Thoughts on the last day of Probation Privatisation…
The last day of the CRC contracts will be a poignant one for all of us. Today marks the last day of the failed and dangerous “Transforming Rehabilitation” (TR) experiment. Breaking up Probation and selling contracts to allow companies to make profits from criminal justice was reckless and we fought it all the way. I am sure many will today be remembering the rallies, the marches, the strikes, the legal action that we threw ourselves into in a desperate attempt to protect our clients, the communities we serve and our profession.
We didn’t win the fight and TR went ahead in 2014 followed in early 2015 by the sale of the contracts. We didn’t stop campaigning but the wonderful Probation People who work in the system did everything they could to continue to support clients to change their lives, to ensure victims were heard in decision making and to protect the public by preventing future victims. Our campaigning slogan was ‘One Probation, One Profession’ and I am wearing my T-shirt with this on today, hoping to strike a pro-social tone about the future and avoiding saying “we told you so”.
As time went on it was clear that the contracts weren’t working, there was no money to be made from crime and the contract owners faced a stark choice. To satisfy the need for profit some cut services back as far as possible, got rid of as many staff as they could and introduced dangerous operating models. Others continued to try to deliver quality services and invested by bearing costs relating to this but there were tough times all round. Throughout all of this Probation People continued to do what they do best – to deliver a service despite the system around them, to find ways to do what was right for their clients and communities regardless of the obstacles put in their way.
Life hasn’t been much better for those moved into the National Probation Service during this accidental nationalisation project. Probation was never a centralised service and never in the civil service. TR brought both things about, removing the localised responsive service that was so vital in serving communities and individuals. Being a ‘non-departmental government body’ allowed Probation Services to be delivered in the public sector but at a remove from the Civil Service, ensuring that practitioners had freedom to think critically about the work they were doing, and the system and context in which they were doing it. The initial drive to fill the CRCs with as many staff as possible saw all of the support infrastructure from Probation Trusts arbitrarily allocated to CRCs. This left individuals facing redundancy in CRCs and NPS areas completely unable to cope.
Some CRCs did a good job in really tough circumstances, but the reality is that the premise of TR was flawed from the start and a fractured service could never work. Both CRCs and the NPS failed to deliver. The consequences have been tragic. An exodus of staff taking the opportunity to retire or leaving due to burnout or simply because they could no longer face working in such a dangerous way. Clients not receiving the support they needed struggled to make the changes they wanted to make to their lives, or to navigate their sentence successfully. Victim Liaison Officers with several hundred cases to oversee struggled to ensure that their clients got the service they deserved, leaving victims struggling to understand complex processes and to have their voice heard. Most tragically serious further offences increased and this means that there were more victims of devastating crimes committed by people who were under Probation supervision at the time. The stress, and distress, caused by knowing that you are working in an unsafe way and that more people will suffer such devastating consequences is immeasurable and the damage to people, to their loved ones and to communities can never be repaired.
So now the CRC contracts have ended and core services will be delivered by the new Probation Service with specialist support services contracted out. The process of transition for those staff who are moving has already been stressful, distressing and at times completely confusing. We face months more of confusion, distress and stress as the Probation Service reforms itself to fit the new scope of it’s work.
We have achieved one of our goals – to have all Probation Services delivered in the Public Sector but we must strive for more. Napo’s demands for the future of Probation will now continue to be to release Probation from Prisons and the Civil Service and to bring local responsivity and accountability to delivery of services. Finally we demand that Probation Practice be based on evidence not whim or cost. Napo will continue to be the voice for Probation People and our Profession and will continue to fight to restore and repair Probation.
Katie Lomas
Urgent Action required for Napo members
ReplyDeleteTo enable us to continue to provide you with an excellent service we will be spending this weekend updating records on our database to show that members are now working for the NPS. From the middle of next week, when the work will have been completed, do go to the Napo website and check the details we hold for you on the database. If you haven’t previously registered to access this, then you will need to so please do that now. This is a separate process from Joining Napo. You will need to go to the Napo website, www.napo.org.uk and click on register. You will need to input your name as provided when you joined, your membership number, and an email address, we would suggest using your non-work email if that is less likely to change; you will be asked to provide a password at this point. When you register the system will send you an email with a link in it that you need to click on to complete the process. You can then log in using your email address and the password you used to register. Once logged in your will be able to access not only the details we hold for you in the Members Profile section but all the Napo Extra Benefits package.
If you have any problems with this then please email membership@napo.org.uk. Alternatively you can just email details if you know they have changed, for example your office address, work email or work contact number. This is especially important if you are going to be working from one of the new Commissioned Rehabilitation Services (CRS) Organisations where we will also need to know the name of your new employer.
Please do remember that from now on your subscriptions cannot be paid by salary deduction so if you haven’t already done so you must now switch to paying by Direct Debit the best way to do this is to use the Switch to DD process on the Napo website, the direct link for this is www.napo.org.uk/SWITCH and we recommend you use a personal pc/laptop or a mobile device as sometimes the process is blocked by your employers.
Also need to remember that from 2015, even before the CRCs commenced operations, TR bought thousands of extra post release statutory clients, with no assessment by a court or parole board of whether they might benefit from probation supervision.
ReplyDeleteRobert Buckland, the UK justice secretary, is to ask the Parole Board to reconsider its decision to approve the release of the child killer and rapist Colin Pitchfork.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/25/moj-to-challenge-decision-to-release-colin-pitchfork
So when you've done months/years of work with your high risk prison-based caseload working towards release, reintegration & rehabilitation, DO NOT FORGET that the government department you work for will ensure that all of your efforts are undermined, discredited, discarded & erased from the memory of man.
Absolutely devastated to leave Seetec - for the first time in years we felt valued and appreciated, with real investment allowing us to develop a structure that really worked. So we move to a service which has already seen down grading of bands, a break up of our structure and what feels like a whole process being done to us. I am trying to be positive about reunion but so far find myself dreading Monday.
ReplyDelete"A man who confessed to having memory cards with child sex abuse images when police went to check on his welfare has been given a community order.
ReplyDeleteThe judge heard he was heavily dependent on alcohol at the time, and suffering from significant mental health difficulties.
Concluding from a probation service assessment and psychiatric report that there was a realistic prospect of rehabilitation the recorder imposed a three-year community order.
This would help [him] with his health issues, aim to achieve rehabilitation and prevent him from committing further crimes"
How will a 21st century three-year community order achieve that?
For those who remember, experienced & understood the pre-TR Probation Service it is important to recognise that Grayling was simply the sacrificial-but-willing stooge who played out a destructive sleight of hand in a much bigger game of political poker.
ReplyDeleteNever forget that the mechanism which allowed for the 2014 ORA was constructed & set in motion by the 2007 Offender Management Act:
Offender Management Act 2007
Long title "An Act to make provision about the provision of probation services, prisons and other matters relating to the management of offenders; and for connected purposes."
Introduced by John Reid
Royal assent 26 July 2007
On 18 December 2008, G4S (Group 4 Securicor) announced that Reid would be taking up a post with the company as group consultant
On 10 May 2010, Reid argued on BBC television that David Cameron should become the next Prime Minister in the interests of honouring the democratic wishes of the British people... The same month, it was announced that Reid had been made a life peer in the dissolution honours after the 2010 election.
In April 2011, to the discomfort of Labour colleagues, he campaigned with the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and others against changes to the UK's voting system
The dissolution of an independent Probation Service had been in the hearts of governments of all colours & persuasions since the 1980's. It was only ever about political power - i.e. control of the criminal classes allows for control of the populist vote.
Reid & co carefully & precisely set up the final nails around Probation's coffin.
Reid's chums in the Tory party, notably Grayling & co, drove those nails home with wreckless, joyful abandon.
We are now left with pseudo probation provision to be delivered by a workforce press-ganged into civil service & chained to the wrist of the serving Justice Minister whose every jerk & twist must be obeyed without complaint; a workforce at the mercy of Tory-favourite Gangmaster Romeo & her obedient lieutenants.
How Napo has been so complicit with this collective act of vandalism against a gold standard public service must make the Certification Officer feel sick to the stomach.
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/certification-officer/about
Good Luck with managing the dissonance of your hybrid existence.
Enjoy the New Order.
Enjoy the New Probation Service.
There are plenty of 'proper' Civil Service benefits, perks & protections you will never receive, know about or be entitled to - unlike your 'excellent leaders' in 'the centre'.
*Gangmaster - "a person who organizes and oversees the work of casual labourers."
Oh "Baron Reid of Cardowan" (ref Anonymous26 June 2021 at 00:05) ex Labour Minister and no friend of the working class who went on to work for G4S before they became the subject of a Serious Fraud Office Enquiry for cheating tax payers and causing misery among some who had been convicted
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Reid,_Baron_Reid_of_Cardowan
The Labour Government from 1997-2010 were no friends to the practice of professional probation work and reneged on committments to renationalise aspects of CJ work they made in Opposition.
Sadly many in Napo championed them.
Here we go again !
ReplyDeleteReunification is finally here and few of us really know what chaos awaits. Everything has been done too late and the patches are already starting to peel. I’m glad this week is over and will put an end to the funeral atmosphere and rose-tinted reminiscing by senior managers and directors.
CRC Managers: “At first I was hesitant about joining the CRC, but after a bumpy start there was so much innovation”.
Truth: CRC’s were so bad they are gone. Staff were treated appallingly. A trumped-up IT system and a few glossy intervention manuals did not equal innovation.
NPS Managers: “We’ve been on a fantastic journey in the NPS and we’re chuffed our colleagues in the CRC are joining us”.
Truth: The NPS has spent 7 years swaggering past the CRC because “the CRC cannot manage risk”. The NPS has haemorrhaged staff because of the bullying management culture, the intrusive vetting practices, and the fear of SFO interrogations.
The NPS and CRC’s have been awful places to work. The architects and custodians of that chaos will now prop up the Probation Service. Expect things to get worse.
I’ll end with an excerpt from the recent HMIP Race Report probation that has been buried and forgotten;
“These are disappointing findings. We have concerns about every stage of probation supervision”
“Inspectors heard distressing stories of inappropriate behaviour towards ethnic minority staff including instances of stereotyping, racist and sexualised language, and false allegations”.
https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/media/press-releases/2021/03/raceequalityinprobation/
Final thought:
... do they really think we are going to call our clients PoPs??
I am just burying head in sand now!! Dread to think what is around the corner and for the first time in my career, have come to the realisation that all is completely out of my control. Somewhere in all of this chaos, there are some very vulnerable offenders who want to change. Instead of bogging myself down with all the politics, I will just focus on them which is what I am paid to do. I will worry about the red tape and missed targets imposed by 'command and control' when I get there. For now, however, my focus is on helping those that need it as much as I can - it is what my job is and if I get sacked for that, then so be it
ReplyDeleteit is very difficult to help the people we work with when you have seventy cases and work in a prison where the governor has no concept of how probation works. The chaos will get in the way of what we want to achieve, as we have no idea who will be replacing aspects of the support TTG has delivered, they will not be working at all with high risk prisoners and I doubt officers in the community are prepared for the work coming their way. I campaigned with so many others to prevent TR and welcome re-unification, but even senior managers can't answer our questions. The majority of the constant barrage of documents and e-mails, rarely mention prisons and how the OMUs will be impacted. We are discriminated against as there is no WMT for prison staff and we are told there never will be, the work just keeps coming. I sincerely hope that a better service will be provided, but I suspect that offenders have not been considered in hardly any of the planning.
ReplyDeleteHMPPS webpages now flooded with new documents, incl:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gov.uk/government/publications/authorisation-as-officer-of-a-provider-of-probation-services-pi-312104
"This Probation Instruction sets out the mandatory actions required of the Probation Service and it’s contracted providers in relation to the authorisation of staff to act as an ‘officer of a provider of probation services’ and any subsequent need to withdraw that authorisation."
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/case-allocation-pi-052014
"This policy applies to all staff involved in offender case management. It details the processes to be followed to allocate cases following sentence, including the criteria which must be applied/assessed in order to reach a decision about suitability."
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/enforcement-of-community-orders-suspended-sentence-orders-and-post-sentence-supervision-policy-framework
"
This Policy Frameworks aims to set out the mandatory actions for the Probation Service, and Electronic Monitoring providers to ensure that the enforcement of Community Orders (COs), Suspended Sentence Orders (SSOs) and Post-sentence supervision (PSS) is both appropriate and timely.
The mandatory actions will ensure that enforcement is not only timely, proportionate and defensible but also underpins effective risk management and rehabilitation of individuals."
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/unpaid-work-pi-042019
"This instruction sets out the requirements with respect to the delivery of Unpaid Work as a requirement of community orders and suspended sentence orders, including details of offender management responsibilities for single and multi-requirement orders. It provides a link to the wider Practice Guidance manual which details the full processes for assessing, placing and managing individuals with an unpaid work requirement."
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/security-vetting-reconsideration-of-central-vetting-decisions-by-exception-pi-022015
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/determining-pre-sentence-reports-pi-042016
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/setting-rehabilitation-activity-requirements-pi-582014
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/arranging-unpaid-work-as-part-of-an-enforcement-order-pi-072016
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/arrangements-for-having-a-dump-at-work-pi-101-1012021
• Staff authorised as ‘officer’ must;
ReplyDeleteo have the appropriate and relevant qualifications, training and experience pursuant to any statutory guidance issued by the Secretary of State (SoS) under Section 10(2) of the OMA.
o have the necessary skills and experience to carry out the statutory functions relevant to their role – for example to manage the delivery of the sentence of the court and to identify, respond to and manage changes in an supervised individual’s behaviour that indicate the risk of serious harm is increasing.
• In the case of authorisation being temporarily suspended or withdrawn, this must be communicated immediately to MoJ Shared Services Centre (SSCL) via the Human Resources Business Partner (HRBP). It must also be communicated to the staff member concerned and the relevant agencies.
• Shared Services will add names of those whose authorisation has been withdrawn to the central list known as the Exclusion List (see 3.22 & 3.23).
3.22 There is a corporate risk that without a consistent policy and sharing of information, authorisation could be withdrawn from an individual in one probation organisation and for that individual could go on to be re-employed in a different probation organisation, without that organisation being aware that authorisation was previously withdrawn. The Exclusion list is designed to protect against this. The Exclusion List maintains a list of individuals that have their authorisation withdrawn, whether or not this has resulted in dismissal. This list is maintained by HMPPS Security Group
3.23 The Exclusion List maintains a list of individuals that have had their authorisation withdrawn due to a material breach of the organisation’s staff code of conduct whether or not this has resulted in dismissal. The list will include both directly and not directly employed workers providing probation services who are no longer authorised to act as an ‘officer’ and is maintained by HMPPS Security Group.
3.9 A staff member’s authorisation as an ‘officer’ automatically lapses when they leave the employment of the relevant provider of probation services. If the individual moves to another provider of probation services they must be re-authorised by the new provider, under the terms of this instruction.
Oh no anyone can do anything so long as approved . Nothing else matters now.
DeleteReunification is the first step. Probation will not be #Probation, until it rids itself of;
ReplyDelete1. Prisons
2. Civil Service
3. Institutional racism
4. Police vetting of our staff
Does 'look on equip' count as training. NPS seems to think it does.
ReplyDelete"Staff authorised as ‘officer’ must;
ReplyDeleteo have the appropriate and relevant qualifications, training and experience pursuant to any statutory guidance issued by the Secretary of State (SoS) under Section 10(2) of the OMA."
I wonder what these means for PSOs? Is this why the terminology has changed to Probation Practitioner rather than supervising officer? Will PSOs become PSPs?
All this 'PPs' and 'PoPs' is getting ridiculous!
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/17/inside-the-mind-of-murderer-power-and-limits-of-forensic-psychiatry-crime-prison?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB
ReplyDelete"Whatever the origins of someone’s propensity to violence, how we respond to a person on an individual, institutional or social level has an impact on them; it is up to us whether that impact is to reinforce the mental processes that contribute to the violence, or to lessen them. To decide how to reduce violence, if that is what we want to do, we need to be genuinely interested in people’s minds. As we support continued research into the functioning of the brain, we should not leave the mind behind."
Nationalising probation service not enough to fix flaws, warns watchdog
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/28/nationalising-probation-service-not-enough-to-fix-flaws-warns-watchdog
Renationalising the management of offenders in the community will not be enough to put right the flaws of disastrous privatisation reforms introduced by the former Conservative minister Chris Grayling, the probation watchdog has warned.
DeleteAs the reunified service launches on Monday, the chief inspector of probation, Justin Russell, said the move to renationalise the service was welcome but will not be without its challenges.
Under Grayling’s widely derided shake-up in 2014, the probation sector was separated into a public sector organisation, the National Probation Service (NPS) managing high-risk criminals, and 21 private companies responsible for the supervision of 150,000 low to medium-risk offenders.
From today, the supervision of all 220,000 offenders on probation and the delivery of unpaid work and rehab programmes will be conducted by the public sector. This broadly mirrors the arrangement that existed prior to Grayling’s “transforming rehabilitation” process several years ago.
The changes come after a turbulent time for the probation service, with failings in high-profile cases, such as the terrorist Usman Khan and the serial rapist Joseph McCann, underlining the difficulties faced in the sector.
Launching the reunified service, the justice secretary, Robert Buckland, said the public would be better protected and that crime would be cut, adding that more than £300m in extra funding had been pumped into the service since July 2019.
But Russell, who has been the head of HM Inspectorate of Probation since June 2019, warned that any cash investment would have to be sustained to correct the mistakes of the past.
He said: “The government’s decision to bring probation back together – though welcome – will not be without its challenges. Challenges that should not be underestimated.
‘There are no magic bullets here: structural change needs to be backed by sustained investment for there to be true improvement. Real transformation is a long-term commitment, and unification is just the beginning of that journey.”
Russell said Grayling’s overhaul was “fundamentally flawed”.
“Squeezed budgets have meant falling probation officer numbers; staff under relentless pressure and unacceptably high caseloads. This has inevitably resulted in poorer quality supervision, with over half of the cases we inspected in the private sector probation companies being unsatisfactory on some key aspect of quality.”
The funding injected into the probation service so far is helping to more than double the recruitment of officers, from the usual annual intake of 600 trainees to 1,000 last year with plans to recruit a further 1,500 in the current financial year.
Buckland said: “The work probation does to protect the public from harm and rehabilitate offenders is too often overlooked but it is vitally important given 80% of crime is reoffending.
“The government is backing the new Probation Service with more money and more staff so that the public is better protected, crime is cut and fewer people become victims.”
Grayling ignored significant warnings from within his department to push through his reforms in 2014. MPs on the public accounts committee said the changes were rushed through at breakneck speed, taking “unacceptable risks” with taxpayers’ money. The justice committee described the overhaul as a “mess” and warned it might never work.
Since the reforms were introduced, the government has had to bail out the private providers, known as community rehabilitation companies (CRCs), by more than £500m.
More than 7,000 staff from CRCs will come together with 3,500 probation officers already in the public sector under the new Probation Service.
Buckland said: “The work probation does to protect the public from harm and rehabilitate offenders is too often overlooked but it is vitally important given 80% of crime is reoffending...”
ReplyDeleteIf 80% of crime is reoffending then the "new Probation Service" aint much fucking use to anyone, is it?
Harry Fletcher, 2013: "Reoffending rates for the individuals that probation does supervise are much improved; those who participate in programmes have a reoffending rate now of 35%."
Grayling, 2013: "The justice secretary, Chris Grayling, has admitted his plans for the wholesale outsourcing of the probation service will not lead to an overnight reduction in stubbornly high reoffending rates but said he hoped it would lead to a "steady year-by-year decline"."
A year-by-year decline that has seen those reoffending rates RISE from 35% to 80%, at a cost of £Billions to the taxpayer, lining the pockets of chums & Sycophants & "excellent leaders" who are NEVER held accountable for their bullying, their racism, their sexism & their generally toxic behaviours.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bigger-better-probation-service-to-cut-crime
ReplyDeleteBigger, better Probation Service to cut crime
DeleteThe public will be better protected and crime will be cut the Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland vows today (28 June 2021) as the new, unified Probation Service is launched.
More than £300 million worth of extra funding has been pumped into the service since July 2019.
The funding is helping to more than double the recruitment of probation officers, from the usual annual intake of 600 trainee probation officers to 1,000 last year with plans to recruit a record 1,500 this financial year. This will mean staff can keep a closer eye on the most dangerous offenders and ensure many more take up the opportunity to reform their criminal ways.
Unifying the service will ensure there is better and more consistent supervision of offenders and closer working with the police, NHS and local authorities. The service will work in 12 regions across England and Wales and a new, specialist National Security Division will be specifically tasked with the enhanced monitoring of terrorists, serious organised criminals and very high-risk offenders.
A refresh of the national standards for probation will ensure staff meet face-to-face with all the offenders they supervise at least once a month, with more frequent meetings for higher-risk offenders. For the first time, the standards also set an expectation that probation staff will visit offenders’ homes to protect children, partners and other family members from domestic and sexual abuse. In some cases, such safeguarding visits will be joint with police and social services.
Combined with its increasing use of electronic monitoring, including GPS and sobriety tags, the Probation Service will be even more focused on keeping people safe.
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Robert Buckland MP QC, said:
The work probation does to protect the public from harm and rehabilitate offenders is too often overlooked but it is vitally important given 80% of crime is reoffending.
The government is backing the new Probation Service with more money and more staff so that the public is better protected, crime is cut and fewer people become victims.
The Probation Service will continue its important work in helping victims to explain the impact of crime on them at parole hearings and to ask for licence conditions to prevent offenders from contacting or going near them. Eligible victims will now be automatically referred to the Victim Contact Scheme under recent changes to the Victims’ Code, and there are plans to extend the Scheme to victims of stalkers and harassers serving less than 12 months in prison.
There will also be extra investment in tackling the drivers of crime and getting offenders to ditch it for good. Charities and companies have been awarded nearly £200 million to provide and signpost vital support services that help reduce reoffending, such as employment, mental healthcare and housing advice. With reoffending accounting for 80% of all recorded crime, these services will help to prevent thousands of people becoming victims each year and save some of the £18 billion annual cost of repeat offending.
DeleteIt comes on top of the £220 million package announced earlier this year to tackle crime, including the largest extra investment in drug treatment in 15 years. Every prisoner will be able to continue drug recovery on release and the funding will expand the availability of treatment for those serving community sentences. With offenders around 50 per cent more likely to break the law again if released without somewhere to stay, the funding will also be used to temporarily house around 3,000 otherwise homeless prison leavers in basic hostels this year.
The changes to probation will also give the government greater levers over community sentences, including the delivery of unpaid work which Ministers want to make more visible to the public and used more frequently to clean up the country’s streets, parks and waterways.
Notes to editors
The supervision of low- and medium-risk offenders and delivery of unpaid work and behavioural change programmes will now be carried out by the public sector Probation Service, alongside the supervision of high-risk offenders which was already the responsibility of the public sector.
More than 7,000 staff from private sector Community Rehabilitation Companies will come together with 3,500 probation officers already in the public sector in the new Probation Service.
.. And today propaganda and BS begins. I could not put it better than as said at Anon 12:14;
ReplyDeleteProbation will not be #Probation, until it rids itself of;
1. Prisons
2. Civil Service
3. Institutional racism
4. Police vetting of our staff
And that’s just for starters.
From Russell Webster:-
ReplyDeleteProbation milestone
This is a guest post by Jim Barton, Senior Responsible Owner – Probation Reform Programme and Electronic Monitoring Programme, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, Ministry of Justice
Today marks an important milestone for our Probation Service. As announced in Parliament, we are now one unified probation system, and have officially welcomed over 7,000 probation professionals, either directly into probation services or employed by one of the organisations we have appointed to deliver commissioned rehabilitative services to offenders. I believe our new organisation brings the very best of the NPS, CRCs and our partners together.
It’s significant progress for Probation and as Programme SRO I am immensely proud of the team that has delivered a big, very complex Government programme on time, to budget whilst in a global pandemic.
Programme achievements aside, ultimately, this is about protecting the public and changing lives and I believe the changes we have already started to implement give our staff the opportunity to deliver the best outcomes for victims, communities and people on probation. So, what will you start to see?
From today, our focus will be on ensuring a smooth transition phase and embedding the changes we have made to bring stability across the organisation against the backdrop of Covid-19. We will soon move to implementing the reforms set out in our Target Operating Model published in February.
A key part is local knowledge and experience. Our aim is for more regional accountability, partnership working and delivery of services that more closely meets the diverse needs of communities and people on probation.
In sentence management our focus will be on more consistent management and delivery of sentence plans, better assessment and management of risk and more balanced caseloads with an improved case allocation process to support this.
For Unpaid Work, Accredited Programmes and Structured Interventions we want to drive up completion rates and deliver better outcomes. We’ll do this by making programmes available locally, making improvements to the assessment and induction process and more regular reviews of active cases.
We also have ambitions to put Unpaid Work hours to even better use, establishing more partnerships with national organisations to help improve the visibility of the punishment in local communities.
Our commissioned rehabilitative service providers will be crucial in delivering other interventions. I’m sure you would have seen last month the government announced an initial investment of £195 million, awarded to 26 organisations across England and Wales to provide vital support services in Employment, Training & Education, Accommodation and Personal Wellbeing and Women’s Services. We have been busy working with our new providers to ensure we’re ready to start delivering services from today.
Of course, our staff are critical to the delivery of the new model. We are continuing our recruitment drive and earlier this month announced the record recruitment of more than 1,000 probation officers, meeting a government target set last July – a record we plan to beat by recruiting a further 1500 in the year ahead.
Once recruited, a big part of our efforts will be to ensure they have the skills, capabilities and ways of working they need to do their jobs to the highest standard. We set out how we’re going to do this in our Probation Workforce Strategy, published last year. It includes a professional register, underpinned by ethical and training standards, to ensure probation practitioners receive the training, qualifications and recognition they need and deserve.
From today, we will simply be known as the Probation Service. We feel the new name is not too far from the service’s roots but also responds to feedback from staff in NPS and CRCs who felt the new name would be a strong signal of us as a new organisation.
Finally, If you are interested in finding out more about our reforms, do sign up to our Probation Changes Bulletin.
If someone is not going to get some benefit from being subject to probation, what's the point of imposing it on them?
ReplyDeleteWhats gained?
'Getafix
well there's a conversation starter, Getafix. It depends what the point of it all is. Punishment. Never been a fan of punishment for its own sake but I see our Sec of State extolling the virtues of visible Community Punishment. Or Community Service when I was starting out there. Service such a more attractive notion. So that is one tussle to be tussled with. Then there is Risk Management ... now a neurotic exercise in risk avoidance. Risk is risk, you can narrow the odds but it doesnt go away, and if you had an ethical bone in your body you would have to balance that with (trigger alert for Daily Mail readers) human right. And then we get on to rehabilitation, the poor relation of current probation priorities, when it should be shining front and centre, (in my view) of everything we stand for. Strange times. First day at work in the "new" reunified in the public sector Probation Service. The more our hashtag leaders bleat excitedly about this brave new world, the more I feel angry and bereaved. Not as bereaved as those who have suffered the loss of loved ones as a result of this fiasco. The upbeat herewego announcements are utterly tone deaf to the misery and exhaustion, the loss, experienced by so many. It is a step in the right direction, but oh lord we are all so weary. It takes minutes to demolish something, a lifetime and lots of skill to build it back
DeletePearly Gates