Clinging to a Dream

Dear Jim,

Thanks for letting me know of Harry Fletcher’s death last week. I am truly sorry that a great champion of the probation service is now no longer with us.

I have just read about the latest news reports of the scathing coroner’s inquest into the Welsh SFO just reported in the national press. After reading the comments about it in your blog, there is something that struck me.

I trained through the DipSW route in the late 1980s sponsored by the Home Office. We probation office trainees were glad to be entering a profession with a proud tradition. Our social work student counterparts were envious of our higher salary and status, self-delusional on our part I know! In turn, as we became main grade officers, we tut-tutted as we read about the endless child care catastrophes like Baby P and Victoria Climbie and consoled ourselves with the thought that at least we were not in a mess like the social work profession. 

Unlike social workers, we had a strong union, not like the supine and ineffectual BASW. We, in the probation service, had practitioners who were leading lights in respected psycho-therapeutic organisations like the Portman Clinic. We were unaffected by political vicissitudes (more or less), unlike local authority social workers who were always at the mercy of venal local politicians.

How times have changed. Since I retired last year there have been 3 probation debacles reported. TR has been disastrous as you have documented in your blog since 2014. I have no faith that joining CRC staff to HMPPS will improve things. Whilst control of the probation service remains under the thumb of central government, much of the creativity and enterprise of probation officers will continue to be strangled. In contrast, if I was to train now on a DipSW I would not hesitate to practice as a social worker, despite the multiple problems they face like most public sector workers.

Just like the prison service, the probation service has been hollowed out of highly experienced staff. It will take 10-20 years to build up that workforce expertise. Just recruiting and having no staff vacancies will not address the long-standing structural problems.

I came into probation via a science degree. Would I have been accepted as an entrant to the service now? Maybe, but concentrating on graduates from one sector, criminology and psychology, is the antithesis of diversity. We are more than just applied criminologists and psychologists. We draw on many disciplines and rely on practitioners who have varied and rich life experiences. This is what makes us, at our best, always hopeful in looking for change in service users no matter how long or problematic their criminal history. But always tempered by the realism that we are all but flesh and blood. 

I have always been impressed by the humanity shown by my most respected colleagues in treating everyone with dignity and respect yet being vigilant for signs of a relapse or disguised compliance. This is a difficult balancing act and necessitates extended training (15 months is totally inadequate), excellent supervision (haven’t had that for decades!) and a passion for wanting to turn lives around and help society to have fewer victims in future. This all sounds very quaint and unrealistic like watching the TV show The Waltons but compared with the clusterfuck that has unfolded since November and since 2014 with Graying’s butchery, I will continue to cling onto my vision (dreams?) for a better future in the probation service.

You are free to reproduce any of my meanderings but please bear in mind I aim to work agency and will require a reference from my CRC previous employer.

Best wishes,

Anon