Latest From Napo 199

Thanks to the reader for sharing the following:-

Feedback to members from last week's NPS meetings

Attendance Management Policy (AMP) and manager discretion

Following much work by Napo reps nationally and across the divisions it has now been clarified that panels (or other similar formats) will not be used to consider issuing warnings. If this is happening (from 2020 onwards) we need to know. It is acceptable for a manager to discuss with their own line manager or HRBP a tricky case or one where they need additional advice. Napo have made it clear that in these circumstances we would expect the Manager to adjourn the AMP meeting and go away to seek advice then resume the meeting (with Napo rep present) to carry on with decision making process. We are clear that the decision must be made in the context of the meeting on the basis of information available to all present not outside of it. The HR team are working on an improvement plan for the AMP and sickness issues and is seeking to promote a coaching approach where managers are supported to improve their practice in this area. We will be having a further separate dialogue on this so that we can feed in our views.

E3 Review

The new target operating model (TOM) for Probation will effectively replace the E3 operating model so we need to ensure we feed into the discussions on the TOM (which we do via national meetings). The Court workstream is already in place reviewing the varying practice around Courts and other workstreams are being set up which will all feed into PPCF (Probation Programme Consultative Forum) apart from OMiC which we have separate consultation on. There will be a process map for all strands to help us understand how it all fits together and where we can direct our feedback most usefully.

We have been assured that the Job Evaluation reviews we have requested will happen and we will shortly be receiving a plan with timescales for this work. Sonia Flynn has responded to our joint TU letter regarding pay protection so say that some work will now happen to explore this and we will receive more feedback in coming weeks.

HR/Coordination hubs for HR support to SPOs

Some concerns raised about the handling of sensitive employee information by people who are not necessarily as focussed on the discretion needed when working in an open plan office alongside colleagues. This will be followed up on in the roll out to other divisions to make sure that the training captures these aspects.

Staff vacancies

Entrance to PQUIP has been widened which has expanded the pool and there is a steady decrease in the number of vacancies. Recruitment is planned to fill future vacancies anticipated as a result of recent policy announcements and the probation change programme. Cohort 7 started in January and the numbers for Cohort 8 starting in July have been increased. It is thought that NE, NW and Midlands staffing will be about right in terms of numbers by spring this year but London, Thames Valley and SE&E will continue to struggle.

Workloads and safe working practices

There is more work to do on the WMT (workload management tool) and SBC (Specification, Benchmarking and Costing) review and we will be consulted on this. We discussed the workload management strategy and the fact that although lots of work went into developing it there is little proper use of it and many staff and managers are not aware of it.

HMIP recommendations

HMPPS will respond to the report with an action plan and we will be involved in a discussion around this and be able to contribute to it via our TU Engagement meetings.

Probation Change Programme

The transfer in Wales went ahead in December. There are no known pay issues which was the major concern but everyone accepts that this was a much smaller scale than the next stage in 2021. There are lessons to learn from other aspects of the transfer such as training and this is under review to inform the future transfer in England.

The first stage of competition for Probation Delivery Partners (PDPs) started in December, the invitation to tender (ITT) will be issued at the end of January.

New Regional Directors will be in post no later than April and the transition to regions will start in April and end in October.

We discussed the confused / absent messaging around the extension of CRC contracts to 25 June 2021 and the programme team accept there are lessons to learn from this. They will provide to us a simple explanation and make sure this is shared. We noted that some CRCs have shared information helpfully, some less so and NPS not at all, it is important for all staff in the system to receive the same information.

Workforce Programme

There is a wider workforce programme review which goes further than just the reintegration of offender management and letting new contracts.

We specifically discussed the issues of a few groups of staff who don’t have the appropriate qualification for their current/future role. Some of these are a few POs in post since the “Howard gap” in the late 90’s who were recruited by Trusts under very localised arrangements, some of which saw them doing the Probation placements as they would have done previously. Others are staff recruited by CRCs to work as POs who have a recent Social Work qualification that is not appropriate. The other group are those working in management roles which don’t currently require a qualification but who may in future need to move into roles which do or into an organisation which requires a qualification for the same role. The programme team are working on a solution for these groups of staff (there may be more than one solution dependant on circumstances) and will consult with us via PPCF meetings on this. The drive will be to support staff to get the right qualification for the role and retain their skills and experience.

Digital, Data and Technology

The most concrete part of this was the news that after the end of the current CRC contracts in June 2021 all providers of Probation Services will have to use HMPPS systems. This will be useful in some ways (preventing constant outages as systems struggle to communicate with each other) but not in others (some CRCs have case management systems much better than Delius). The spark of hope is that the digital team are now scoping what needs to happen to make HMPPS systems better. This will be a long term and we are not likely to see any change immediately. They are starting from the end user needs (end user being frontline staff) and working from there. They will retain Delius and OASys as background databases (effectively containers for information) but they will design new “user interfaces” to allow staff to do the things they need to do without duplication and double-handling. The team have offered to give more input to us on this and I will liaise with them to arrange some sessions with a key group of members. Importantly they made a big deal of the fact that AT (assistive technology) accessibility has to be built into all system design for HMPPS systems (sadly this doesn’t stretch to contractor systems like SOP) and they are working with DAWN and a group of AT users on this.

Probation Delivery Unit (PDU) Proposal

LDU clusters are transforming to PDUs. We are being consulted on how this will happen however the change includes processes to select PDU Heads which cut across separate discussions we’ve been having about transfers. This means we will reconvene the separate negotiating meeting under the Staff Transfer Agreement heading to discuss the proposals. Siobhan Foreman, Napo’s Manager Member lead, has attended a consultation event with ACO staff and there will be another this week so all feedback from these and from members who’ve contacted us directly will be considered.

We had a presentation on Rehabilitative Culture. This is a new concept for HMPPS but one we were more than happy to welcome. It seeks to embed a rehabilitative culture in all that we do. Policies will be written with this in mind and we will all be encouraged to move away from labelling – the order to use the term “offender” is gone! A two page guide will be issued to staff encouraging us all to consider how we embed rehabilitation in all that we do. I am certain the vast majority of members will not need this but it’s great that the rest of HMPPS is catching up with Probation.

Information Security

There are two elements to this, the first are the issues we raised with the information security team relating to protection of staff information as well as client information. Lucy Demaine attended the meeting to feed back that her team are putting on workshops and designing posters and leaflets to get the message out about this. We have already had the feedback that attendance management panels will no longer be used and now they are looking at the SPDR validation process to assess the information security issues in it. Site visits done by the Information Security Team will now focus on staff awareness to make local action plans.

Information Assurance Officers were recruited on a temporary basis to put in place information sharing agreements. They are now considering recruiting one for each region on a permanent basis to support the work in this area. We have asked that information sharing agreements be stored in a way that is easily accessible across the organisation. Most are stored locally for the LDU or division but we often need to share information across these borders.

In one division a member of staff had their laptop and phone stolen along with their work notebook over a weekend. All of the information they needed to report this to the information security team was not available to them so nothing could be done until Monday. The information security team have 24/7 coverage so that they can deactivate lost or stolen laptops and phones to prevent data breach. The division are now issuing cards like a business card with the relevant numbers to call on one side and space on the other to record asset numbers to make reporting easier. These will need to be kept separately to the equipment obviously. This will be rolled out across NPS.

We also discussed the SSCL data breach. The MoJ have now contacted personally those individuals whose data security was breached if they were assessed as medium risk due to the nature of the information (for example records of some specific training like counter terrorism was viewed to be more risky). Staff have all been given an email box to contact if they are concerned and many are getting in touch to check if their own data has been compromised. Napo’s position on this is clear. The MoJ should be contacting each individual regardless of their risk assessment and informing them of the data security breach and how they will be supported. Napo members are vulnerable because they work in the community and although thankfully rare there have been examples of staff being targeted because of their job in the past. Kate Stock will take this up with the MoJ team and come back to us.

Staff wellbeing

As part of the wider MoJ work on wellbeing they have agreed to set up a Trade Union Wellbeing Stakeholder Group. There will therefore be an initial focus on staff wellbeing and supporting people. We discussed the need for this to move away from the individualised resilience model that tells people made ill by their work that they must “toughen up” or “look after themselves” rather than acknowledging systemic problems and addressing them.

As part of this discussion we also mentioned Structured Professional Support which until the last two months has been underused in NPS. There has been a recent spike in usage however which is unsurprising given the context of several high profile SFO cases and the impact that has on staff both involved and not involved in them. Matt Wilson has commissioned some analysis of the effectiveness of the service and will share this with us. Any feedback from members is welcomed to inform further discussion on this.

We also had a useful discussion about the need to promote a more positive management style at all levels of the organisation and how this can be done especially in the context of the use of policies such as attendance management and the heavily target driven culture mixed with impossible workloads. We will continue to discuss this further.