Price of Everything and Value of Nothing

Jim,

Are you aware of an ongoing project to remove the band four staff from the delivery of sex offender programmes? There is currently a consultation ongoing and a job evaluation which is being done with the clear aim of down grading this work due to cost implications.

They want band 3 staff to deliver Domestic Abuse and Sex Offender programmes. Of course, this work used to be all done by band 4 staff (PO), it was only a cost cutting TR exercise that saw programmes work split with DA going to the CRC who immediately down graded the staff needed. However, CRC practice on DA was not generally well regarded as we know. HMIP found very patchy practice when they looked at BBR work in the report linked below.

You'd have thought that taking practices embedded in the totally discredited TR clusterfuckery and extending them to a further risky group of politically sensitive offenders might not be the best idea?

The excellent Probation Journal article by Renehan documents the impact of the Domestic Abuse work on largely female band 3 CRC staff. When I read this personally what I took was that the abuse of these staff by the organisation mirrored the abuse that the course was supposed to address. They were not adequately trained and supported to do this work. Again, doesn't seem the best footing on which to extend these staff into working with another group of POPs who's offending may bring a even greater degree of complexity and emotional labour.

In prisons Sex Offender programmes are delivered by a mix of "unqualified" prison officers alongside forensic psychologists I think, but then prison SO programmes have been found not be very effective so again, perhaps not the best model.

Ultimately, this is a cost cutting exercise and cutting costs while not cutting quality is always fool's gold. 

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Domestic abuse: the work undertaken by Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs)

Foreword

An estimated two million people experienced domestic abuse last year. A good proportion of people in receipt of probation services are domestic abusers, and domestic abuse constitutes a sizeable proportion of the work of Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). In this inspection we set out to assess how well CRCs are working to reduce domestic abuse and protect victims. Overall, we found CRCs nowhere near effective enough in this critical area of work, and yet good work here could make so much difference to the families and individuals concerned, and to society as a whole. 

Yes, we found pockets of good practice, as we have come to expect, and we saw examples of good public protection partnership work as well. But overall the work was characterised by a lack of awareness and applied expertise. It is not an exaggeration to say that many individuals were drifting through their supervision period without being challenged or supported to change their predilection for domestic violence, and that simply won’t do. 

Those left unchallenged and unassisted pose a particular threat to others, most especially those close to them. Too often we were left wondering how safe victims and children were, especially when practitioners failed to act on new information indicating that they could be in danger. Practitioners often underestimated the level of harm victims and children were exposed to. Some practice was of grave concern to us. 

In the cases we looked at, we found that very little meaningful work had been completed in custody. In the community, domestic abusers were not making enough progress, and many had completed little work to help them improve their relationships and behaviour. While a range of domestic abuse interventions were being offered, I am not assured that these were all evidence-based, evaluated or delivered effectively. Too few individuals were either starting or completing Building Better Relationships, the only accredited domestic abuse programme that the court can impose as part of a community sentence. 

Many practitioners had unmanageable workloads. Inexperienced staff were managing complex issues with little training or management oversight. Some were too busy to do a thorough job, while others simply didn’t have the knowledge needed to do a good job. Some CRCs had introduced new structures, policies and case management tools but, generally, CRCs should be taking a more strategic and determined approach. In my view, they should be making sure that practitioners know the current evidence base and that they are equipped to supervise domestic abusers well in all respects. That is not happening: there is insufficient focus on domestic abuse. 

There is a lack of clear and specific contractual obligations and incentives for CRCs to actively manage domestic abuse. The Ministry of Justice has the opportunity to consider this, as and when it recasts contracts. 

Our recommendations are focused on what we see to be the big priorities. There is enough in this report to help CRCs identify what needs to be done and where things are working well. I encourage them to build on the pockets of good practice identified here and to give domestic abuse the priority and attention it deserves.

Dame Glenys Stacey 

HM Chief Inspector of Probation

September 2018

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Facilitators of probation-based domestic violence perpetrator programmes: ‘Who’s in the room?’

Abstract

The role that probation practitioners play in the desistance process has begun to receive much needed attention. Yet, the experiences of facilitators of probation-based, domestic violence perpetrator programmes have long been neglected. This article explores the experiences and wellbeing of eight facilitators from one cohort of the Building Better Relationships (BBR) programme in England. Drawing upon five-months’ observations and in-depth interviews, I demonstrate how working with domestically violent men with insufficient knowledge, experience, or support, exacerbated within the context of Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, impacted significantly on facilitator well-being, professional identities, and practice. Practice implications are discussed.

Discussion

The thematic inspection of domestic abuse work within CRCs offered a rare glimpse into the BBR programme. However, it was limited in scope given it did not seek to identify who exactly is ‘in the room’ (Burke, 2014). Understanding the capacities of group facilitators who undertake such work, and the effects on them, is crucial not only for desirable outcomes but for the well-being of those who are tasked with facilitating change in others. Unfortunately, to date, facilitators of DVPPs have been forgotten in between the debate of programme fetishism and desistance focused supervision with probation practitioners (Durnescu, 2012).

I have highlighted that facilitators were not enabled to work in ways that were commensurate with their own personal and professional values for many reasons: there was a lack of adequate training which focused on delivering (some) exercises from a manual and ‘lumped’ together amongst other accredited programme training; the video equipment which was used to record group sessions and monitor practice had not worked for over 2 years and so practice development was not in force; supervision was not supportive; facilitators felt de-valued due to a lack of pecuniary incentives, professional development, and promotional opportunities; and the emotional demands of the job was overlooked even though this affected how they felt and worked. This was further complicated in those cases where facilitators had their own personal encounters with trauma which had both positive and negative effects on them and in how this shaped their practice. What is important to note here is that some facilitators felt they had to leave their own trauma at the door, or face professional judgement or risk losing their jobs.

While many of the facilitators were able to humanise the traumatising but traumatised men with whom they worked, the lack of time, low confidence, and investment in them as valued professionals had impacted on their wellbeing and their professional identities, experiences that were interdependent and mutually reinforcing. Even while the Transforming Rehabilitation agenda of the Coalition Government of 2013 sought to de-professionalise part of probation services, the facilitators in this study, like many other probation practitioners in CRCs (Tidmarsh, 2020a), were still invested in the discourses of professionalism in which they endeavoured to deliver a service that valued the clients with whom they worked. But calls to ensure they were response-abled were met with solutions that diluted the standard of service they had strived to provide. Supervision was not adequate to deal with the emotional demands of the job, vicarious trauma, or the psychological impact of re-living their own traumas. The lack of due care towards facilitators resulted in them feeling devalued, exhausted, desensitised and disincentivised to do their job which was executed with a mixture of enthusiasm and dread. Almost 12 months on, five facilitators were either on long term sick leave or had left.

Nicole Renehan

June 2021