A Quart Does Not Fit a Pint Pot

Ok this has been going on for some time now and the argument has distilled into a war of words between POs and SPOs - the latter effectively wringing their hands and saying 'we care, BUT basically have to carry on following orders and allocate more work'. This is a fucking disgrace and what compounds it is the silence from unions; HMPPS Permanent Secretary; Chief Probation Officer; Justice Select Committee etc etc etc:-

“But then you allocate “your staff” more work the very next morning. How caring!” Where do you suggest the cases go instead? Cases continue to get sentenced, are they meant to stay unallocated, how would you feel as a victim of crime if that was the case?

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What magical solution do you suggest for when there are no staff left to do the job? Victims and their families want justice through staff having the capacity to actually do the job. They aren’t getting justice when we have 15 people coming in a day, and only have time to spend 10 minutes with each of them because then we have their case notes to write up, referrals to do, oasys to update, phone calls to make to social services, housing, courts, police, safeguarding checks, MAPPA and MARAC updates, breaches, parole reports and hearings, emails, teams calls, staff supervision and the bloody list just keeps on going. All the while being micromanaged by incompetent SPOs that have no idea what they’re doing, to within an inch of our lives. We see cases for long enough to ask if they’ve been arrested and check they’re still living where they should be, and to give them another appointment. We don’t do any meaningful work with them anymore. There isn’t time. 

So what do you suggest? Allocating to overwhelmed staff until they collapse under the caseload isn’t working. A lunch break that doesn’t involve cramming food in our faces while we continue typing would be nice once a week but it doesn’t happen. There. Is. No. More. Capacity.

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I would suggest the minimal work that is being delivered [to] such over- allocated cases is not justice for the victims, not delivering what the Court intended at sentencing, letting down those we supervise and causing harm to staff. I suggest our senior managers/ excellent leaders do what the prisons do, say very publicly Probation is at capacity and the plans we had to fix this have not worked. If the glass is full any intelligent person would stop pouring!

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Under the Health and Safety act 1974, the employer has a duty of care to its staff, and we have a duty of care to ourselves, to ensure that we have a safe working environment. To protect ourselves we need to call in sick and report stress on the portal, and request stress risk assessments to be recorded and reviewed. If managers do not follow this process then the Foreseeability Notice that NAPO created, should be used more frequently as a preventative measure. My understanding is that the organisation / employer is data driven, and we need to provide this evidence to NAPO for them to present and and challenge at meetings, so they can address the workloads, trauma and stress within the organisation.

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As far as I can see, in order to protect the health and well-being of staff, according to law drastic action of some sort is the inevitable direction of travel here. Staff are leaving in droves; going off sick; suffering PTSD; prospective new recruits being dissuaded; staff increasingly confiding in me or contributing anonymous accounts on the blog, all in direct contravention of civil service directives and code of practice. This is going to continue until there's a bloody big public row because any sane person knows things can't go on like this. You cannot get a quart into a pint pot.