This is not the blog post I was going to publish today when I went to bed early last night. I went early because I knew there will be many reading the blog through the night, worrying, disturbed and concerned about what has become public knowledge from the Inquest into the murder of Terri Harris and her three children. And I was right, the following was written at 02:08 this morning and it will be so representative of the feelings shared by many staff across the Service.
The time has come for others to speak up, if they feel able, either anonymously here, or by making contact confidentially. Something has to change and pressure must be exerted upon our political leaders to get a grip, acknowledge the utter and calamitous failure of Probation being subsumed within HMPPS and the inexorable march of uncaring and incompetent civil service command and control freaks. This cannot and must not go on.
Once again I have been approached by serious mainstream media for background to the sorry state of affairs. Yes, we all know staff must not talk to the media and especially to this blog, but since when did responsible Probation Officers simply follow orders without reference either to their moral compass, professional judgement or simply sense of what's right? But please be careful and take care not to reveal anything that might identify you if posted directly on here. Please look for support amongst your colleagues, you are not alone and above all take care and look after each other.
--oo00oo--
How many of us have stopped watching the news when we’re on leave out of fear we may see one of ours on it? How many of us really leave our cases in the office? We don’t. We take them home with us in our heads. There’s never a break from it. How many of us end up waking up and writing a list in the early hours of the morning so we don’t forget to do things when we get to work? How is anyone supposed to manage that level of debilitating stress?
How many times have we sat at our desks with our heads in our hands and not known where to start because every case is on fire that day, and we don’t know how to put them out? But are afraid to take it to managers because they will write us up as having capability issues? How are staff being put on these punitive processes for being human? How then can anything be fixed when we cannot trust the people above us not to hang us out to dry if things go wrong? Where is the support? Where is the monthly clinical supervision? Why aren’t we having that? Why are staff being given warning letters for being off sick because of management? How are we supposed to be a part of our own families when we have all of this going on in our heads all of the time?
Being a probation officer is supposed to be about rehabilitation and helping to make positive change. Instead staff end up in therapy, on medication, off sick, having a break down, feeling unsafe in work, out of work, and knowing nothing will get better. It will only get worse. It’s not a life. There’s no job satisfaction. Our trust in others is severely damaged. And we are all just waiting for WHEN one of ours does something terrible.
Being a probation officer is to live in daily fear of something going terribly wrong because we are stretched so thin, and have cases flying at us from every direction, that half the time we don’t even remember our cases. They all merge into one giant offender. We get to spend 15 minutes with them once a week and basically just monitor them. There’s no time to do toolkit worksheets. We are swamped with emails, referrals and telephone calls from one service to another because all services are at breaking point.
Don’t even get me started on trying to find housing for cases. Cases that have severe mental health issues, are suicidal, are high risk, are dangerous. There’s barely enough time to write up sessions, and lunch breaks are a thing of the past. Probation is burning down around our ears, and we are expected to continue like nothing is happening. ‘Business as usual.’
Anon
From Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"Just wondering if there is a serving or recently quit, probation officer or someone currently on or relatively recently completed a period on licence, who would argue that probation is best placed under the prison service?"
I recall parking my car in a prison car park. I went on to see 7 pre release we called them clients. Not accurate but respectful. 2 were actually mine . 5 returning to other county officers but distance meant local teams picked up these duties. The prison officers turned the keys we did rehabilitation. They did the punitive we gave the care. They hold the discipline we provided the guidance. They mocked prisoners we talked with them on their plans. They called them societies rubbish we spoke of hope improvement responsibility. We knew where we stood the police never have anyone intelligent thought the jail was abusive to their esteem and we developed people from a mess on release with compassion care and confidence. We saw them as needed not as a direction of 15 minutes. We got know these people well and could make very clear projections. Dumbing down our work to the level and control of prisons police we are now expected to regiment our approach to the sort of descriptors above. We are probation we are different people not one hmpps. We are insightful able carful people. We direct drive encourage support repair manage protect . We are probation we were unique not combined on mass to the Tories cheapskate mess and the mental kaleidoscope of nonsense in Rees Romeo heads. Let us go learn the lesson now no empire is worth what you are doing and the sscl people are abusers of their role because they are robotrons.
DeleteThank you to the writer of this, it sums up how most of us feel. I want to add the voice of an SPO to this. We come in for a lot of criticism from colleagues, but also get a lot of support and empathy. Currently I line manage over 15 staff, as everywhere my team are over worked, under resourced and stressed. But they are amazing people doing some amazing work in impossible circumstances. The concerns I have for the well-being of my team keep me awake, I am constantly having to juggle balls and spin plates in the small hope it alleviates some pressure for them. I know that it doesn’t- it adds heat to a boiling pot.
ReplyDeleteStaff are burnt out. They go home feeling guilty, tired, and overwhelmed. Not only are they trying to manage high caseloads with high need, they are trying to help their colleagues and welcome a constant turn over of new staff in the hope that they stay.
New staff are given a bloody awful hand, they are being under trained and hammered with huge caseloads, despite my best efforts I am sure that there are cases they shouldn’t have.
We work in silos- gone are the days when you started to get to know your case pre sentence, and worked with them until the end whatever that sentence was. Courts are understaffed, the initial assessment process is consistently flawed. If they think the Bendall catastrophe has resolved this it hasn’t.
Police checks are taking weeks- the focus isn’t on analysing offending or behaviour, we are in a copy / paste culture of OASys and quality assurance!
22 years in probation- 17 as a PO- my highest caseload was 110 cases in the CRC. Caseload numbers are not that stupid anymore but I have POs on 40 cases, PSO’s on 50+- all are complex, high need. How on earth are staff expected to be effective? First thing that is dropped when workloads are high is the 1-1 rehabilitation, group work is touted as the answer. Barriers to engagement- breach- enforcement takes months, we don’t look at how we can effectively engage people anymore, deal with resistance and denial and sequence interventions. Targets, targets, targets. No doubt we need performance measures but they don’t mirror what we need to achieve . And then HMIP issue reports stating we have great leadership and research indicating that community disposals work with good 1-1 relationships in probation- ironic, frustrating and why we have an issue in probation, but certainly the latter is not news.
My teams caseload is over 600 cases, am I confident that all bases are covered, that I know all of the really risky cases? no. But I am confident that, despite the tensions, my colleagues are bloody working hard and trying their best.
Touch points model on 600+ cases- laughable and impossible, but also meaningless.
Managers meetings are a constant discussion on how do we support staff, we don’t hold the keys to the solutions locally and nationally they are not interested.
Staff retention is that key- but to achieve this we need to go back to the drawing board and look at the whole structure of probation and it’s value base. We have become solely a public protection agency, ineffective at public protection as we no longer assess effectively or rehabilitate. Yes better pay would have an impact but I think we all want the ability to be effective in building those working relationships with our people and do the rehabilitative work, not be chained to a laptop ticking a box or filling in a tool which tells us what we already know (for those of us fortunate enough to have had some decent training).
Sentencing- let’s not go there- PSS- principle of rehabilitation- is an utter shambles.
I stay in the service because I care- care for my colleagues, care for the people coming through the door, partners and public. Thats no longer seen as a positive by senior leaders / HMPPS. Will I stay until the end of my career, probably not but I will do what I can to look after my team while I am able to.
Anon 07:41 Wow thanks very much for taking the time to give an SPO perspective - I feel it will chime with a lot of others. You have contributed the next blog post - Being a Senior Probation Officer.
DeleteThus far, the silence is deafening.
ReplyDeleteNothing from ‘on high,’ nothing from NAPO, nothing from the politicians, just nothing!
Probation practitioners at all grades are being crucified and nobody has anything to say on the subject.
NAPO a should be giving a lead about adhering to the WMT , handing work back and working to contracted hours.
Probation Officers are working countless unpaid hours trying to bale out the sinking ship, and the more you do, the more they expect.
Our destiny lies in our own hands as those supposedly in charge have demonstrated yet again that they are not fit to lead.
Have you not seen the joint union campaign re workloads ?
DeleteNo never
ReplyDeletePO
Anon 09:04 I guess that's the answer to the Twitter question at 04:24
DeleteWhen somebody is released from custody they stop being part of the 'prison system' and they become part of the 'community'.
ReplyDeleteThey are no longer actively being 'segregated' from the community, they actively need to be 'integrated' into the community.
Prison and probation are working from polarised positions.
Prisons work to keep people 'IN' and probation work to keep people 'OUT'.
How on earth can One HMPPS ever be anything else then an extremely troubled and destructive marriage?
'Getafix
Just posted this on Twitter and the first person who 'liked' it was Frances Crook, former CEO of the Howard League for Penal Reform. Keep going 'Getafix!
DeleteFrom Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"Well it was the only option after the disaster that was the National Probation Service and then NOMS came about. Sometimes I think probation should be returned to local authorities where it worked quietly but effectively for quite a long time."
In England and Wales Probation has never been managed by any local Authority- until (I think 2001)- when central Governement took over probation remained an agency of the Local Magistrates's Courts Committees (apart from the Inner london Probation Service which was manged by The Home Secretary, all be it with a committee structure similar to those of The Magistrates; Courts Committees elsewhere in england and Wales - I paid far to little attention to this aspect of being a probation officer as that is how we came to be "officers of the court" and not Officers of Central Governement, simlar to the way Social Workers continue to be Officers of their Local Authority.
Delete(From Bing AI
"Probation officers in England and Wales were given the official status as “officers of the court” in 1907 with the passing of the Probation of Offenders Act"
https://sl.bing.net/fBparunXSjA)
Inside maghaberray is a must watch, it is old school probation- confrontation and compassion. No form filling etc just pure human interraction that explores early trauma with subsequent crime. This is so old school but which has become consigned to the dustbin of history- but this is what we used to start - to explore perceptions, culpability. Neutralisations,justifications etc BUT this absolutely requires face to face dialogue in a safe space. That is where the true value of probation lies, not in joining the principles of punishment.
DeleteFrom the Guardian:-
DeleteJailed: Inside Maghaberry Prison review – a gripping look at the UK’s most dangerous jails
If I’m entirely honest, he comes across as likable,” says Stephen Nolan, shaking his head as he leaves an interview with a 6ft 6in Lithuanian man serving 10 years for beating a man to death in an alleyway. “And that battle is why I’m here.”
Nolan is a Northern Irish journalist who has been given unprecedented access to a high-security prison in County Antrim for serious and paramilitary offenders. The result is a powerful and gripping series, Jailed: Inside Maghaberry Prison, in which Nolan interviews prisoners and staff to find out – well, how that whole loss of liberty, societal need for punishment and opportunity for rehabilitation to prevent recidivism thing is working out. It is delivered in six tight, punchy half-hour episodes that give you much to think about, once you’ve stopped reeling from the impact.
As Nolan notes, Maghaberry was described in 2015 by the then chief inspector of prisons, Nick Hardwick, as the most dangerous prison he had ever been to. Among the endearments shouted at him from cell windows as he walks through the grounds (“Nolan, ya fat prick!” “Nolan, ya fat bastard!”) are accusations of corruption, neglect and drugs being rife in the prison. Rage and frustration are palpable everywhere and he is often buttonholed by jumpy, volatile prisoners keen to give their opinion of the place – though often less keen to explain why they are inside it.
Not that Nolan is one to let them get away with what seem to be well-practised evasions. We hear some amazing circumlocutions that allow the inmates to swerve responsibility. (“I’ve been told hundreds of times what I was … part of … That’s probably around the situation of it” is the best one man can do when presented with a detailed account of his case and conviction; he was the leader of a gang that defrauded people of nearly £200,000.) But Nolan presses and challenges and follows the men’s claims to their logical conclusions to what feels like an unfashionable or rude degree, so used are we to interviewers allowing people to state their truth and letting it stand alone. “Where’s the morality inside you?” he asks a drug dealer. “Were you desperate for money? Why didn’t you stop?”
With others – with the mentally distressed or the (officially or unofficially) medicated – he is gentler but no less probing. “Really, David?” he says in almost fatherly tones to one young inmate who is giving him what Nolan knows to be a very partial account of his crimes indeed. But when David wells up, he doesn’t comfort him; he asks him why.
DeleteWhen a clearly vulnerable, equally young – so many of them are so young – man descends into near-incoherence as his grip on reality slips, Nolan tries to calm him, while also letting the intractable sadness of the boy’s situation speak for itself. But every episode is punctuated with reminders that most of the 1,000 men in here “have done terrible things” and caused terrible suffering to others. “Prison may be hard, but it’s temporary. The grief [the prisoners] inflict never goes away.”
He doesn’t press the governor of the prison quite so hard. Unprecedented access, even for a relative bruiser of a journalist, presumably has its price. Still, simply by virtue of the men being visible on camera, where it is as hard to fake remorse as it is to fake good or bad mental health, the systemic problems about what we do with our criminals (and perhaps even what we do to, with and for our men) are gradually limned. Nolan, for his part, articulates his own internal conflicts about the situation. “How do we punish him for who he is,” he says of one prisoner, “but change him into who he needs to be?”
Anger, depression, mental illness, remorse, denial, cauterised feelings and in a few cases an apparent absence of them are all on display. The governor, David Savage, insists that rehabilitation is possible and on offer under his roof. Even if this is true, it is hard to see how intervention at this very late stage in all the recidivist careers on show can make much difference. And of course it won’t undo the suffering of the victims already left in their wakes, though the point is to prevent the accretion of more. Nolan speaks from the heart and perhaps for all of us when he says with compassion and despair as David’s broken rant continues: “We need to fix you. Because imagine you going outside in this state.” Jailed, however, is light on suggestions of how this can be done.
Jailed: Inside Maghaberry Prison is available on BBC iPlayer.
I can't wait to get out of this fucke* up job and fucke* up CJS. For the stress we are under and damage to our MH it just isn't worth it. I came into the job to help people and not contribute to such a shambolic disjointed system. The other services are crashing around us. It's time to look for something else, even if it pays less it's worth it to be able to sleep at night and not worry about an SFO or DIS which are both increasingly common in today's service. I didn't come into this job to be a 'screw on wheels' either ,like a parole officer in the USA! Next thing they will be asking us to carry guns or handcuffs and round them up on recall. That's all i seem to be doing at the moment, threatening letters recalls etc. It's deflating.I don't want any more of those SFO's or the treatment / guilt etc that go with it.
ReplyDeleteThe best thing you can do for your sanity and integrity is to leave. That is what I did and all that unbearable stress has now gone. I can now sleep peacefully, not thinking about what awaits me when I return to work.
ReplyDelete