Food For Thought

Prologue

A colleague I haven't spoken to for some time rang me the other day and we were musing on what the future might have in store for probation in a post-Covid world. Our discussion very much reflected a similar conversation with another colleague of even greater experience. The view was that probation is becoming increasingly irrelevant, a situation hastened by civil service bureaucratic control and the de-personalised effect of Covid operation. Effectively its no longer serving any meaningful and useful purpose and in a post-Covid world of inevitable government spending cuts, its further decline in relevance, begun with separation from a social work base, would see its effective disappearance. 

--oo00oo-- 

I now have two friends who have contracted Covid and both became extremely ill, despite both being generally health conscious and neither having underlying health conditions, neither required hospitalization, but both suffered ongoing health ramifications, with one requiring a recent admission to hospital and further tests. The London directors messaging was totally out of kilter with the lived experience of practitioners and the focus on business as usual matters was patronising...the reference to staff expressing "indifference" in the staff survey for simply entering "neither agree or disagree" seemed to discount what a large proportion of staff meant when they entered their answers, and the focus on "recording in delius, reviewing risk registers, updating OASYS" failed to grasp the reality of the lived experience of most practitioners.

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I have just found out that my colleague who sits within two meters of me tested positive for coronavirus on the weekend. No one from management informed me or the rest of the team of the potential increased risks. No increased cleaning. Hot desking is a daily occurrence. I have no faith in my employer protecting me. As a result I have had to stop providing care for a relative whom is shielding. There is a perception that as prisons provide opportunities for testing that no other precautions are now needed. I fear raising this issue and being redeployed.

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Oh I'm so, so, sorry to hear this...so stressful for you and others involved no doubt. Yes, the fear we all feel raising legitimate concerns is extremely sad and very worrying...why else do we all ensure our comments are anonymous on these blogs? The fear engendered comes from those at the top, who constantly scratch their heads wondering why their staff are so disenchanted, while issuing diktats about recording, CRISSA, OASYS reviews, risk registers, HETE data, with seemingly little care for the people involved, both staff and service users alike.

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I am - if I survive it - going to wait till the pandemic is at least on the wane before I make any decision about my future in the Probation Service. I realise that the anxiety and, frankly, despair at what my job has become, might be amplified by Covid anxiety and gloom. All the probation officers in the room I work in are at various stages in this: one has got his early retirement pension forecast, I am asking for mine, and another is actively looking for alternative work. That is over a century of experience looking to walk out of the door at first opportunity. The micromanagement and the utter failure of policy makers to recognise the pragmatic reality of our work is soul destroying. Telling me that the increasing layers of recording and scrutiny are "for my protection if anything - SFO - happens" is so not reassuring.

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Your so right so must be nearly 60 to recall those days as I do. Working with modern qualified staff who are POs but really they are nothing much more than over paid typist clerks. Talking to them in supervision they type into the PC while still talking at you. It is not what we know which is why they could never picture returning [to] professional practice. Old lot out soon as.

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I'm with you, a post degree CQSW was always, and a 12 month probationary period, a good foundation for learning - oh how this has been diluted. I so remember the broad church of colleagues, some of whom I disagreed with politically but never doubted their integrity, the fountains of knowledge of many SPO's (granted not all) and CPO's willing to challenge govt policy even under Thatcher. I used to respect my management because they welcomed challenge and wanted POs to think outside the box. I am also tired of this but it is not Covid, which I can rationalise but the shit from above 6th.

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We are cannon fodder. Frontline so needed at work, "hidden heroes" - thanks for the management clap. But not worthy of a priority jab or a pay rise. Probation in a parlous state: Graylings omnishambles has meant we have attention of policy makers, when actually the mission is much best served when it is off grid. So now we have fuck all resources, and running interference from ambitious fast track numpties in the civil service whose ignorance and ambition will quite possibly snuff out the glimmering embers of what was a valuable service and a joyful place to work.

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Why is CRISS crap? Seems reasonable outline for a meeting (Check in, Review, Intervention / Issue, Summarise, Set task). I don't use the same myself in my profession but similar and pursue a collaborative agenda with my clients. It allows for an efficient and focussed use of time.

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Great question, but you have to understand the background and context. In principle, the idea of a more structured and focussed way of engagement is not what staff resist....CRISS was initially rolled out via a 3 day training programme, SEEDS, which allowed the time for staff to engage with the material and its rationale.

However, this "way of engagement" quickly got replaced by a "recording convention" - so staff recording exactly what they did and what was said under the various "headings" of check-in, review, implement and so on with prescribed guidance re-designing what CRISS actually means to fit the process of recording. The mantra became "did you record using CRISS" format, "has CRISS been used?", "let's do audits of staff to check if they are recording correctly", irrespective of whether the sessions themselves used that format or how well a session was or was not performed. Staff soon realised they were spending double the amount of time transcribing out their appointments, coupled with organisational diktats from senior managers which essentially said "you MUST use CRISSA in your case recording - it's MANDATORY - we will monitor its use".

Somewhere along the line, the "I" (which was initially "implement the sentence plan"), became "intervention", with managers chucking bundles of 121 worksheets and exercises onto the intranet. The mantra now seems to be "deliver some form of exercise, print out a worksheet, we don't particularly care what it is and for god's sake just, record, record, record".

When you couple the above with other layers of "recording" which have come about over the past few years, you'll get a sense of the hostility CRISS operates within: HETE data, personal circumstances data, professional judgement entries, NSI updating, risk registers, officer diary, OASYS QA standards....all of these require entirely separate processes, within a "case recording system" that is not intuitive, with each entry being in disparate parts of the system, with meaningless "check boxes" which must be filled out each time, otherwise your entry gets rejected. Then of course, couple this with manager's favourite mantra: If you didn't record it, it didn't happen!

You'll see in various posts recently staff referring to themselves as "typist clerks". I see myself as a data entry officiant. The pandemic has brought in this idea that "supervision sessions can only be 15 minutes long", with people scratching their heads as to how that can possibly be meaningful and the organisational response is "we are delivering vital public protection work" which pays no attention to people's lived reality. Lo and behold loads of staff are currently saying "actually, I've noticed some of my people engaging MUCH better on the phone rather than in the office" - no shit sherlock, because you are actually listening to the person and meaningfully responding, one of the most powerful "interventions" known to man, rather than chucking exercise 6.2.9 from "targets for change" in their face.

So please appreciate that staff feel overwhelmed with data entry and data recording, and managers push the data recording agenda aggressively, pandemic or not. Staff's fingers worn to the bone, and meanwhile people have lost a sense of whether any of this has any meaning - does any of this have any impact onto the re-offending rates of the people we are working for.....?

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Thank you. That explains the hostility. It must be demoralising. What you describe sounds like you are all very busy achieving very little other than producing a record to be audited.

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Well it's not been a real job since we lost social work it's all admin and order now.

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I know many social work qualified officers believe DipPs and PQUIP qualified staff have little understanding of 'the real job' but that's simply untrue. I'm DipPs qualified but it was by working with social work trained colleagues that I was inspired to become a PO in the first place. I had then - and retain now - many of the same values as earlier qualified officers, and the notion that I don't do a 'real job', or only do admin tasks is frankly insulting. And it's getting tired. There is much valid discussion of the deskilling of officers but please don't assume that there aren't still staff out here doing the best we can for our clients. It's demoralising to hear those with more experience belittle a job into which many still put a huge amount of work and commitment.

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Hello Xxxxx and others....I'm so relieved to hear you have the values and ethics which matter, and hope you are surrounded by trainees who have the same - that is not, however, my experience. I also trained via the DIPS route; as I recall it we (or at least in my area) did training on skills like CBT, solution focussed work, Trotter's working with involuntary relationships, pro-social modelling and the famous "motivational interviewing" - the involvement of the service user in their own "journey" via meaningful sentence plan goals became the bedrock of my day to day sessions; at that time I felt I had a good grounding in skills, with academic background, coupled with 1-2-1 support via a PTA who really encouraged/discussed both my ethos, attitude, skills and I was able to work with a relatively small group of service users whose offence/risk profiles were on the "lower" end of the risk scale...not to mention of course we would write regular PSRs, and built up to more complicated matters towards the end of our 2 year period.

What I find now is that within weeks PQUIPS are suddenly dealing with DV, sex offences, and gangs, with little support and lots of ego.... Sentence plans have become little more than stock phrases about "addressing my drugs use" or "managing my risk", and one to one appointments deliver little meaning other than "monitoring", "interrogating" and "questioning", "checking" they have done certain things, or "referring" them off elsewhere. Is it me, or has probation become little more than a referral and triage service, pushing the person's issues off to another organisation "with more expertise". The ethos of probation training has become about completing wonderfully well written OASYS, marking CRISSA entries, and ensuring "risk is managed"....god forbid that people are encouraged to get to know the wider family unit, involving those individuals in the sentence plan or the person's "journey", or involving the person as their own agent of change.

Please people tell me if I'm wrong, but that's how I see it. Just take a look at the "mandatory" training we are all threatened with sacking if we don't do - what a pile of shite! Did any of the modules on DV, child and adult safeguarding encourage any meaningful supervision sessions, or any of the social work ethos and skills which many of us lament the loss of. Nope! It was all "soundbites" and "acronyms" - we all knew we could pass the test at the end without wasting our time reading the shite which preceded it, and it's this kind of thing (in my view) that angers and belittles the workforce and creates the resentment so palpable on this blog.

The competency of the people is not the issue, but the training ethos very much creates the officers values and ethics.