any budget for our home grown poverty struck offender services anywhere more important than local communities in this Country? No, this issue is going to get very ugly as it divides us as we are now talking offending profits to euro companies and we have no idea how much more expensive CRC experiment has been over trusts. Why not? How much has been the profit margins in all CRCs? Why not and what possible reasons could there be to extend all these failures in the next 3 and a bit years. Please end the likelihood of that now so the Privateers can look elsewhere soon. In any case labour will save the day and as soon as we can get them in we will.

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I know PSO's in NPS that are now writing PSR's at court that struggled to write breaches, yet the CRC's have the most experienced PO's years of service and we are looked down at. I know a colleague of mine that used to send socialist Party emails to us he stopped when he became a second rate civil servant because he did not want to compromise being in the NPS. Not one of NPS staff stuck their necks out to be counted, I doubt if there are many now who would fight for the service to be reunited. Whilst on the other hand the CRC staff speak out everyday. Ironically I really feel that the true Probation Service is the CRC's.

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Public services have become a feeding ground for private enterprise. They've become a little like the charity sector, everyone takes a share of every £1 put in until theres 5p left for the front line. (The charity commission has just moved into offices at the MoJ). There are more and more contracts being awarded by dodgy process. Auditors for example have declared that a contract awarded to outsource libraries and leisure facilities in Wigan was done illegally. There was no tendering process. You have to ask yourself why not, and who benefited? Yesterday Atos were given £45 million for MoJ management services. They were the incumbent company, but I wonder who else was invited to bid? It's become wholesale plunder on a scale the Vikings would be proud of.

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Grayling represents everything that's wrong with uk politics. He's dishonest, deceitful, selfish and greedy, contemptuous of the process of law and protocols that may hamper his personal aims or challenges his ideology. He is uncaring, has no compassion, and no concern for those his decision making effects. He has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. If Grayling were a "convicted" criminal, he'd be considered a very dangerous man.

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And service users are travelling 30 mile round trip because Working Links want to cream off more profit and increase their own personal shares! Easy money buy shares in the company you manage watch your own personal profit increase as you make those decisions to cut and sell them just before you go bankrupt. It's called insider dealing and despite being illegal we all know it happens all the time.

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Everyone is ill equipped in relation to psychoactive drugs. Prisons, probation, NHS, addiction agencies and even the users themselves. The real demon where psychoactive drugs are concerned is the government and free market ideology. It's OK to have legal highs where no one knows their contents, manufacturing processes, effects on health, propensity for addiction, or the consequences of taking them in conjunction with other substances. Yet drugs that there's a wealth of knowledge about, impact known, consequences of use studied, impact on health examined, social consequences understood are outlawed.

Legal highs (although no longer legal) is the result of government failed drug policies.
It's OK to get high on something we know nothing about, but it's not OK to get high on something we have extensive knowledge about? Drugs are drugs. They're dangerous. They kill. The more knowledge you have about what you're taking the safer you are. I wonder what knowledge the government has on psychoactive substances? I'd wager a lot it's far less then those working in the field, how ever limited that knowledge may be. Government drug policy kills more people a year than drugs do.

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My point was more about the problems of co-ordinating a response to spice like drugs when the parts of Probation are fragmented, increasingly disparate and in a state of flux and crisis. How do you disseminate information, good practice or even fund efforts to that end? The new Probation landscape is less fleet footed than it was. It was difficult enough co-ordinating different services and resources around problems in the past. I believe it is now nigh on impossible.

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I've had 5 PO's on the outside both inside prison and whilst on licence and 4 different ones on the inside. And only one of them was what I would call a good PO who actually gave a damn, did what she said she would when she said she would and who treated me as a human being. Whilst I do not wish to tar all with the same brush, and I am sure there are really good PO's out there, my personal experience is that the majority leave a LOT to be desired. Other people I knew whilst inside have also had the same sort of experiences which suggests that the bad outweigh the good all over the country. Yes it's not a scientific analysis but if so many of us who come from all walks of life and educational and social backgrounds experience the same issues it strongly suggests the issues lie within probation.

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I am a CRC PO still practicing, just. About to walk. I remember when the OASys system first started. "Offender" this and "offender" that, page up and page down. These questions we had to answer and how they were phrased, filling in that long assessment forced me to think about someone in a particular way which frankly I had never done before. A whole person's being compartmentalised into 13 aspects with no real thought as to how one would impact on another. The person we are assessing becomes objectified, scrutinised, a subject of "scientific" (not) analysis. Risk of harm and reoffending expressed in percentages. 

OASys is still being used as a "backbone" of our practice, managers love it, the quality of our practice is being measured by it, many practitioners took and still take great pride in producing a good OASys. Yes I grant you, doing an OASys assessment does force us to spend time researching the "case". But it also forces us to think of people in a particular way, and may I suggest that way can very heavily militate against our seeing that person in front of us as just that. A person full stop. No better and no worse than me. 

Oddly enough, though we are frowned upon now when we talk about offenders, the computer system templates are all littered with the term. I defy anyone to find any template using the term service user. So lip service is paid, but it has yet to penetrate to the bureaucratic heart of the company. (There is no other heart aside from the money and the bureaucracy, I've searched). What do you think of the term service user anyway? Is it a misleading name? What service is provided? And if a service is provided, who is it for? 

I spent years doing OASys and all the other irrelevant probation exercises with my left hand while at the same time doing what I considered to be "the real work" with my right. And I consider I have learnt a great deal from those "clients/offenders/service users/ people" I have had the privilege of working with. My experience can never be theirs and I dare say I have put my foot in my mouth on many occasions out of ignorance and perhaps out of arrogance, for which when it comes to my notice, I apologise. I do care intensely. But I have also wanted to be effective. To see progress and hope and freedom. To see an outcome we can all live with.

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Interesting that when I wrote about my experience of being on probation not that long ago on this blog as a guest post, the number of current practitioners who had the knives out and claimed not to recognise my experience was astounding. I note with interest that those who had the knives out for me haven't yet gone for the Tartan Con or the other poster Jim referred to at the top of the post despite the posts being just as critical of those practitioners as I was

Our experiences of life on probation are just as valid as the experiences of the practitioners suffering under TR yet so many of you seem to dismiss our experiences completely which, quite frankly, leads me to suspect that you are not in the right job. People in prison are human beings. People on probation are human beings. Anyone can end up in prison on probation with the right set of circumstances behind them so you need to be a lot more considerate and careful about those under your supervision because you add immeasurably to the damage the system causes to those at its mercy when you dismiss us and our experiences.

And before any of you start whingeing about shouldn't have done the crime if you can't deal with the time etc, what about the staggering number of people who end up being convicted of a crime they didn't do? It could happen to you tomorrow. So treat people as you would wish to be treated were you in their shoes. Many prison and probation officers are just as callous and lacking in humanity as the politicians mentioned in the comment above.

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Hello. I'd be interested to read your guest piece if you give me the link or mth/yr it appeared. I wouldn't be too perturbed by those who got their knives out n sniped, they show themselves for what they are, ie. people who haven't quite twigged what their job is supposed to be about. The power crazed nature of some who use their self assumed 'status' to put them beyond reproach never attain much level of respect or if they do it all comes crashing down in the end when they are laid off an no one wants to employ them. That's when they realise they were not 'quite' as fantastic and indispensable as they thought.

At university I had a couple of hallmates who were doing a 1/2yr course in social work (some sort of cobbled together fakeass degree). Some of them I guess would have gone towards prisons and probation. But I have to say by god that bunch were the thickest bunch of morons I have ever met (and I have met some Swiss Germans in my time I tell you). I remember thinking this lots will probably go on to do vastly more damage screwing things up than any good they might do, and if they did any good at all it'd probably be by accident. Thing is alot of peeps are drawn towards jobs they see as power based due to insecurity and the need to lord it over others.

I think my Prob officer despises the fact I don't have my head down, break down in tears of regret, oh and am somewhat smart. I will get round to the formal complaint at some stage and when I do I am sure the line manager will be facilitated to take out their own petty grudges come job appraisal time. I know avoiding prison and going to a CRC should be something of a punishment and is very lightweight compared to a prison hellhole, but it shouldn't be a kind of mental torture due to the CRCs own sheer incompetence. I should say I have met 1-3 nice/quite professional staff but they do strike me as old school and 'get it', whereas the younger 'ambitious for all the wrong reasons' types are basically a blockage.

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When I started as a PO, I had a case load of around low 30s (varied risk levels) and no IT. I hand wrote reports, supervision plans etc and had them typed up by a secretary. Now people have caseloads of 100, all high risk DV, lifers and sex offenders and a shedload of IT issues that require attention. I can see why clients are unhappy with the level of service they get. An optimum caseload for a Child Protection Social Worker is 15. In reality, the caseloads of social workers is nearer 24. What possible chance has a PO with a caseload of 100 got in terms of best practice? 

I am sympathetic to the plight of the people who speak ill of Probation staff on here although I do not put this down to the 'quality' of the POs themselves. I have heard management defined as 'getting the job done using other people'. The corporate management of Probation (MoJ, NOMS, HMPPS and CRCs) has failed to facilitate the delivery of services to offenders because they have been asked to do the wrong things at the wrong time with the wrong people. The situation will not change until the Probation Service is taken out of the hands of the Prison Service management who, to my mind, have never comprehended the concept of 'Probation', what it can achieve, what it cannot achieve and what systems it needs in order to function effectively. In a nutshell, the wrong people are in charge.

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''In a nutshell, the wrong people are in charge.'' Yes indeed, but I would argue also that a lot of the wrong people are doing the job of probation officer. And 'because' the staff and their line managers are all overloaded THEY are getting away with it. Maladministration, bad practice, (bullying the service user with threats) all going on in a bad turn a blind eye culture of I'm getting paid so that's enough and if its goes wrong, if theres an issue then blame someone else, cover my back and ultimately blame and take it out of the service user cus it must be their fault.

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I think the problem started with Carter. His Reducing Crime, Changing Lives report prompted the joining up of Prisons and Probation and sealed the fate of Probation by putting Prison Management in charge of Probation without acknowledging or understanding the contempt that they had for it (Phil Wheatley was been heard expressing this at a conference in Cambridge shortly after taking on the role, actually asking his management team to keep their lone Probation colleague 'out of the loop' on critical issues). They thought Probation was a waste of time (in a Dail Mail reader sense) and proceeded to manage it accordingly, as they have always managed it in Prisons - with thinly disguised contempt.

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I personally don't think we are scrutinised enough! Good to think we are all caring and professional but given that I have only had one supervision in a year and no one has observed my practise or bothered to look at my entries in donkeys years, it is quite scary what people could get away with. I rely on my service users for the genuine feedback. So long as I get a smattering of positives, a few thankyou cards and people calling me a few months after order expire, I assume I can't be that bad but saying that we cannot always please and part of our job is to enforce and often pass on unpalatable truths. We are always going to be unpopular at times. It ain't no picnic. Good to hear what 'tartan con' has to say.

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Talking about scrutiny, is it just me or do others note various present and recently former justice ministers appearing on TV and they never get asked.