Can We Dare to Hope?

We all know things are even worse post reunification and I thought this contribution from yesterday was interesting:- 

"We all know that the Probation Service no longer functions in a healthy way, doesn’t adequately keep the public safe or successfully rehabilitate the vast majority of our clients. Nor does it provide a safe or healthy place for staff to work. So I ask, how, as a group, we can come together to bring about change in a constructive and meaningful way. We know the unions are ineffective so it’s time to take a different approach. I suspect many reading this blog have views as to how to bring about collective change. I would love to hear your views."

Particularly in view of this event organised by the Institute for Government the very same day:-

Unification of probation services: one year on

The new unified Probation Service combined the previously outsourced management of medium- and low-risk offenders with the public sector National Probation Service, which managed high-risk offenders. Launched by the government on 26 June 2021, it was the fourth major restructuring of probation services in 20 years.

This involved hundreds of thousands of cases, thousands of staff across hundreds of sites, six companies and scores of sub-contractors – all with different ways of working.

One year on, how well has the transition worked? What more needs to be done to improve the running of probation services? And what opportunities – and challenges – could the next year bring?

To discuss these questions and more, the IfG was delighted to bring together an expert panel including: 

• Jim Barton, Executive Director for the Probation Reform Programme at the Ministry of Justice
• Suki Binning, Chief Social Worker at Seetec and Executive Director at the Interventions Alliance
• Linda Neimantas, Head of Probation Inspection Programme at HM Inspectorate of Probation.

The event was chaired by Nick Davies, Programme Director at the Institute for Government.

and again the same day is possibly something of even greater interest, news of this:-

Rehabilitating Probation

Rehabilitating Probation is a three-year ESRC-funded research project, exploring the most recent iteration of probation reform in England and Wales. Probation services across England and Wales were reunified following a period of large-scale privatisation under Transforming Rehabilitation reforms implemented in 2013, which had led to the establishment of a publicly operated National Probation Service (NPS) and a number of private Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs).

In June 2020 the public and private arms of probation were brought back together under a newly constituted public Probation Service. This project explores this significant public service reform, the scale of which is unprecedented. Our research will capture the experiences and consequences of reform at:

(a) local, regional and national levels; and

(b) from a range of perspectives, both within and outside of the probation service.

Through a series of work packages and research activities that run in parallel throughout the project, our study is recording the impact of reform at local, regional and national levels and from a variety of perspectives, including: probation staff; senior managers; policy makers; people on probation and external stakeholders.

--oo00oo--

Lets all hope it's the beginning of a new probation age that can break free of civil service command and control!