Guest Blog 87

Probation as Abuser

I am a senior probation officer and have been in the service for over fifteen years. Of course, I'd be happy to own the things I'm about to say, I believe them and I can evidence them, but I'd never get permission to publish these views and if I identified myself without permission, I'd be in breach of the civil service code and subject to disciplinary action. 

It's worth pointing out that a dedicated set of public sector workers have been silenced and reduced to anonymous blogging. This itself, is the first act of institutional abuse I'd like to mention. It's hardly the behaviour of a confident organisation that's not afraid of healthy debate, more the type of censorship that might be seen in a repressive regime. 

Some time ago senior management were pushing an agenda of "professionalisation", but that's a hard circle to square with a staff group that is unable to publicly comment on their work. Truly probation staff are the "hidden heroes", hidden in plain sight and forbidden to speak.

With a few years in the job I've seen some things. From TPOs to PQiPs, from new labour to coalition, from Grayling to Gove, from NPS Mk1 to NPS Mk2, I've watched and lived it all like many who read this blog. It's entirely subjective of course but I've never seen the service in such a bad state. The staff shortages, the chaos, the weariness of colleagues is at breaking point. I know of offices with huge lists of entirely unallocated cases. A panicky email has been sent out asking for staff who might be willing to go and live in a hotel to prop up London probation. 

Why any PDU head in a remote area would approve the loss of a member of their own staff to prop up the capital is beyond me. While London is clearly in utter crisis other PDUs are teetering on the brink. Weary SPOs tell me they've been "in red" on the prioritisation matrix for months. What's the cause? Well far from being the great panacea that was promised, reunification has not brought relief to the system. 

At times of change, people change and many have voted for the door. Helped perhaps by Brexit labour shortages, they've left for the many, many jobs that now look much more attractive both financially and emotionally. Lidl pay £12 per hour and there's no domestic abuse or sex offending, well not much. The remaining staff are increasingly shell shocked and off sick. Absence rates are through the roof further tipping the service into crisis. 

Any staff that have the ability or the wherewithal are applying for jobs elsewhere in the business to get away from sentence management. That said, those PDU heads are wise to this and are simply refusing to release staff when they get new jobs! What's the answer? An army of PQiPS. Hundreds of them, in some offices I'm told there are more PQiPS than POs. This is great news, but who will train them? The stressed-out experienced staff are too busy managing the dangerous cases, there's a shortage of PTA's. 

It's like Putin's great mobilisation, an army of conscripts with no officers to train them and no ability to fight. PQiPs are leaving (deserting?) before they even qualify. They look at their weary miserable colleagues, they look at the lack of support and the huge responsibility, they look at the SPO apologetically asking them to take another high-risk case with remote oversight and it's not painting an attractive picture of their future.

Of course, the senior management response to a service in crisis is to double down. Having submitted the probation service to repeated catastrophic re-organisations the time is clearly right for further ill-conceived tinkering. Despite many failed attempts to get prisons and probation to work seamlessly (end to end offender management anyone?) they're going to have another go. We will become "One HMPPS". It's a sick joke. It's almost as if change is the only thing they can do, despite little evidence of benefit and considerable proof of harm.

Change in probation has been the one constant in my time and the pace has accelerated. The expectation that staff will absorb more change is, in my view, abusive. Is it a coincidence that the service has a largely female workforce? Certainly, probation pay has been neglected conspicuously over the years. The message for some years now has been absorb more work, absorb more change and get paid less. 

The only counterweight they have to this is tin pot reward and recognition schemes doling out consumerist shopping vouchers or "wellbeing" programmes that have to be set up and run by staff themselves. Messages like "take five to connect with colleagues" circulate alongside emails to allocate more cases. Numbers cease to make sense with 120% being the new 100% on the workload management tool. 

It's abusive nonsense and don't ever be fooled, they don't care. I'm not saying they're evil, I'm not saying they're not kind to dogs and small children, but if you think they care about frontline staff other than as bare resource to be burned up and exploited then I think you're a bit misguided to put it politely. They know what would make things better, they know that lower workloads, less change, higher pay would improve morale and wellbeing (and probably outcomes for probationers) but ask yourself, have they ever done any of those things in the last ten years? No, they haven't, and no amount of moaning on the people's survey will ever shift that dial so don't even bother.

Lets put our senior management through the lens of OASys. What would be the crime? Hard to look past some form of domestic abuse. Repeatedly punching the face of someone you claim to love. Like many an abuser you've controlled the ability of your victim to interact with the outside world, controlling their freedom of speech. 

The constant change, the threats about performance, interspersed with daft awards and occasional cake (please bake your own), what is this but a form of gas lighting, leaving staff constantly dazed and confused. The restriction of finances, both resourcing and salary wise. The constant accrual of new victims, looking at you PQiPs. It all adds up. But you know what's the worst? The absolute worst is taking advantage of someone's love, someone's passion, someone's vocation and betraying that so they let you treat them so badly. That's proper abuse that is.

There's a new Lidl opening up the road. Might have a look.

Anon