Cultural Reflections 2

I notice that in parallel with yesterday's discussion there was some similar introspection over on Facebook:-  

Someone close to me was explaining about a friend who had got into trouble and was sent to prison. How was her Probation Officer I asked? She said ‘the lady at Court was nice’ and then ‘her Probation Officer is about 21 and awful’. So - stereotypes of any type are odious. This is not about age per se, this is not about anyone individually, but I think this reflects a new cultural attitude, a pride (as in lack of humility), a lack of awareness of privilege, a lack of curiosity, a lack of wonder about people. There are too many frankly unkind and slap dash POs coming through. There is a culture that rewards this. Someone said to me once (probably when I was young and they could see a certain arrogance in me) - ‘you have to earn the right to speak into someone’s life’. It’s true, you do. If you don’t bother with this, you become ‘awful’ - which not a good look.

Nicely said. ‘‘Twas ever thus.

Oh you mean that The Probation Service does NOT reflect our communities and is filled with university educated and upwardly mobile, young, white females? Surely not?

Perhaps this is a manifestation of the culture of probation practice. However, I know some young POs who are considerate and caring and go above and beyond in their work with those serving sentences. Maybe she was unlucky as there are always bad apples!

Is this about making younger or inexperienced officers feel bad? There are POs of all ages and experience who are not very good at their jobs. I know a huge raft of younger officers who are doing an incredible job in challenging circumstances. Also some of our clients often take a dislike to their officer because they are actually doing a good job! Sometimes it can take weeks or months of mutual relationship building to reach a good understanding of the purpose of the whole thing, and having to carry out tasks such as enforcement can impact on this, but it doesn't always mean that the person is doing a bad job.

No I was at pains to say it’s not about age it’s about the relationship between professional experience/culture of the organisation. And the relationship between maturity and professionalism. I want to know if something has changed in the organisation as many have observed it - I’m not the only one who sees it. But how to go beyond sense and into evidence I don’t know. User voice is no more in London.

I was a PO for over 10 years. Temping for the last 4 years. I had my temp contract terminated because an offender I had inherited from a female PO put in an official complaint about me for being intimidating and the SPO terminated my contract without an investigation! The offender in question is a sex offender who was annoyed at me because I didn't change his appointment because he wanted to go on a date! I had already changed his appointment due to his employment. He said his previous PO would have allowed him to go on his date and I was being unreasonable. He missed his appointment so I sent him a warning letter. He showed up to his next appointment and then refused to engage in the supervision session, didn't wanna take his sun glasses off, refused to answer any questions. He was on licence and was refusing to engage in the ARMS assessment. I reminded him of his licence conditions and the part about recall. Then he claimed I was intimidating him had upset him so much he was going to go home and get drunk and do drugs. Btw, I was his first male officer! The SPO said that I should have been more understanding. Understanding of what? I reminded her of his licence conditions and the possibility of an SFO because no ARMS had been done before and the previous PO had never enforced any missed appointments or enforced his licence.

I had only been 21 for 2 months when I started in the Probation service in 2014, and I found it tough with some older male service users, as they took one look at me and judged my ability and knowledge as they had children older than me. Now I’m 25 and I still regularly get asked how old I am, which is very frustrating when you are trying to be taken seriously. However, sometimes it is professionals in Probation and other services that seem to judge my ability more than the offenders. This job has taught me not to judge a book by its cover, and I would hope that my colleagues do not judge me by my age, but by my practice.

Absolutely it’s all about the practice and that is what I care about. I really didn’t mean to offend and just want to encourage all new POs who care and are doing a great job. I remember well being a new trainee and it was very stressful and very rewarding, it’s an extraordinary job.

No offence taken, just wanted to highlight how this job can be extra tough on young PO’s! 

Very very true!

I think the process of how we no longer look for the welfare aspects reflects how people are trained. I don’t think age comes into it if you really do care and want to make a difference. I think as individuals our lives shape us and as such some youngsters coming through have some real life experiences. So your right age is not the factor it’s about the care of what happens inside and outside of probation. If this could be on the training agenda then I think we’d have some pretty good officers to keep the service going forward.

Just spoken to a new PQIP recruit who explained the new NPS selection process and he said it’s resulted in a far more diverse intake. Great! But I still don’t see the absolute need for a degree.

I was having a discussion about this very thing this week. Sadly, I think with the split, many amazing experienced officers have gone and have been replaced with new who can then be moulded into the new way of working, hitting targets, paperwork takes priority, 10 minutes per service user, call centres and not understanding the relationship between NPS and CRC or between the service users across the board. You can quite easily have a person on NPS now and never know that their cousin, brother in-law and partner may all be on CRC. I think it's a sad reflection of how the Government have broken this amazing service.

Great discussion. I agree that there are good and bad officers of all ages. I think that the managers are an important part of the Equation.

A manager who does not meet probationers face to face tends to see issues in terms of enforcement and this rubs off on younger officers. Also we have some managers who appear to have put themselves up for the SPO role because they do not want to work with our client group. It worries me that some senior staff lose sight of the fact that a good quality relationship with a probationer is the most effective tool we have!