AGM 2020 Motions

It's that time of year for Napo members to vote on the order in which Motions will be considered at the virtual AGM being held in October. All are worthy, including significant constitutional changes that will see the number of Branches reduce from 23 to 14 representing the new regional NPS structure, but the following particularly caught my attention. All can be viewed here and voting closes at Noon on Monday 7th September:-

2. Increasing diversity in Probation 

This AGM notes that whilst the recruitment drive in probation is welcome, there is a growing lack of diversity in those recruitment with the majority of PQiP recruits being young white women. In order to have a workforce that fully represents the communities they work with the MoJ must address this issue. This AGM calls on Napo HQ to demand that the MOJ to: 

• publish their recruitment diversity statistics, 

• work with Napo to increase diversity in probation to carry out research, 

• identify barriers experienced by those seeking entry from a diverse background, 

• to published the results of the current Pathway to Progression pilot once it has concluded. 

Proposer: Professional and Training Network

3. Professional Role Boundaries 

AGM notes motions passed in recent years that seek to address de-professionalisation of probation work through blurring of role boundaries. Historically, it has been acknowledged that work involving high risk of serious harm cases, or those of greater complexity requiring a high degree of professional judgement, should only be managed by Band 4 probation officers or above. 

In both NPS and CRCs the distinction between which cases are managed at Band 4 and Band 3 has continued to become blurred. In NPS the introduction of Case Management Support (CMS) allows for extensive co-working of cases, while in CRCs the definition of who is qualified to be a Responsible Officer varies from business to business. 

Napo has attempted to address this problem nationally through the creation of a national register of practitioners and pay progression linked to professional development. Progress has been slow, however, and many staff continue to be responsible for work beyond their pay grade. With the re-unification of casework there is an opportunity to reassert professional role boundaries. This AGM demands: 

• the establishment of a professional register, 

• clear and consistent guidance across all businesses about what constitutes band 3 and band 4 work, 

• meaningful Continuous Professional Development linked to pay progression. 

Proposer: Kent, Surrey and Sussex Branch

4. Virtual Supervision? 

This AGM believes the relationship between a client and their Probation Officer is one best built on face to face contact. This AGM understands the MoJ has recently interviewed some staff currently working from home about the effectiveness of ‘remote’ supervision. Those interviewed have been left with the distinct impression the MoJ interviewers had limited knowledge about the depth and skills involved in managing probation clients and may be seeking ways in which to justify shutting offices and moving towards more remote working outside of COVID recovery. This contradicts the findings of recent Inspection reports criticising various CRCs for poor risk management via remote supervision. 

AGM believes long term remote working, instead of face to face supervision, will seriously limit the ability to assess and manage risk. It will impact on building relationships within which “interventions” and influence can take place, thereby damaging our effectiveness and our personal and professional reputations. AGM instructs Napo Officers and Officials to ensure any move to dilute face to face supervision is vigorously challenged unless backed up by evidence and appropriate training. 

Proposer: London Branch

6. Prison OM role boundaries 

This AGM believes NPS staff working in prisons are not being properly recognised or valued for their roles and their role boundaries appear to be unclear to many probation, prison and parole board staff and colleagues. All staff should be equally valued. 

This AGM notes redeployment of NPS staff in prisons as part of the COVID-19 EDM demonstrated the lack of importance placed on their day to day work by the organisation. Requests from Parole Boards indicate they are viewed as administrators. Other colleagues have used them as messenger services. 

This AGM views reunification as an opportunity to clarify and reinforce the roles and boundaries for NPS Prison Offender Managers. The AGM instructs the NEC, Officers and Officials and Probation Negotiating Committee to ensure that role boundaries are better defined and communicated to other agencies to ensure instructions and requests are role appropriate. 

Proposer: London Branch

7. OASys: 

Outdated, off target and stifled in bureaucracy OASys is well past its sell-by date. The exhortations to good practice, guided by the science, to coin a phrase, are informed by and refer to strengths based approaches, trauma informed practice and desistence theory. OASys is a hindrance not a help in facilitating good and effective work. There is a veritable industry now in polishing this tarnished old jug, absorbing the time and attention of professional probation staff, and diverting them from work which would be rewarding for both them and their clients. 

Demanding the junking of this behemoth by MoJ will be like asking a child to relinquish her favourite toy, but it’s for their own good This AGM instructs Napo to demand and negotiate a full overhaul of the systems used to assess offenders and plan their sentences, in order for these to inform and support effective work to rehabilitate probation clients and protect the public. 

Proposer: Napo Cymru

8. Stop the de-professionalisation of Probation Practice 

Napo AGM is concerned that tailored, creative and responsive approaches to probation practice are being eroded and replaced with costly and onerous check-list processes labelled as “evidence based”. 

Napo AGM believes that these time-consuming strategies “calling out” alleged poor practice, removing the autonomy of practitioners, and demanding changes to their work within unrealistic time frames, is having a demoralising impact on the workforce. In this climate, we have seen experienced staff become ill or leave, with differently qualified practitioners left to fill the void. This AGM believes that money to fund these processes would be better spent on good quality training, supervision and resources for practitioners. This means that time could be freed up allowing for thoughtful and well-considered practice, coming from a positive starting point where real change for service users might take place. 

This AGM therefore instructs Napo Officers and Officials to: 

• undertake research into the effectiveness of the current quality assurance strategies, exploring the impact of current processes on practitioners, service users and risk to the public, 

• collect data on the amount of money spent on quality assurance strategies and campaign for funds for quality assurance strategies to be re-directed to fund training and front-line services. 

Proposer: South Yorkshire Branch

9. Too Much Micromanagement, Too Little Support 

Napo recognises that a style of micromanagement has been allowed to encroach on our practice to create an unhealthy working environment. Professionals are increasingly working in a stifling environment where more of their assessments are consistently scrutinised and checked to ensure uniformity against ever changing standards. 

This modus operandi has appeared to increase at the same time that meaningful, supportive supervision has all but disappeared. Our members are hardworking, professional practitioners and should be recognised as such. Instead it becomes the norm that we are continually pushed to create regimented reports within micromanaged structures. 

There is a wealth of material that evidences how destructive micromanaging people can be. It detracts from the core focus of our work, demotivates staff and leads to burnout across all grades. It creates mistrust leading to the loss of experienced staff who choose to leave rather than be managed in such a way. 

This AGM asks that this be taken up as an issue to safeguard and promote our professionalism and re-build trust with our employers. It asks that we see a return of a proper supportive framework that promotes professional judgement and seeks to remove this harmful approach in management. 

Proposer: The Mercia Branch

10. PSOs: Plugging the gap and bearing the weight 

The significant staff shortages in Probation have been an issue now for the last 6 years of TR. However, it is yet again PSOs that are left carrying the weight of the service and being put at risk as they are repeatedly used to plug the gap in PO numbers. Misallocation of cases to members that don’t have the experience, have not had the training and are not remunerated for the level of work being asked of them is a long standing issue. 

Lockdown has exacerbated this issue leaving our members isolated and without any peer support or management support. The growing number of cases, that would previously have been allocated to a PO, now being given to PSOs, which has been identified by HMIP, Justice Select Committee and by Napo, is very worrying and putting the public and members at risk. 

This AGM calls on Napo to: 

• ask HMPPS to reintroduce adequate training for PSOs from day one of their employment, • ask HMPPS to issue clear guidance to managers about what cases should be allocated to PSOs and develop a clear role boundaries policy, 

• encourage PSOs to challenge inappropriate case allocation and to inform branches when issues arise. 

Proposer: Campaigning Network

11. Innovative Probation Technologies: Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater 

As part of TR, some providers of probation services invested large sums of public money in developing innovative probation technologies (software tools, automated administration systems, etc.) to show what could be done to streamline/simplify processes, improve efficiency and generally, improve upon clunky, patched-up, decades-old systems and outdated technologies used in the Trusts. 

These systems continued to be used relatively unchanged in the NPS. Recent NPS tools appear designed to make work more complex and difficult rather than easier. Bizarrely, the MoJ/ HMPPS appear to have committed themselves to persevere with their own flawed systems. They are, it seems, intent upon training those transitioning to the NPS to use clunky/ outdated, less user friendly and unreliable tools, than those used in the CRCs. This cannot be allowed to happen unchallenged. 

This AGM calls upon Officers and Officials to develop a no holds barred, punchy, and critical ‘Future Probation Technologies’ statement that focuses on current concerns, highlights existing technological innovations/solutions, and demands that the MoJ/HMPPS does not abandon the best innovative technological solutions already developed in the CRCs and does everything possible to acquire/assimilate/ develop these more advanced technologies, where appropriate, to help improve probation services and propel the NPS into the 21st century. 

Proposer: Professional and Training Network

12. Back to the Future for PSRs 

This AGM welcomes the fact that the Secretary of State for Justice has recognised the need for a greater investment in the quality of PreSentence Reports. The Magistrates Association has also stated that it is vital these documents are of sufficient standing to inform the sentencing process. 

This AGM calls for an end to unachievable targets for the completion of ‘on the day’ reports, where vital information on risk, particularly relating to DV and child protection, are more likely to be missed. Adequate time to properly assess vulnerability, e.g. in relation to trauma and/or mental health needs is also essential. 

Probation court staff require workload weightings which properly reflect the time needed to complete high quality report and risk assessments i.e. ones that meet the professional standards associated with PSRs before the implementation of ‘speedy summary justice’. 

These weightings must also take into account the increasing amount of work involved in completing the many other assessments needed, in addition to the PSR, which ensures that the finished article meets the demands of “quality assurance”. This AGM directs the Negotiating Committee and Professional and Training Network to press the relevant directorates to implement these realistic and fair workload weightings. 

Proposer: Professional and Training Network

17. Probation Reform 

Napo AGM welcomes the government’s second U-turn to end the privatisation of Probation Service delivery – hopefully, once and for all, the profit motive in probation work will be cast to the dustbin of history for ever. Grayling lied and failed, again. 

However, this AGM also notes that the current plans to regionalise everything under the auspices of the HMPPS, where Prisons are by far the greater power, are also likely to fail. Under the dead hand of the inflexible, command and control obsessed Civil Service, these reforms are far from the locally delivered, locally accountable, professional and flexible Probation Service that is required. 

Without that localism we will be less able to reduce the risks posed by some of the most difficult, disadvantaged and damaged people in society. This AGM therefore instructs Napo’s officers and officials to mount a concerted campaign with sister trades unions, opposition political parties and others for: 

• probation to move out of the Civil Service/ HMPPS structures at the earliest opportunity, 

• probation Services to be aligned with Local Authorities as non-departmental government bodies that are centrally funded, again at the earliest opportunity, 

• probation’s autonomy and professionalism to be genuinely based on social work values and social work training. 

Proposer: South Yorkshire Branch

18. Reunification achieved, but what next for Napo’s campaigning? 

Napo has achieved what many thought was impossible, the reunification of probation and an end to CRCs and a split workforce. Campaigning network has reviewed previous AGM motions and have consolidated them into one to help members focus on the rest of Napo’s demands. AGM calls on Napo HQ and members at grass roots level to campaign for the following objectives; 

• release from prisons - probation has been dominated by the prison service for too long and culminated in OMiC, a delivery model that goes against evidence based practice of what works and the need for consistency for prisoners, 

• out of the Civil Service - allowing probation to work as an independent body, get staff out of the shackles of the civil service and give it the flexibility it requires for effective delivery, 

• a return to evidence led practice - after TR which was based on zero evidence, probation needs to go back to what works, actively promote evaluation of interventions and fight for member’s professional development, 

• embedded in local communities - being centrally run by Westminster restricts probation from working with the local communities it serves and meet the needs of clients. 

Proposer: Campaigning Network

19. PQiP training is not fit for purpose 

PQiP training is still not fit for purpose. Despite the hard work of the professional and training network there has still been no progress on the much awaited review of PQiP. It is clear from our members that PQiP delivery has varied significantly across the country. Whilst reunification will resolve the issue of inconsistencies, the training has been reduced to a tick box exercise only teaching learners processes. Newly qualified members report feeling totally unprepared for the day to day work of probation and that they lack the confidence to carry out their roles. 

This AGM instructs campaigning network to work alongside professional and training network to: 

• highlight the issue with stakeholders, parliamentarians and the media, 

• urge HMPPS to start the PQiP review as a matter of urgency and meaningfully engage with Napo from day one, 

• urge HMPPS to ensure that the training is developed to meet the needs of learners and not the MoJ budget, 

• insist on the inclusion of more professional based training rather than just processes, 

• insist that HMPPS review their recruitment strategy in light of the lack of diversity of learners entering PQiP which currently sees a majority of young white women. 

Proposer: Campaigning Network

28. Life after lockdown, lessons we can learn from home working 

Home working has been difficult for many members from a lack of adequate working space, isolation from peers struggling with a life work balance. That is why Napo has used the term ‘at home trying to work’ to highlight the issues facing members. However, there have also been many benefits as it has offered people a flexibility that has previously been denied to many. The home working policy developed by HMPPS has never been signed off by Napo and has been consistently inconsistent in its application. Divisions and even offices have interpreted the policy differently leading to confusion. Lockdown now gives Napo the opportunity to address this. This motion calls on Napo to; 

• demand a review of the home working policy in light of Covid and look at what can be learnt from the lockdown, 

• address the issues that have arisen such as inadequate ICT, lack of working space, issues of confidentiality 

• identify the benefits of flexible working and ensure that these are not lost going forward. 

Proposer: Campaigning Network