Conversation Starters

On the day that a discussion kicks-off within the portals of the Welsh Assembly seeking to find a way to fix the obviously broken Probation Service, I was particularly struck by these contributions from yesterday:-  

I joined the service after it was no longer social work based but before NOMS. We had a value base that was changing, but still recognisable as social work, albeit with some political influence pushing the enforcement side of things (which could be ignored providing you were prepared to stand up for yourself and your decisions). 

I have no idea what our current value base is. Whatever we are meant to be doing is couched in pretty civil service language that means nothing to me, generally sent in 15 email attachments I can't open and don't have time to read because I'm writing my third type of assessment this week on the same case. 

As far as I can tell my job description is to be all things to all people and to never ever say anything bad about anything. The so called independent parole board appears to have different definitions of risk depending on how full the prisons are and we are either enforcing too much or too little on different days of the week. 

I've always loved my career choice, despite the fact that it's always been a political football - there always been a clear reason and all round benefit in doing what we do. This is nothing short of a farce. We employ hundreds of people doing things like quality audits and development tools. They have no fucking clue about people, about what's possible, about the fact that WE are the ONLY resource we have and we are finite no matter how many resilience and mindfulness briefings they make us attend. 

CRCs are failing but so is NPS and all we get from management is how amazing they are for forcing us to hit meaningless performance targets week after week. The thing is, that to me Probation has looked different within the context of each individual case. Yes there's an organisational overarching objective, but that's achieved in a different way for each person we work with. 

One size fits all doesn't work for cases or for staff and the much feted creativity that TR was meant to promote has been strangled by a real lack of understanding of what the front line role is meant to be. It's broken. I don't think it can be fixed. But it's also breaking the people who encounter the whole sorry mess, which in my book is unforgivable.

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How do you solve a problem like probation? I'm not too sure if that's the right question really. The direction of travel must ultimately depend on the destination you want to arrive at. It's my opinion that probation has changed so much and so often over the last couple of decades that those who work in the service have very different ideas of what the destination should be. 

Social work based? Supervisory and enforcement ethic? Public protection agency? Law enforcement or a post custody monitoring body? I think they're all legitimate arguments of what the service should exist to provide, and for many people their idea of what the service should be will be partly shaped by what the service was like when they joined. 

I think it's worth remembering that someone who joined the service around the time NOMS was created have a fair few years in now and maybe considered by some to be long in the tooth. But there's still people who predate NOMS and they gave a different perception of what the service should be. It's a conundrum that's complicated by wider changes in the criminal justice system and political interference. 

The probation service means too many different things to too many different people, so before someone tries to fix it they need to be clear in their minds what they want the end result to look like. My own personal opinion is that it should be social work orientated and not so focused on law enforcement. But that's just my opinion.

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Engaging with someone around their harmful behaviour is both complex and necessarily unique to that person. Adding in the mandated aspect of Probation work adds further complexity. The only way that I can make sense of, that stands a chance of working, is by establishing a professional rapport and relationship, engaging the individual motivationally, and then, based on thorough and ongoing assessment, collaborative work toward agreed goals. That means a one-to-one relationship with time to be meaningful. Beyond that the relationship needs supporting by others within the organisation and out. A collective focus. I don't care if you call it social, community, therapeutic or probation work. If it does not have those ingredients as a minimum, it is unlikely to deliver substantially.

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Set probation and prison services apart from politics and let the purpose be (re)habilitation and inclusion into society. That way all those people we need with us can be contributing rather than thrown on the scrap heap which is what is happening now. Stop wasting people. Children in schools should be given a diverse spectrum of opportunities rather than everything being focussed on academia. All types of intelligence should be embraced and developed.