Another Journey

I'm always extremely grateful for contributions to this blog because I think it keeps it relevant and as someone said recently, it provides a place for testimony. This came in yesterday:-

Reading some of the comments about probation, the police and vetting I’ve thought about my own journey.

I remember my interview for probation officer training. There was me, a young black person sitting in front of an all white male middle class looking panel of professionals. To the question “tell us about a change and the process you followed”, I just went for it and explained my journey of being a school dropout, care leaver and juvenile prisoner to become a university graduate with a good work history. I think I fought not to shed a tear when I was speaking and they listened without a flinch and simply asked how I had such a story but was no different in age from many of the other graduates being interviewed.

To my surprise I got the job and during the first few days in probation I was summoned to HQ. It was all very formal and was sat in front of two older middle class looking females who had a printout on me that looked like an old MG16. I remember feeling so worried and that my dream of being a probation officer was about to end. There was a blank sheet of paper and an envelope on the desk for me to write the what, where, when, why, how. They gave me a cup of tea and left me alone for an hour with instructions to seal and leave the envelope with the person outside the door on my way out. I did what they asked, went back to the office and it was never mentioned again.

A few years later I went for a promotion elsewhere and came across one of the same women at interview. I was successful and I saw her again a few weeks later when I started the new job. She reminded me of when we first met at that HQ in my first week and told me she had thought, “good heavens, what have we taken on here”, but thought my education and work history “spoke for itself”, adding that I had proven myself and had got the promotion as my practice as a probation officer was “shit hot”. I wasn’t used to positive feedback and remember being amused to hear such a posh looking older woman use a swear word.

So you see probation used to be all about believing in people and change but we’ve lost that a bit. We had people in positions of authority that believed in giving people like me a chance and did so. I would not be writing this story without those people that gave me a chance and judged me on my merits. I’ve hardly told this story and rarely share my pre-probation background with anyone in the workplace. I’ve never used my background as a talking point either, even though I could have spent my entire career doing talks about ‘lived experience’. I always thought that while I’d be wheeled-out and applauded at conferences, I feared there will be too many colleagues negatively whispering about me. I’ve also always wanted to leave the past in the past where it belongs.

For those already whispering about people like me, we all wholeheartedly wish we hadn’t made those mistakes but cannot change the past. I remember speaking to a family friend about this shortly after I qualified as a probation officer. A really old black lady I’d known much of my life who came all the way to my house just to congratulate me for qualifying. She knew all I had been through, including some of the things I had suffered at the hands of the police which her own children and grandchildren had suffered too. She told me not to worry about my past any more or the stigma, “don’t be ashamed of your past, it was your journey to become who you are and look at you now and look at all the people you’re helping”. She was right and I’ve never forgotten those words.

I don’t think people like me are welcomed as much by probation as we were in the past. I do think my experiences overall have made me a better probation officer. That is not to say criminal convictions should be an eligibility criteria, but my reasons for wanting to be a probation officer were very simple but also very unique. I have found that probation teams do benefit from a varied mix of people and a good cross-reference of society. I don’t call it desistance or lived-experience and I do not consider myself to be an ex-offender either. I’m just a person with many experiences who wants to be defined by who I am today not what I did for a very short period in my distant past. I’ve encouraged every person of probation I’ve ever worked with to do the same.

I have always wished I didn’t need to feel so guarded about my past, but it’s what’s worked so far. CRB, DBS, Vetting is always a worrying time for me, with vetting being the worst as I’ve a few family members with not fully clean histories too, but all now upstanding professionals. I have passed vetting and know others that have passed too with similar pasts. The advice I was given and which I give to others is to tell them everything and don’t hold back. It’s still a bit hit and miss, I think luck plays a part too. The advice I give to probation is to do a bit more to enable those that struggle with vetting to pass the process and carry on with their jobs.