What Ever Happened to Violet Towers?

This blog has been running for a long time and although I try my best, sometimes I miss something important and it can take a jog from a reader to highlight the gaps:- 

Hi Jim, Found this article from the past and thought it was interesting, it's titled, “MPs voice probation service fears” and was dated Wed 27/07 2011.

A quick Google search brings up the following article from The Independent, which I quote in full because I only gave it a fleeting mention at the time:-

MPs voice fears over probation service paperwork

It is "staggering" that probation officers can spend as little as a quarter of their time dealing directly with offenders, MPs said today.

The Commons Justice Committee criticised the "tick-box, bean-counting culture" which has left staff tied up filling in paperwork rather than supervising and helping to rehabilitate criminals. The MPs recommended that probation trusts should be given greater independence and said there was an "urgent need" for scarce resources to be focused on the front line.

Publishing a report into the role of the probation service in England and Wales, the committee called on the Ministry of Justice to commission an external review of the National Offender Management Service (Noms). The MPs questioned whether Noms, which was established in 2004 and effectively merged the prison and probation services, was delivering good value for money, giving probation trusts the support and freedom they need, or co-ordinating the supervision of offenders in jail and the community. They raised particular concerns about "micro-management" by Noms and the volume of form-filling probation staff must do to comply with the agency's targets. 

The report said: "We accept that probation officers have to do a certain amount of work which does not involve dealing directly with offenders. However, it seems to us staggering that up to three quarters of officers' time might be spent on work which does not involve direct engagement with offenders. No-one would suggest that it would be acceptable for teachers (who also have to do preparatory work and maintain paperwork) to spend three quarters of their time not teaching. The value which really effective probation officers can add comes primarily from direct contact with offenders. While we do not want to impose a top-down, one-size-fits-all standard, it is imperative that Noms and individual trusts take steps to increase the proportion of their time that probation staff spend with offenders."

Justice Committee chairman Sir Alan Beith, a Liberal Democrat MP, said: "Probation is an essential part of the criminal justice system and at its best the probation service delivers community sentences which are tough, challenging offenders to change their offending lifestyles. The ability of probation professionals to undertake effective work directly with offenders has been hindered by a tick-box culture imposed by the National Offender Management Service which has focused predominantly on prisons and has micro-managed probation."

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of probation service union Napo, added: "The report confirms that the National Offender Management Service has been a major problem from the start. Napo warned in 2004 that Noms would be a bureaucratic nightmare. It is scandalous that probation staff now spend 75% of their time on form-filling and responding to centrally driven emails."

Mr Fletcher went on: "The last 10 years has witnessed a massive rise in the constant Government monitoring of probation staff to the detriment of face-to-face contact with offenders. This does not enhance public protection but undermines it. This flawed historical trend must be reversed."

Probation and Prisons Minister Crispin Blunt said: "I heartily agree that the probation service needs to be freed up from unnecessary red tape in order to focus on reducing the appalling rates of reoffending. Half of the people we release from our jails are re-convicted within a year of getting out. That's why we're making changes to enable probation officers to use their judgment and discretion more widely. The culture of target-setting and box-ticking is over."

But shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan MP claimed the Government was "taking a big gamble with public safety" by "cutting too far and too fast" in the prison and probation services. He said: "It is irresponsible to shed thousands of front line staff from the probation service at the time they are expected to take on a greater role in working with offenders in communities. Tough community sentences can be used as effective punishment and to reform offenders, but if they are to work, they must be properly resourced and the public must have confidence in their ability to act as a punishment and a deterrent."

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Justice Committee chairman Sir Alan Beith, a Liberal Democrat MP, said the value of a probation officer was "what he can do to turn an offender's life around, to make the offender think differently".

He said: "We had offenders in front of us who talked about how that relationship can work and how it needs to be a strong and assertive one - not just someone being friendly, but someone who's challenging them to think differently."

He added: "It was brought to us in evidence by frustrated probation officers who said that it was still a problem for them. I think it was micro-management, it was box-ticking, it was all the things we've come to associate with a target culture which really do need to be changed." Sir Alan said Noms needed "completely restructuring" and there needed to be a move in the direction of "local commissioning of both prison and probation".

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke said he was "staggered" by the quarter figure.

He said: "We knew it was a problem and we've been addressing it. It goes back to a failed system of management where you pile targets and micro management and stipulate to people what they should do, which we've been getting rid of. I've already started addressing this. We've reduced the number of targets, we've streamlined the national standards, we've said that we're going to give probation officers back their professional discretion."

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I wrote about the Justice Affairs Committee report at the time, particularly highlighting the harm being caused by OASys:-

Saturday, 30 July 2011

Good and Bad News

Wednesday was a good day for probation. From early morning to late evening it was all over the news. Friends outside the Service noticed. Even my mother said she heard something about 'probation officers not seeing people long enough.' For a Service that normally has such a low profile it was good to hear blanket media coverage of the Justice Affairs Commitee report earlier that day. Ok there are 46 recommendations and the figure of only 24% of our time being spent seeing people is old news from a NAPO survey, but at least we had the public's attention for a day and the message about form-filling got through.

I'm all too aware of the danger in repeating myself, but the blame for all this time being spent doing other stuff was not placed firmly at the door of OASys, the Offender Management System that makes grown men and women weep and drives them to drink, or worse. It's not just me that thinks this. Take a look at this article from the Guardian yesterday by a colleague with 10 years experience and their thoughts on it. The Justice Affairs Committee really don't understand what OASys is in reality and the damage it is doing to the Service. The trouble is that words are really insufficient to adequately describe the futility of the whole damned thing. Not only does it take hours and hours to fill in, it really doesn't deliver what it is supposed to: -

"It's remarkable that the justice committee largely confines discussion of eOASys to a single section, bizarrely entitled "the management of risk". eOASys do not provide a statistical calculation of the risk of a person causing serious harm to others, merely a "rubber stamp" of reliability for an officer's own comments, entered repeatedly under pages of headings. Seeing eOASys and risk assessment as synonymous does practitioners a disservice: it's a demoralising sign of how little trust is placed in our judgment and experience, and can rob us of confidence in our own abilities by institutionalising reliance on a limited tool."

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But what is particularly interesting looking back some nine years later and reflecting on what probation has become under the dead hand of HMPPS civil service command and control, is that the mojo has all but been completely squeezed out of the endeavour, with staff too frightened, disinterested or unenlightened to speak out. 

The passage I quoted is from an Opinion piece in the Guardian at the time by a PO using the pseudonym Violet Towers and I rather wish I'd quoted it in full:-

Probation officers don't need telling off

I know we spend more time on forms than people – but it's the government that needs to realise the purpose of the service

Probation red tape: Probation officers told to spend more time with offenders and less on paperwork." I could have done without a telling off from BBC News before my breakfast. The media has misunderstood the justice select committee's report as chastising naughty officers who prefer forms to people, missing important points about bureaucratic culture. I've been working in probation for 10 years, and the committee's summary is a pretty accurate picture of the "tick-box culture" that dominates the organisation.

Having said that, I don't think the report fully grasps how much of the 75% figure (the percentage of a probation officer's time not spent dealing with offenders) is taken up with computerised forms. The "electronic Offender Assessment System" – eOASys – was introduced in 2003 and described during my training as the most important task we undertake. In it, officers input information on an individual, ranging from details of their offence(s) to their accommodation, education, mental health, approaches when faced with problems and drug and alcohol use. Ratings are given to show the extent to which they display certain traits or problems. These are aggregated and weighted to produce figures for the statistical likelihood of their reconviction.

eOASys must be carried out before reports are prepared for courts and parole boards, at the start of any supervision, at least every 16 weeks while a case is in the community and at least every year for most prisoners, as well as when supervision ends, and following significant events – such as further arrest. A full eOASys takes five or six hours, and I generally have about five or six to do per 37.5-hour working week. Some reviews are quicker than others, but the time still adds up – particularly considering the slowness and unreliability of the IT. The repetitive nature of the task is very frustrating, as is the format: human beings' lives and minds do not often fit well into discrete categories and neat boxes to rate 0, 1 or 2.

It's remarkable that the justice committee largely confines discussion of eOASys to a single section, bizarrely entitled "the management of risk". eOASys do not provide a statistical calculation of the risk of a person causing serious harm to others, merely a "rubber stamp" of reliability for an officer's own comments, entered repeatedly under pages of headings. Seeing eOASys and risk assessment as synonymous does practitioners a disservice: it's a demoralising sign of how little trust is placed in our judgment and experience, and can rob us of confidence in our own abilities by institutionalising reliance on a limited tool.

This reliance means the forthcoming "relaxation" of national standards is going to be a major change. From drafts I've seen so far, the standards are almost being done away with: for example, pages of detail on how and when sentence planning should take place is replaced by the statement "there must be a sentence plan". Probation staff are used to bosses chucking the baby out with the bathwater (or chucking us three dozen babies and an inch of bathwater, and blaming us when their faces are still mucky five minutes later) but this is quite staggering, and seems to be motivated by producing a privatisation-friendly environment rather than a supportive framework for effective, defensible work.

The justice committee report is, however, strong on the importance of the professional relationship with clients in effective work: this is certainly not a new idea, but it has been sidelined by politicians terrified of sounding "soft on crime". In my area, the notion of "the working relationship" is presently being sold back to us as if it's brand new thinking. Interacting meaningfully is now a radical innovation called "offender engagement".

This comes hot on the heels of an initiative pushing target-hitting like never before: daily meetings at which everyone's performance is questioned, with detailed and sometimes individualised figures circulated to all during the week. For a time in 2010, officers were expected to attend a meeting with an assistant chief officer to explain a single missed target. After all this, someone notices that it's taking up quite a lot of our time to jump through all these hoops. I could scream.

To address the problems of bureaucracy, the government needs to get a coherent idea of what the probation service is for; eOASys and target-ticking have become ends in themselves. As the committee says, leadership and courage will be needed. Kenneth Clarke showed both – as a knit-yer-own-hummus lefty Guardianista, I didn't exactly expect to end up respecting him more than any of his former Labour counterparts – but David Cameron has made it clear that his views are not what he wants from a justice secretary. I expect to be replaced by a robot within the next five years.

Violet Towers has worked in probation for 8 years, the majority of which as a probation officer. She writes using a pseudonym, and posts on Cif as Violetforthemoment

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The article generated some lively comments and Violet responded:-

Good morning, thanks for the comments. I haven't got a lot of time cos I'm off to a meeting shortly but will try to answer a couple of points raised.

"You've worked in the probation service for ten years and you still need a government standard to tell you when you should start preparing a sentence plan? Do surgeons need government standards telling them where to cut? For crying out loud, are you really so incapable of managing even your own time without a government standard telling you what to do and when?"

The point of that para, as I hoped to get across with the baby-bathwater thing, was that we are going from National Standards being over-prescriptive micro-management which I personally responded to in a similar fashion to you, to virtually no standard being set at all. We need to have a standard to be held accountable to, and to guard against poor practice (whether it's through laziness, misunderstanding what's required, or new officers struggling to adapt to higher caseloads), and I think most people would agree that for any job really, but a single sentence doesn't seem to be sufficient. The baby's gone out with the bathwater. I really welcome the chance to have more control over managing my time as at the moment I feel I have virtually none. Unfortunately I don't think this is the whole aim of the standards' relaxation: having virtually nothing in place makes it easier for a company taking us over to impose their own over-the-top sets of prescriptive standards. Hope this makes things clearer?

"Experience counts for nothing these days, it seems. Ignoring clinical practitioners' experience and wisdom is de rigeur in the NHS, for example. We now live in a culture of The Suit Knows Best."

Definitely. Managerialism is destroying probation, and my ma in the NHS says things are similar for her. It drives me crazy to have a desk-warmer telling me excitedly about how they've come up with a great new initiative claled 'offender engagement' - pretending they've invented the way I would have been working were it not for all the forms they make me fill in.

"The problem is exacerbated when government culls (largely higher paid senior) staff and either fails to replace them, or replaces them with lower salaried juniors. Said juniors require guidance in the form of managerial instruction or a clearly defined mandate."

Agree about the changes in staff demographics. We lost a lot of senior probation officers (the grade that line manages POs) recently, mainly very experienced people, cos of some SMASHING idea about having POs do part of their jobs (line managing PSO grade colleagues), without the SPO salary of course. This has been backpedalled like crazy but all those members of staff are still gone, so who's going to be boosted up in a hurry to replace them when management accept their folly? Same with office managers - the post was abolished a couple of years ago with SPOs doing the work, again with experienced staff leaving, but now they're being reintroduced.

"The same is happening in social work, teaching and nursing. Doctors are trying to avoid it. Far too much time is spent filling in forms, writing care plans / lesson plans and not enough caring for the patient (client) or teaching. The skills of doing are fading away."

Yes, yes, yes. All the form-filling that was supposed to record what you were doing in the early days has ballooned and become an end in itself. As I said, for probation I think it's because no government in the past 20 years or so has been able to decide what they want us to be.

"All we need to know is offender obiding by the rules of their probation. Tick a few boxes."

I didn't have a lot of space to expand on the last para re the purpose of probation but, though I disagree with your view of what we're for, I agree that confusion over purpose has led to a lot of this trouble. Boateng telling us "we're a law enforcement agency, that's what we are, that's what we do" a few years ago, huge focus on risk management in the forms of filling out forms to cover our arses - then down the line they realise that something isn't working, because they ran away with the first ill-thought-out idea that they came up with. I hope the Committee's report will be helpful in elucidating some of these difficulties.

"But the whole point of reducing silly standards and the absurd time wasting bureaucracy is precisely so that POs can spend more time with offenders, relying instead on POs to be able to manage their day themselves. FFS, running a diary/taking responsibility for managing your own work load isn't exactly hard..."

Agreed! But it is a worry - and one that the select committee addressed - that POs who have been trained to operate in the current culture and to see eOASys as their fundamental task are going to struggle at least initially when the crutch is taken away. This isn't necessarily their fault - the change in emphasis making the forms the job is all a lot of officers have known. So it'll be interesting to see what is done to support people through the change and what people make of what is sadly for some a rather new way of working.

"OTOH, too many are I suspect worried that when the shit hits the fan they won't have 'all standards were met' as an excuse behind which they can hide."

Sadly I agree, though I'm not sure exactly how many this applies to - some people don't know how to work any other way, and some don't want to. There are people working in probation who are lazy and don't care as long as they get paid, just like anywhere else.