HMI Sticks Knife in TR

Preface

Before I launch into today's offering I feel the urgent need to call out the mendacity of the MoJ and the utter cynical news management by civil servants, paid for by us in order that the public can be deliberately misled and 'bad news' buried. And make no mistake, ever-so-nice Rory Stewart played his part in yesterday's fake news story about prison violence reducing in order to save his job, so that the Working Links collapse could be shunted off to the news graveyard of Friday afternoon. No doubt the same minister authorised 'bookending' the bad news with another fake news story this morning about satellite tracking of offenders. And this is the typical behaviour of the mendacious government department that run HMPPS with an iron grip and will run the whole of a reunified probation service if the current Napo campaign is successful. 

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It's now quite clear that the MoJ spin doctors were aware Dame Glenys Stacey was about to stick the knife into the whole TR project, nicely timed with the Working Links collapse and her report on Dorset, Devon and Cornwall CRC does not mince its words in the press release:-  

Chief Inspector welcomes government action over Working Links and publishes damning report on Dorset, Devon and Cornwall CRC

Dame Glenys Stacey, HM Chief Inspector of Probation, has welcomed government action to ensure the continued operation of three private probation companies whose parent company, Working Links, has announced it is going into administration.

The need for an urgent government response, in the interests of protecting the public, is underlined by a deeply troubling report released today by Dame Glenys, following an inspection of one of the Working Links CRCs – Dorset, Devon and Cornwall (DDC).

As soon as the results of the DDC inspection in November 2018 were apparent, Dame Glenys advised the government that intervention was necessary, the first time she has recommended this course of action. It is the first CRC in HMI Probation’s 2018-19 inspection schedule to be rated as ‘Inadequate’, the lowest rating.

Inspectors found staff were under-recording the number of riskier cases because of commercial pressures. They were also completing individuals’ sentence plans to meet performance targets, without actually meeting the offender.

In the report, Dame Glenys said these were “immutable lines” which had been crossed. She said: “The professional ethos of probation has buckled under the strain of the commercial pressures put upon it here, and it must be restored urgently.”

Today, Dame Glenys welcomed the government’s “swift action” in moving to ensure the three CRCs under the wider Working Links banner are protected and can continue to safeguard the public. Working Links has three CRCs, in Wales and the south west. The government has agreed that Seetec, owners of Kent, Surrey and Sussex CRC, will take over the three Working Links CRCs.

Dame Glenys said: “This should be a turning point. Ministers recently took the decision to terminate all 21 CRC contracts early, next year. The Secretary of State is now considering what comes next. Our CRC inspection evidence shows a variable picture but it is one in which the provision of services in most cases is wanting, often significantly so.

“We find probation services delivered by the National Probation Service, for higher risk individuals, to be good, overall. It is not easy to change the model for delivery by CRCs of a complex service for over 154,000 medium and lower-risk offenders every year. But the future model must preserve the ethos of probation, and respect and nurture the probation profession itself. The alternative is made clear in the thoroughly dispiriting Dorset, Devon and Cornwall CRC report.”

That report records CRC staff telling inspectors they believed the way Working Links was operating was “contrary to the core values and purpose of probation”, with no direction or any strategy for improvement.

Staff, inspectors concluded, “are trapped in a spiral of decline. The imperative to meet task-related contractual performance targets and so avoid service credits (financial penalties) dominates working life”.

Dame Glenys was particularly troubled by two aspects:

• All cases in Working Links CRCs are assigned a blue, red, amber or green rating, based on their level of risk of harm and/or of reoffending. This rating determines the resources which will be allocated to them. Cases rated as ‘red’ require the most frequent contact and more interventions. The report noted: “Practitioners told us they refrained from case-appropriate assessments in some instances to limit the numbers of ‘red cases’ that have to be seen every week. This is an immutable line crossed. It seriously compromises the CRC’s understanding of the caseload and the resources required to manage the work safely and effectively. What is more, it compromises probation itself in those cases.”
• A key element of CRC work is to involve the individuals in planning the progress of their sentences from the courts. While there was sufficient engagement with individuals in most Cornwall cases, it was insufficient in the majority of those in Devon and Dorset. Too frequently, inspectors found, there was no plan at all. The report noted: “This is exemplified in one case by the inspector’s observation that “the plan was completed to meet a target, so was done before the responsible officer met the service user, with the service user having been turned away from his induction appointment because the CRC had not yet allocated the case.” The report noted that this, too, was an immutable line crossed.

Dame Glenys said: “The Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall CRC is not delivering probation services to anywhere near the standards we and the public expect.”

Inspectors found good Through the Gate services for people leaving prison. These services are outsourced in a well-contracted and properly-resourced scheme. But, Dame Glenys said: “Most other work is of poor quality, and simply not enough meaningful work is being done. Instead, effort is focused disproportionately on reducing the risk of any further contractual (financial) penalty. For some professional staff, workloads are unconscionable.”

Some officers had on average of between 80-100 cases, with some caseloads reaching 168 – an unmanageable workload. CRC staff had been cut by one-third since 2015 and one manager described the pressure as “mind-blowing”. Courts had very little confidence in the CRC.

Staff felt they had little support and had not been consulted in a staff survey since 2015. The report noted: “There were many concerns about the personal safety of staff in operational offices.”

The Inspectorate has previously expressed concerns about work in the Gloucestershire area (part of the Working Links’ Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire CRC), where inspectors found that work to protect the public and reduce reoffending work was poor. HMI Probation will next week start inspecting the Working Links’ Wales CRC.

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This is not just a report about a failing Working Links CRC - it's a condemnation of the whole TR project:-

1. Organisational delivery

Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service’s (HMPPS) notification to terminate this and all other CRC contracts early has led to confusion among the staff in this CRC about the direction of the organisation. Staff at all levels voiced their strong commitment to the probation service, but perceive the way that Working Links is operating this business to be contrary to the core values and purpose of probation. There has been an absence of direction, as managers experience the constraints of working towards an exit plan. There is no strategy or direction to improve the quality of core probation work. 

Staff in DDC CRC are trapped in a spiral of decline. The imperative to meet taskrelated contractual performance targets and so avoid service credits (financial penalties associated with performance levels below contractual targets) dominates working life. There is a high staff turnover, and professional staff numbers are reducing. Several probation officers have taken up employment with the NPS in the last year. Recruitment is proving difficult in this area. 

There are examples of positive work in the CRC, exemplified by the development of work with women, the use of community hubs for inter-agency work, the maintenance of integrated offender management (IOM) and the range of structured interventions available. There are serious risks to these services in the current operating environment, however. For example, the number of community hubs is reducing.

Leadership

A Working Links vision and strategy set out the aspirations of: Providing a great service, being a great place to work, delivering ambitious growth, being pioneering – innovative yet responsible. This vision provides the basis of the DDC CRC annual service plan and continuous improvement plan. 

All grades of staff believe that services delivered by the CRC are driven exclusively by financially linked contractual targets, and that little of the Working Links vision has come to fruition; 94 per cent of staff surveyed stated that the CRC does not prioritise the quality of service delivered. 

There has been a marked change in the relationship between Working Links and the CRC since early 2018 with the announcement of contract termination by October 2020. This has been characterised by increased financial controls, and reduction of training and human resource advisor capacity. At senior management level, there is a perceived loss of corporate coherence between Working Links and the CRC, limited financial authority, and increased financial constraints to the point of disruption of service delivery, particularly in the areas of unpaid work, ICT and estates. 

The business risk register identifies a range of business risks assessed as having up to a likely probability of occurring but no more than a minor impact. We felt that the impact of these risks was underestimated. There is not a single mention in the risk register about the quality of services delivered. Risk mitigation, identified in the DDC annual service plan, has no reference to the role of middle managers in supporting and developing staff through the oversight and supervision of work. The CRC has an array of quality assurance processes that have had little impact on the quality of services delivered. 

The operating model is based on group delivery of many of the elements of the sentence. This includes group induction of all cases. On one occasion, we saw 20 people being inducted by one member of staff; the planned ratio is one member of staff for six individuals.

Delays in accessing rehabilitation activity requirements (RARs) and accredited programmes compound the resource difficulties for responsible officers. There is evidence that practitioners understand the operating model – the ‘BRAG’ case assessment system, in particular – as solely a method to control the allocation of their time and not to support an individualised, high-quality service. Practitioners told us that they refrained from case-appropriate assessments in some instances, to limit the numbers of ‘red cases’ that have to be seen every week. This is an immutable line crossed. It seriously compromises the CRC’s understanding of the caseload and the resources required to manage the work safely and effectively. What is more, it compromises probation itself in those cases. Two initiatives are about to stretch resources still further, as outlined below. 

Firstly, responsible officers located in operational hubs hold up to 162 cases, assessed as requiring contact every 30 days by telephone. We have previously expressed our concerns about this approach: there is no evidence to suggest that it is valid; instead, we believe that it limits the potential to effect change in individuals. Current resource problems will be compounded by the new contractual requirement for minimum levels of face-to-face contact in all bar stand-alone unpaid work cases. This will limit the number of cases supervised in the operational hubs and increase the number of cases held by community-based responsible officers. 

Secondly, the CRC has previously used layer 1 Offender Assessment System (OASys) – a limited assessment – in the majority of cases. Efforts to improve the quality of work has led to the re-adoption of the more detailed layer 3 OASys assessment for most cases. This could lead to improvements in the CRC’s understanding of the risks and needs of the caseload, and provide a platform for a more individualised service. The resource commitment that this entails has yet to be fully integrated into the organisation’s measure of workload, and presents a further challenge to an already stretched operational resource, with no additional resource identified to undertake this work.

Staff

The CRC’s Justice Innovation Unit (which works across all three Working Links CRCs) has developed a workload indicator tool that suggests that there is sufficient capacity to manage the caseload requirements if all posts are occupied. The perception of most responsible officers surveyed (72 per cent) is that the workload is unmanageable.

Caseloads range from 18 to 102 for probation officers and from 14 to 168 for probation service officers. In some offices, the average caseload is between 80 and 100. This is unmanageable, and puts professional staff in an invidious position. At the time of the inspection, the workload indicator did not take into account the additional time required to complete layer 3 OASys work. Similarly, it did not reflect an agreed commitment to incorporate the additional time required to deliver face-toface work in almost every case.

One manager commented that: 

“People are so stretched that we have lost sight of what it takes to rehabilitate and to protect the public. Quality is about building relationships, doing the work, but people don’t have the time to do this; we are over-processed and it is mind-blowing. Even just to send a letter, there are too many processes and you do not dare step out of that process”. 

Middle managers report high workloads, with one manager reporting they had direct responsibility for as many as 27 staff. There is little time for detailed and reflective supervision. Continual reminders about performance targets dominate the work of responsible officers, at the expense of considered work with individuals. 

The deficiencies identified in practice indicate a staff group without the opportunity or capacity to develop and apply the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to manage the requirements of the caseload to a high quality. There were, of course, some practitioners who demonstrated good practice, but this was far from the norm. 

There has been a reduction in overall staff numbers by one-third since February 2015, in mostly corporate and administrative roles. A management document sent to the inspection team indicates a potential future ‘end state’ which includes further staff reductions. The Dorset offices are almost entirely dependent on agency staff at probation officer grade. Managers have expressed concern about the level of service provided, with some of the agency staff employed being unable to work to required standards; this is exacerbated by insufficient management supervision. 

The CRC has retained a commitment to training probation officers through the Professional Qualification in Probation (PQiP), although the numbers involved (currently two new-starts) do not match the organisation’s need for staff trained to this level. 

The supervision of responsible officers is almost entirely focused on performance and targets rather than managing risk of serious harm and safeguarding. Only one officer in twelve could identify an example when a supervision session has included discussion about a child safeguarding matter. Just over one-third of staff surveyed indicated that they receive supervision that enhances and sustains high-quality work with service users. 

There is an approach to quality management across the three CRCs, led by Working Links’ Justice Innovation Unit. Quality management work is delivered via an observation policy, case auditing process and feedback system (the ‘Learning Loop’). A detailed quality team schedule describes the range of activity to be undertaken. The approach has made no discernible difference to recurring problems in key issues, such as enforcement and sentence planning. 

Less than 20 per cent of staff thought that there was sufficient access to training, or that there was a culture of learning and continuous improvement. A detailed ‘learning and development’ offer indicates a wide range of opportunities, but there is evidence that it is not well deployed. This was illustrated by recent spousal assault risk assessment (SARA) training, where only 5 of 31 planned sessions were delivered owing to non-attendance both by participants and facilitators. 

There has not been a staff survey since 2015 and, although the CRC plans to conduct such an exercise, there is caution at a senior level about what this would achieve. The absence of an up-to-date staff survey limits the CRC’s understanding of levels of staff satisfaction and the reasons behind them. 

There has been poor engagement with the trades unions in the last two years, following disputes over roles and grades for unpaid work staff. This has improved recently as a result of agreed new contractual requirements for additional face-toface supervision. 

There is a keen sense (72 per cent of staff surveyed) that insufficient attention is paid to staff safety and wellbeing, and there were many reports of staff put at risk in a range of operational settings.