"An echo chamber for retired POs and out-of-their-depth long-serving OMs desperate to vent some bile as the next round of capability procedures begin at work."
".... some comments espouse probation practice from the 70s and 80s so maybe they'd consider 20 years ago to be current!"
Oral evidence to Justice Committee 19th January 2021:-
Justin Russell: From a probation point of view, we interviewed some people on probation about their experience of supervision during lockdown. They were generally positive about it. People who are in a stable position and have a stable home life welcomed being supervised by phone, and that was quite popular with some people.
People who were more vulnerable and had mental health problems and more chaotic and complex lives missed the face-to-face contact with their probation officer. It was very difficult for a probation officer without that face-to-face contact or without being able to do home visits to see how that person was getting on, whether they were looking after themselves or whether there were things that needed to be helped. There is a real issue about the more vulnerable part of the probation caseload and how they are supported during this pandemic.
There has been an understandable focus on the highest-risk cases being the priority for face-to-face contact, and I understand that, but they also need to support people who are vulnerable. I understand the probation service is in discussions with a major volunteering charity about providing volunteers who can support the more vulnerable people on probation, mentor and befriend them. That is a welcome initiative, and we need more things like that.
Justin Russell: From a probation point of view, we interviewed some people on probation about their experience of supervision during lockdown. They were generally positive about it. People who are in a stable position and have a stable home life welcomed being supervised by phone, and that was quite popular with some people.
People who were more vulnerable and had mental health problems and more chaotic and complex lives missed the face-to-face contact with their probation officer. It was very difficult for a probation officer without that face-to-face contact or without being able to do home visits to see how that person was getting on, whether they were looking after themselves or whether there were things that needed to be helped. There is a real issue about the more vulnerable part of the probation caseload and how they are supported during this pandemic.
There has been an understandable focus on the highest-risk cases being the priority for face-to-face contact, and I understand that, but they also need to support people who are vulnerable. I understand the probation service is in discussions with a major volunteering charity about providing volunteers who can support the more vulnerable people on probation, mentor and befriend them. That is a welcome initiative, and we need more things like that.
--oo00oo--
Postscript
"Now they've finally met their ambitious target of removing most of the experienced, qualified, expensive staff using TR, I understand the probation service is in discussions with a major volunteering charity about providing volunteers who can support the more vulnerable people on probation, mentor and befriend them. That is a welcome initiative, and we need more things like that - by which I mean professional cleansing, getting rid of irksome troublemakers, replacing them with volunteers & saving public money so we can give more of it to those lovely privateers."
(Ed - Posted 17:30 on yesterday's blog post)
Those two comments are, I believe, made up by the same contributor answering their own earlier comments in true Trumpian propaganda fashion.
ReplyDeleteYou believe incorrectly. I posted the 2nd comment, I didn't post the first.
DeleteI'm not sure what the significance of Justin Russell saying there should be mentors is in relation to advise, assist and befriend? He's not saying that current probation practice is worthless, just that this would be a welcome addition.
What does advise, assist and befriend in a probation context even mean? I once asked a probation officer from that era and they told me they would take service users to the cinema. Are you honestly saying probation officers should undertake 21 months of training and be paid £30-35k to go to the cinema?
"a welcome addition" - I think this blog has a bit more life in it yet.
DeleteI would say that 21 months training is far too little.
DeleteI would also say that if you have to ask what advise, assist and befriend even means, then you're arguing against something you have no understanding of.
I would also say that basing your argument around something said once by a singular probation officer is plain nonsensical.
Hence why I asked the question about what does it mean? Can you provide a concrete example of where it differs to current practice?
DeleteHigh risk is where its always been at really. In the 70 and 90s the focus was sharpened to resources follow risk. The old softly softly bus fares and befriending fund dried up fast to pay for managerialism expenses and business MBAs for middle managers. It saw the offender services decline and the training aided by the new direction of Labour pave a way for PFI hostels, Bringing in outsiders and coming from new partnerships. We all lost the plot perhaps, being too relaxed.
DeleteNapo let CS get privatised and re badged to unpaid work. Language of the USA anti reform just punish them inner conservatism. Napo did not blink as they had their eyes wide shut. The slew of incompetent naive and inept Chairs failing to engage in a fight preferring tea and biscuits in a nice meeting chamber than a battle for probations interests. Despite this inbuilt leadership incompetence there were members who led the warnings sadly not heeded as the Napo structures conspired them out. Foolishly napo saw the London CP privatised as a test that paved the road to our national destruction.
The work was different then and so was the nature of employees. Today staff are grotesquely disfigured from care and nurture to value only numbers a grossly new metric to qualify throughput and quantities . Quality takes time money and patience. Three things they do not understand. To get back to anything half near way, will require a cultural shift. The latest cohorts were not trained or selected for the traits needed to reform reflect or value experience of other. We are stuck with a monstrous machine of technocrats craving and starving for new data streams and by cramming numbers not the three things required.
I understand the ongoing mud slinging of which this is part will not bring the changes anytime soon. We all realise the Grayling destruction will take another generation before the rebuilding . This in my view remains impossible while politics control the dogma of Tory business ideologies. Just as long as the Tories remain in government I hope.
An absolutely exceptional post 22:31...thank you for taking the time to write it.
Delete"There has been an understandable focus on the highest-risk cases being the priority for face-to-face contact, and I understand that, but they also need to support people who are vulnerable". There us a massive industry in risk management: right to prioritise it, of course. NPS is doing its thing here, and much of it very impressive. It would be helped by some intelligent redesign of the hopeless IT systems.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile Probation Officers, well me, anyway, are raking through their attics and contacts to locate sleeping bags and saucepans and a kettle. Middle ranking cases will be top ranking if they are left to fester, and anyway this is an humanitarian thing. Where did that go?
So agree 18.05 service users have been judged and sentenced so why would advise, assist and befriend be such a difficult concept to grasp? One of the best bits of advice ( after degree, 2 years cqsw and a pass or fail 1 year probationary period) was to really get to know the client, and their families. Earn their trust based on professional boundaries and compliance will follow. It seems that over the years the importance of compliance was lost to enforcement
ReplyDeleteI doubt that 18:05 finds the 'concept' of advise, assist, and befriend too difficult to grasp. I suspect the words are well understood. But if it's so glaringly obvious what it provided then that can't be provided by a good practitioner now, why is 18:05 still waiting for the example that's been requested. I agree that the 1980/90s remit of the Probation Service allowed more freedom to work imaginatively (and I certainly trusted my employer more and felt less badgered), but it also allowed some staff to do little or nothing... to the extent, I recall, that gave rise to the term 'positive inaction' (doing nothing at all in the managementof a sentence, including trying to deliver the sentence or enforce non-compliance, in case it negatively impacted on the service user). What I hear in many posts on this site is the voices of those who weren't doing much then, and who are now outraged that expectations had to change as a result and have steadfastly refused to try and adapt since. I'm not happy with lots of things in Probation and I try and work with and around them in the best interest of the individuals on my caseload. If I felt the whole situation was so utterly doomed and futile I'd have left 15 or 20 years ago. And yes, it was me yesterday that posted the first of the comments reprinted above... and I suspect I'm at the opposite end of the career spectrum from 18:05. People can't still be scratching their heads about why the previous model of Probation wasn't really sustainable. Can they?
Delete18:05 isn't awaiting an answer. It was 19:03 that was looking for an answer and refered to their previous comment.
DeleteBut what is the point of trying to explain something to someone who has vehemently and aggressively argued against something that by their own admission they don't know anything about?
Is that it? Is that the best there is by way of a response? 18:05 is 19:03 - as is plainly confirmed above. But why would I have assumed that you might have deduced that from the available evidence. That would have been too convenient an exhibition of key Probation skills. Like I say, you've only really yourself to blame for that upcoming capability hearing.
DeleteIn my mind, it's not that officers now "can't" or don't want to or don't understand the concepts of advise, assist, befriend. Its that the service has tried to reduce every outcome to a measurable metric...take 1950's point above, about "really getting to know the person and their families"...this is measured by "how many times did you do a home visit", have you done an OASYS in 15 days, did you do the web (in London), have you seen the person once a week, did you use CRISSA. I've no doubt that officers in the 1980s "got away with doing little" as they do now by entering blank entries or pulling through OASYS. But the question "how did you actually get to know the person", or to what extent did meaningful engagement with their families actually make a difference, or did it?
DeleteThe current metrics dont improve practice for anyone, but in my view completely overwhelm motivated officers to do their jobs.
So, 23:51, this is my first contribution to this thread, but the examples were already there, you just have to try to take a step back to interpret what people are saying rather than trying to prove your own point
The examples were not there, and still aren't in 21:11's post above. This is just more regurgitation of long standing tasks that are still practised today. Just because our overlords are measuring the work more - or in different ways - doesn't mean the methods are not still used or that the service user needs to experience that in any different way. Hadn't thought much about it before in honesty, but the absence of a single example after 24 hours is now becoming conspicuous. Anyone - an example of positive or effective work once undertaken under the culture of 'advise, assist, or befriend' that would not now be possible or acceptable? Just one? Please...
DeleteWe still have staff that are inactive and that's old and newer staff. Advise, assist and befriend is about valuing people. I think it is still seen in probation however due to red tape we have limited time to spend with people. Staff are no longer valued and it has become a them and us with senior management. The time spent with clients is not acknowledged but miss a target and you know about it. As for face to face in the crc we are expected to see people but do not hold high risk cases, no extra payment in the first lockdown. Are all crc's seeing clients with limited protection in place.
DeleteAdvise, assist and befriend was aimed at real long term change for the individual, not just about getting them through their licence period so they become someone elses problem.
DeleteIt may have been well-intentioned. It may also have made for a less pressured work environment. But did it really achieve positive outcomes for anybody other than the occasional success story who may very well have 'desisted' anyway? I suppose we can only ever speculate as no measure of success- then or now - carries much weight. Interestingly, and sorry to repeat myself, still no concrete examples though.
DeleteWell I guess it falls to me to respond seeing as you appear singularly unimpressed with the contributions so far.
DeleteI think most readers of this particular platform feel it's an utterly facile question and a bit like forming an opinion of an entire profession at a certain moment in time and based on hearing an officer took a client to the cinema. In fact a bit like this reminder from Rob Allen's blog November 2020:-
"Probably 25 years ago, I was part of a delegation from NACRO that trooped along to see New Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Jack Straw to discuss his plans for youth justice reform. On his desk, lay a copy of Edwin Schur’s “Radical Non-intervention: Rethinking the Delinquency Problem”. The 1973 text from a doyen of labelling theory wasn’t on the face of it the likeliest inspiration for Straw’s emerging plans to end the excuse culture that he thought dominated responses to children in trouble. So it proved, as at one point he brandished the book as an illustration of everything that was wrong with prevailing orthodoxies in work with young offenders, where , as he would put it once in government, “there is no punishment, no chance for them to make amends for their crimes and no action to tackle the cause of their offending”.
http://reformingprisons.blogspot.com/2020/11/straw-in-wind.html
Thanks Jim. I'll take that as a thoroughly considered "no". I don't accept it is a facile question at all, particularly within the context of a discussion about the merits of "advise, assist, and befriend' and a comparison of old and new practices. I merely asked for an example of positive or effective work undertaken under the culture of 'advise, assist, or befriend' that would not now be possible or acceptable in our current working culture? I would consider this central to that debate (regardless of the sideshow merits or ridiculousness of 'radical non-intervention' - which conveniently played into the hands of those seeking broader change). I think most readers of this particular platform just couldn't think of an example.
DeleteIt's still facile.
Delete"adjective - ignoring the true complexities of an issue; superficial."
Seriously??
DeletePatronise: "verb - to treat in a way that is apparently kind or helpful but that betrays a feeling of superiority"
It isn't facile. Although I accept your gracious concession of the point via the only means left open to you.
Meanwhile, on Fantasy Island:
ReplyDelete* Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he is "optimistic" people will be able to have summer holidays this year
More empty rhetoric & false promises. And here's why:
* Newcastle United's £40m Brazilian striker Joelinton shared a photo of himself with stylist Tom Baxter, who is understood to have been working from his garage, on Friday. Newcastle City Council said it forced Mr Baxter to shut his business premises last month after several warnings.
* More than 70 people are facing a fine after they "blatantly" broke coronavirus regulations by attending a party on a boat in west London. The Met Police said officers found a large gathering on a moored boat near Volt Avenue, North Acton, shortly after 23:00 GMT on Saturday.
* Partygoers who travelled across the country to attend a birthday barbecue have been fined by police for breaching Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. Officers found a party with loud music, alcohol and two men cooking food on a barbecue at 21:30 GMT on Saturday. The homeowner said it was his party and attendees had travelled from as far as Lincolnshire and Gloucestershire.
* Britons were included in a number of arrests of foreign tourists at an Austrian ski resort which was supposed to be closed. It seems they had paid for the use of addresses in Austria so they could falsely claim to be Austrian residents.
Here's a headline about one of the Austerity Twins:
ReplyDelete"Former chancellor George Osborne to become full-time banker" - stop giggling at the back!!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/01/former-chancellor-george-osborne-to-become-full-time-banker
"Osborne was appointed editor of the Evening Standard in 2017, but stepped aside to become editor-in-chief of the newspaper last summer. Osborne was succeeded at the title, which is owned by the Russian multimillionaire Evgeny Lebedev, by Emily Sheffield, a former deputy editor at Vogue. Sheffield’s sister Samantha is married to the former prime minister David Cameron, who along with Osborne oversaw the cuts in public spending during the coalition government of 2010-2015."