Pick of the Week 54

It's been some time since we had a roundup of contributions, so here's my pick of the recent crop:-

"I had experienced the feeling of being part of a ‘lesser’ organisation in the eyes of those within the public sector Probation Service and saw how new staff were at times belittled by those they had previously shared offices with."

It was always structured thus. Grayling said so. He knew exactly what what he was doing & knew staff would run with it. He has form: "a management consultant with Burson Marsteller and then their European Marketing Director.... When helping its industry clients to escape environmental legislation or sprucing up the image of some of the most repressive governments on Earth, B-M brings to bear state of the art techniques in manipulating the mass media, legislators and public opinion."

"we have to let go of the past and look at how we can move forward and support those who are working in the ‘now’." From where I sit on the geological scale (probably late Triassic) it's not so much the 'not letting go' as the utter frustration, rage & total despair of watching everything that represented a 30 years career being rubbished & replaced AT VAST PUBLIC EXPENSE by vacuous soundbites from wealthy idiots who want to secure the wealth for themselves.

"CRC is a business - that’s what it’s about." Sound familiar? Back to early 2000's: "We are a law enforcement agency. It's what we are, it's what we do."

That showed the shift away from what had been largely a system of one-to-one rehabilitation and supervision of offenders by people with a social work background whose job was to understand all the factors that influence a person deciding to commit an offence. - Gordon Jackson, a branch official of the probation staff union Napo in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

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This blog made me really sad - I work within a CRC and absolutely despise the way service users are used as "currency " and staff are made to feel that the only thing that is important is meeting ridiculous targets and not loosing the company money - It is unfortunate that there are plenty of other managers with the same attitude as Kelly Elliott and likely to have a massive influence not only on the new staff they're training but on TR2 - if I wanted to work for this kind of business I would have gone to Uni to study business and work for a company that actually remunerated me for meeting targets not bullied and oppressed me as the current CRC does.

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The CRCs are indeed companies - the clue is in the name. Their reason for existence is to make profits and retain and renew their contracts to continue making profits. They care nothing about the probation profession but are prepared to say anything to inspectors to try to hoodwink them into believing they value professionalism. Kelly Elliot clearly believes that transitioning from a brainwashed CRC Manager to an an academic post that she is now able to objectively analyse her experiences. This is clearly not the case. She is herself the new breed of probation staff who passively swallows the corporate lies and narrative hook line and sinker regurgitating this on the pages of the PIs propaganda rag as if it is gospel. 

Her pride in a learner parroting the corporate line should be deeply disturbing. There is now an ever widening gulf emerging between the CRCs and the NPS who are now paid more and given professional status whereas private sector probation is being asset stripped and their workers deprofessionalised. It is a sorry state of affairs. Would NPS staff even bother to protest on behalf of staff in the CRCs? Some staff in the NPS do not even recognise their former colleagues as equivalent to them anymore. Witness the huge absence of solidarity when they received a pay settlement and CRCs weren’t even included because they are nothing to do with real probation.

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I think it's important to keep abreast of what private companies with public service contracts are doing elsewhere and in the round. "CRC is a business - that’s what it’s about." That to me is quite a chilling statement, whether you work in probation or not. It is of course a statement of fact, but there's a lot embedded in that statement that needs pulling apart. Actually, it's an announcement that CRCs are no longer to be considered a public service at all. It's a business, and the focus going forward will be determined by a business model, not on service delivery or best practice.

Decisions will be taken to maximise profit and reduce costs because that's the most effective way for a business to operate. How that might be achieved and what it means for future service provision and employment rights should worry everyone. Qualifications, wages, pensions, caseloads, there's a million ways to squeeze for more profit. And where will probation services be in 5 or 10 years time? Will it be staffed by G4S security guard types earning national minimum wage? Service users being charged for attendance? Who knows, but I'd recommend that in the privatised probation world, staff should look at their employer in the same context as their most dodgy client. It's not the behaviour you see in the office that's important, it's what they're doing elsewhere that counts.

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You are right, and that is what is so bizarre about the whole thing. If we rewind to what was/is the role of probation backalong, it was/is to implement Court Orders and support individuals that are subject to the criminal justice system - which is a statutory service delivered on behalf of the people, for the people to preserve fairness, and ensure an equal service to all. I remember attending preliminary meetings with potential charity stakeholders where the time was still very much that they were pitching to provide a similar 'in terms of the ethical starting point' service. The current bunch of providers were clearly wolves in sheep's clothing, with a takeover by stealth through the implementation of a n increasingly aggressive business model. The disconnect now between how it appeared to start (post split) and the statement ' the CRC is a business' is truly frightening.

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"Let me be perfectly clear: the quantum amount of money available for this deal could never be enough to redress all of the injustices suffered by our members." Bullshit. There's always money in the Magic Money Tree.

• There was enough to pay £80m to the 21 CRCs for EVR, but that was stolen by the privateers & Napo said not a dickie bird
• There was enough money to pay CRCs a further £370m when they spat their dummies out
• There was enough money to let the CRCs keep their fines
• There's always enough money for IT & native clouds
• There was enough money for MoJ bonuses
• There was enough money for POA staff payrises

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"When the Quantum of Solace stands at zero, you have to get away & save yourself" Fleming's words in the book 'You Only Live Twice' which inspired the more recent Bond movie. When everything you care about has been destroyed or no longer cares for you, it's time to get out & care for yourself.

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Divide and rule.

I keep watching the Probation profession with great interest. Largely because it got under my skin and essentially mattered to me, the profession, my former colleagues, the people I sought to fundamentally help, justice, a belief that making a difference was not only possible but evidentially doable. I know there are stalwarts who still hold true to the cause. I think, however, my own faith has faltered for many reasons. Primarily it is because Probation as a collective endeavour does not make sense to me anymore. In consequence I find the prospect of putting myself back in the fray, unappealing, regardless of how many spondoolies are on offer at the end of the month.

Probation needs to make sense again, its reason for being firmly established. PR-ish sound bites are cosmetic. A deeper self perpetuating resonance for Probation needs to be established. In order to do that we need a Probation Service with a central voice, not disparate competing often conflicting interests. I will standby a while longer.

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Why should you get good pay for being data input operatives?

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Not a blog contribution, but I'll round this collection off with something I saw on Facebook recently:-

For those of us at the frontline ‘Getting on top of work’ doesn’t seem to be an option any more. If you show any signs of coping then work is piled on relentlessly. The obvious victims of increased bureaucracy are service users. Constant turnover and staff shortages mean that fire fighting is the norm rather than just holiday periods. Management Information and Monitoring Systems track your performance and smart workers just focus on the key targets as these are the things that can attract unwelcome attention if not met. It would be seen as an unreasonable target if managers were required to give workers adequate time to do quality casework rather than produce the appearance of quality casework.

Unless bureaucracy and caseloads are reduced to manageable levels and the Case Management and Assessment Systems we are compelled to use are designed to monitor less and assist more then there is no chance of being freed up enough to produce real ‘quality work’ that is likely to have a lasting impact.

I was asked the other day by a senior manager who did not have a probation background what I meant by ‘quality work’. It is an intriguing question in a time where some of those I regard as the best practitioners have either left or given up trying to produce quality work as many of those recently appointed as managers have never experienced or seen it in Probation. Some believe quality is entirely quantifiable and that the ideal probation worker is a robot devoid of feelings or clinical judgement/analysis relentlessly ticking boxes and filling forms. Quality work is certainly not about just meeting targets or ticking boxes.

There has always been a tension between seeing the punters and doing the paperwork. When I joined probation in 1987 there was a very simple and logical paper filing system and if this could be replicated electronically it would be more than sufficient to do the job with everything in one place. ‘People not paper’ was a mild complaint at the time. Present case management and assessment systems would do well to replicate those earlier paper files for minimalist efficiency.

Unfortunately there is no demonstration office (Probation lab) that Is available to test the effectiveness of either past, present, or future probation practice experiments. I really wish there was. Even when new software that costs millions is beta tested using real practitioners no particular effort is made to make enhancing practice the goal as those who are designing and testing it have only witnessed or ever done the job In one way and think that is ‘the way’. Those who have done it well in other ways are a dying breed and out of fashion. What is clear is that present systems are clunky cumbersome and neither effective or joined up. Regrettably we just plough on regardless entering data like automata.

David A Raho