It's Saturday and I'm up very early again because we seem to keep returning to a regular and alarming theme. This from yesterday:-
You are right @ 18:13 and last night at 9.25pm I fired up the computer, and sent the email resigning with immediate effect. It has been a long time coming. I awoke this morning, not feeling a sense of jubilation or a desire to turn cartwheels of joy as one would expect but a profound sense of rage and sadness at the whole sorry state of affairs and the disgraceful way staff are treated. More surprising was the reaction of friends and family who were rejoicing that at last I had got rid. You are worth more than your situation which sounds unsustainable and your health and family cannot replace you or you them or gain back precious time. This machine will roll relentlessly on without us. A fact. sad but true. I think I was actually bereaved and grieving for a while there, but where one door shuts......and I send you every good wish.
The above was in response to this:-
I thought last week was bad but this week was even more punishing. I literally don't stop, don't have time for even a quick lunch most days and often come home dehydrated and completely exhausted physically and emotionally. It feels inhuman at times. It reminds me of the photos of firefighters or NHS workers during pandemic, hunkered down exhausted and having a rest, except there is no rest and no recognition of how hard pushed we are. No one seems to notice or care. It has become normalised.
And the Minister comes out with the normal guff. This from HoC Justice Committee session 23rd October 2023:-
Damian Hinds: Yes.
Edward Timpson: What assessment have you made as to the impact these changes will have on the probation service and its ability to provide sufficiently resourced, high-quality opportunities for rehabilitation around education, housing, sobriety and a job—all the key areas that we know make a difference and help to reduce reoffending rates?
Damian Hinds: You are absolutely right about the central role of probation and the huge difference that probation officers make in the lives of those individuals. As you know, we have put more money into the probation service—£155 million a year—and we have recruited quite heavily. There had been—and, as you will know, in some parts of the country there still are—significant staffing challenges. Because we have recruited a lot of people in the last two to three years, there are quite a lot of people who are, effectively, going through their training and development. They will of course become experienced probation officers in time, but right now, as we speak today, there is on average a relatively shorter time in post.
Your question was about what assessment we have made. We have absolutely made an assessment of the impact of these changes. The probation service is looking very carefully at how to make the most effective use of the time of its professional resource.
Q31 Edward Timpson: Can you help us in understanding the workload of an individual probation officer, accepting that every case is different, so an absolute number does not necessarily tell the whole story? Is there an accepted level of case load for a probation officer? Is the assessment that that will still be met with these changes?
Damian Hinds: There is such a view. You are absolutely right that situations vary by the exact type of case, by risk level and so on. Because of what I was saying about staffing challenges and how they have been different in different parts of the country, there have been a number of places where workloads have been too high and need to be made more manageable. What I was saying about the service—and the service itself is looking at this—is that we need to make sure that resource is being most effectively directed to where it makes most difference.
--oo00oo--
Abstract
This paper provides insights into the predominant styles of political reasoning in England and Wales that inform penal policy reform. It does so in relation to a particular development that constitutes a dramatic, perhaps even unique, wholesale reversal of a previously introduced market-based criminal justice delivery model. This is the ‘unification’ of probation services in England and Wales, which unwound the consequential privatization reforms introduced less than a decade earlier. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with senior policy makers to present a narrative reconstruction of the unification of probation services in England and Wales. Analogies with desistance literature are drawn upon in order to encapsulate the tensions posed for policy makers as they sought to enact this penal policy reform.
UNIFICATION, POLITICAL REASONING AND THE ‘BATTLE FOR PROBATION’S SOUL’
[A story is interesting] not because of what truths it can tell us about a person’s past but rather what it might say about the person’s future. (Maruna and Liem, 2021: 128)
We have seen, in the preceding analysis, that the unification of probation was widely recognized as being a success (in the context of attenuated expectations for government reform projects). That said, such efforts could not overcome the brute fact of prior history:
In thinking about this, we can reflect on our analysis of the constructed narrative for the probation unification reforms, the core justifications for policy participants, and how these align (or do not) with wider possible narratives about probation. We saw above that the consistent government justification for probation renationalization was that unification would provide ‘a sustainable long-term model for probation services that provides public protection, visible and credible options for sentencers, deals effectively with individuals who have offended repeatedly and gives the right rehabilitative support to address offending behaviour’ (HMPPS 2020: 10). Within the Target Operating Model, the strapline ‘Assess, Protect, Change’ (APC) was proffered as a distillation of probation’s aims (HMPPS 2021: 6–7):
Assess: Undertaking accurate, timely assessments of an individual’s risks and needs that take into account protected characteristics and specific considerations arising from these.
Protect: Managing an individual’s risks and needs in conjunction with other relevant agencies. Taking effective action…and safeguarding victims.
Change: Empowering supervised individuals to make lasting changes to their lives through building good and trusting relationships with them that help motivate them through any rehabilitative activities and support them in integrating into the community. Working closely with other agencies and community services to facilitate this.
The internal processes of policy development, the ‘puzzling’ through to satisfactory policy solutions (Weller et al. 2021: Chapter 8), thus reflected the multi-faceted roles and expectations placed upon probation. It is notable, in August 2022, that senior leaders felt able to remind all staff that the ‘mission’ to which probation (and prisons) were working was ‘public protection’ (HMPPS 2022). This suggests an envisaged dominance of the ‘assess’ and ‘protect’ aspects of APC. One which connects with the longer history of probation’s increasing alignment with a public protection agenda that elevated functions of ‘surveillance, control, and exclusion’ (Nash 2000: 211), treating people on probation primarily as ‘risk bearing subjects’ (Robinson 2008: 440).
At the same time, the APC points to probation’s envisaged role in supporting rehabilitation. The notion of rehabilitation as the central ethos for probation has deep roots, emerging in the post-war period as a secular incarnation of the original mission to ‘save the souls’ of the sinful (McWilliams 1983; Mair and Burke 2011). One must recognize, however, the extent to which rehabilitative policy, and its underlying justification, has shifted across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Garland 1985), being capable of eliding into public protection (Robinson 2008) or standing as its distinct other (Burke et al. 2019).
This speaks to the widespread sense that probation’s purpose is far from settled (at time of research interviews, and at time of writing). This is due in part to the focus on organizational restructuring in recent years, which has led to a relative neglect of questions relating to what probation is and what it is for. It also speaks to probation’s history, which has been marked by debates about its values and its nature, its essence much contested.
In discussions about probation’s future trajectory, respondents found succour in different strands of its self-identity. One explicitly drew connections back to probation’s social work past in discussing what good probation work looked like, and the challenges in achieving it:
Reflecting the historical notion of probation as being rooted in its locality (e.g. McWilliams 1985), some respondents recognized the force in the view that probation practitioners are (or should be) ‘local people, rooted in local communities, and local services’ (PP8). One senior civil servant considered, 1-year post-unification, that ‘I think we’re still trying to find that sweet spot now’ (PP2), between regional empowerment and centralized control, but fundamentally ‘the only way to get brilliant delivery is for those [probation] regions to be driving it’ (PP16).
Similarly, many respondents recognized that there was force behind concerns that unification was pulling probation into civil service structures, processes and cultures that ‘can feel very disempowering to people’ (PP10). Some respondents, contemplating the Probation Service’s structural alignment as part of the centralized state, could not predict how this would develop:
Recognition of concerns were reported in more coded terms during our research period, with many policy participants speaking to the need for the service to focus much more on ‘the basics of probation practice’ (PP8), ‘quality of practice’ (PP10), ‘good probation practice’ (PP4): ‘we have had at least 7 years where it’s all been about structure… We’ve got to move on and make the next few years about practice’ (PP2). However, the ongoing reforming impulses did not cease. One respondent remarked that ‘the pressure of change in probation…One HMPPS being a great example, it just hasn’t stopped’ (PP9). Another respondent described it as ‘another change in an already change-saturated area’ (PP17).
I was particularly struck by this observation from a few days ago:-
Operation Protect: we are now often in the situation where we have more in common with our clients than our employers. The machinery grinds on requiring us to fulfil often meaningless tasks and expectations beyond our capacity to do them, and to require us to require that of our clients. So two humans in the face of the relentless machine work out together as best they can, how to navigate through the process unscathed.
This came in a few weeks ago, (edited to remove identifiers) but gained little notice having been left on an earlier blog post:-
As part of Operation Protect, we held a fringe meeting with Jim Barton of HMPPS, regarding members’ extreme workloads. Jim was happy for those present to follow up from this fringe and email him further questions. If you were there and have more questions to raise as a result of the discussion and as part of further meetings and our campaign Operation Protect, please also email us at info@napo.org.uk and we can continue to follow up on important queries.
I am just about to complete my training as a PQiP. 50 year old with lots of experience, motivation and compassion for those in crisis. Absolutely love the exchanges and change I strive for with the offenders. To be honest, I receive more respect, honesty and civility from the offenders than I do from management. Been belittled, set up to fail, bullied, demoralised and intimidated by management. I am extremely good and conscientious in my job. Counts for nothing. Probation full of people desperate to climb the grading ladder. Any complaints and they all close ranks. The most incredibly corrupt and failing service I have ever worked for.Tasks and admin jobs impossible to complete without working way beyond hours. Pushed me to the brink. Personal issues and eventually pushed to an emotional breakdown. Cue to manager dishing out an unacceptable absence improvement plan.Impeccable work record from me but it counts for nothing. I stood up to bullying and illogical and impossible management requests and now I am out. Pushed me to the edge and now can barely manage a day without breaking down emotionally. Breaks my heart as I love the job, as in I strive to make a difference for those on probation and the wider public in general. But that’s not what probation service want. They want scapegoats, yes people, subservient robots who will pander and pant to their every whim while those in management just keep standing on their backs to line their pockets and polish their egos! It stinks.
Napo doesn't exactly inspire confidence:-
Operation Protect Fringe at AGM – writing to Jim Barton at HMPPSAs part of Operation Protect, we held a fringe meeting with Jim Barton of HMPPS, regarding members’ extreme workloads. Jim was happy for those present to follow up from this fringe and email him further questions. If you were there and have more questions to raise as a result of the discussion and as part of further meetings and our campaign Operation Protect, please also email us at info@napo.org.uk and we can continue to follow up on important queries.
Then I notice a recent academic paper confirms what has long been suspected, namely top Whitehall mandarins haven't really got a clue about probation and what its for:-
Abstract
This paper provides insights into the predominant styles of political reasoning in England and Wales that inform penal policy reform. It does so in relation to a particular development that constitutes a dramatic, perhaps even unique, wholesale reversal of a previously introduced market-based criminal justice delivery model. This is the ‘unification’ of probation services in England and Wales, which unwound the consequential privatization reforms introduced less than a decade earlier. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with senior policy makers to present a narrative reconstruction of the unification of probation services in England and Wales. Analogies with desistance literature are drawn upon in order to encapsulate the tensions posed for policy makers as they sought to enact this penal policy reform.
----///---
UNIFICATION, POLITICAL REASONING AND THE ‘BATTLE FOR PROBATION’S SOUL’
[A story is interesting] not because of what truths it can tell us about a person’s past but rather what it might say about the person’s future. (Maruna and Liem, 2021: 128)
We have seen, in the preceding analysis, that the unification of probation was widely recognized as being a success (in the context of attenuated expectations for government reform projects). That said, such efforts could not overcome the brute fact of prior history:
We’ve pretty much lost seven years for the probation service as a result of all the effort, investment going into that structural reform and then having to come back out of it the other side. (PP2)Additionally, the service and staff bore the scars, the ‘organisational trauma’ from TR (Robinson 2023; Millings et al, 2019). At a public event reflecting on the unification programme, the Director of the Reform Programme stated that he was ‘under no illusions about the scale of the challenges that lie ahead’ (Institute for Government 2022). These challenges include recruitment and retention of staff, workload, improving, and ensuring consistency of practice, building stakeholder confidence, and resolving longstanding IT and infrastructure issues. But more fundamentally, unification was recognized to have brought to the surface foundational questions about what probation is and what it is for. A number of respondents reported actively thinking about probation’s future identity, with one respondent describing it as bringing to the surface the need for a ‘fight for the soul of probation, what is probation?’ (PP1).
In thinking about this, we can reflect on our analysis of the constructed narrative for the probation unification reforms, the core justifications for policy participants, and how these align (or do not) with wider possible narratives about probation. We saw above that the consistent government justification for probation renationalization was that unification would provide ‘a sustainable long-term model for probation services that provides public protection, visible and credible options for sentencers, deals effectively with individuals who have offended repeatedly and gives the right rehabilitative support to address offending behaviour’ (HMPPS 2020: 10). Within the Target Operating Model, the strapline ‘Assess, Protect, Change’ (APC) was proffered as a distillation of probation’s aims (HMPPS 2021: 6–7):
Assess: Undertaking accurate, timely assessments of an individual’s risks and needs that take into account protected characteristics and specific considerations arising from these.
Protect: Managing an individual’s risks and needs in conjunction with other relevant agencies. Taking effective action…and safeguarding victims.
Change: Empowering supervised individuals to make lasting changes to their lives through building good and trusting relationships with them that help motivate them through any rehabilitative activities and support them in integrating into the community. Working closely with other agencies and community services to facilitate this.
The internal processes of policy development, the ‘puzzling’ through to satisfactory policy solutions (Weller et al. 2021: Chapter 8), thus reflected the multi-faceted roles and expectations placed upon probation. It is notable, in August 2022, that senior leaders felt able to remind all staff that the ‘mission’ to which probation (and prisons) were working was ‘public protection’ (HMPPS 2022). This suggests an envisaged dominance of the ‘assess’ and ‘protect’ aspects of APC. One which connects with the longer history of probation’s increasing alignment with a public protection agenda that elevated functions of ‘surveillance, control, and exclusion’ (Nash 2000: 211), treating people on probation primarily as ‘risk bearing subjects’ (Robinson 2008: 440).
At the same time, the APC points to probation’s envisaged role in supporting rehabilitation. The notion of rehabilitation as the central ethos for probation has deep roots, emerging in the post-war period as a secular incarnation of the original mission to ‘save the souls’ of the sinful (McWilliams 1983; Mair and Burke 2011). One must recognize, however, the extent to which rehabilitative policy, and its underlying justification, has shifted across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Garland 1985), being capable of eliding into public protection (Robinson 2008) or standing as its distinct other (Burke et al. 2019).
This speaks to the widespread sense that probation’s purpose is far from settled (at time of research interviews, and at time of writing). This is due in part to the focus on organizational restructuring in recent years, which has led to a relative neglect of questions relating to what probation is and what it is for. It also speaks to probation’s history, which has been marked by debates about its values and its nature, its essence much contested.
In discussions about probation’s future trajectory, respondents found succour in different strands of its self-identity. One explicitly drew connections back to probation’s social work past in discussing what good probation work looked like, and the challenges in achieving it:
[Probation officers] want to try to change behaviours and achieve better outcomes. It is very specialist, complex type of social work. But [there is] the expectation on them to also provide those protection duties. (PP4)This connects with the historical emergence of the ‘scientific’ iteration of probation’s self-identity (McWilliams 1985, 1986), casting probation as ‘a social work service with a long and proud tradition’ (Mair and Burke 2011: 115).
Reflecting the historical notion of probation as being rooted in its locality (e.g. McWilliams 1985), some respondents recognized the force in the view that probation practitioners are (or should be) ‘local people, rooted in local communities, and local services’ (PP8). One senior civil servant considered, 1-year post-unification, that ‘I think we’re still trying to find that sweet spot now’ (PP2), between regional empowerment and centralized control, but fundamentally ‘the only way to get brilliant delivery is for those [probation] regions to be driving it’ (PP16).
Similarly, many respondents recognized that there was force behind concerns that unification was pulling probation into civil service structures, processes and cultures that ‘can feel very disempowering to people’ (PP10). Some respondents, contemplating the Probation Service’s structural alignment as part of the centralized state, could not predict how this would develop:
I can’t, still, work out whether this operating environment will allow us to settle in in two or three years’ time, or whether this is just a square peg in a round hole. I can’t tell you, yet, which one it is. (PP17)During the period in which our research interviews were conducted, near-uniformly negative inspection reports by HM Inspectorate of Probation grew in number (HM Chief Inspector of Probation 2023), which while anticipated (given the time that would be required for reforms to bed down), were not easy reading. More recently, a number of Serious Further Offence (SFO) investigations were published (see HM Chief Inspector of Probation 2023), which, coupled with high profile media coverage and challenge from the opposition Labour party, put the Probation Service under sustained critical focus.
Recognition of concerns were reported in more coded terms during our research period, with many policy participants speaking to the need for the service to focus much more on ‘the basics of probation practice’ (PP8), ‘quality of practice’ (PP10), ‘good probation practice’ (PP4): ‘we have had at least 7 years where it’s all been about structure… We’ve got to move on and make the next few years about practice’ (PP2). However, the ongoing reforming impulses did not cease. One respondent remarked that ‘the pressure of change in probation…One HMPPS being a great example, it just hasn’t stopped’ (PP9). Another respondent described it as ‘another change in an already change-saturated area’ (PP17).
I'll leave the final word to something a reader reminded me of:-
Probation is very much like the poorly understood ligament in the body. It joins muscle and bone, has a bad blood supply, is difficult to see with x-rays or ultra-sound and, if ruptured, takes years to repair, about 7 to be exact. A final total rupture can still be avoided." Joe Kuipers in 2014
Posted this morning elsewhere, but seems relevant today:-
ReplyDelete"Scratch the surface on short sentences and there are concrete challenges;
- Meaningfully resourcing and addressing the underlying high social needs prevalent amongst those subject to short term imprisonment including stable housing, income, employment, mental health and addiction.
- A probation service weakened by successive failed reforms, a staffing crisis and overstretched workloads.
- Punitive, lengthy community-based sentences and a reliance on imprisonment for breach and non-compliance.
None are new issues. All have been exacerbated in recent years."
Helen Mills, Head of Programmes at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies writing in Russell Webster's blog
https://www.russellwebster.com/presumption-against-short-sentences-misses-the-point/
Having made the point, the article itself then goes on to miss it, as, in common with so many commentaries, it goes on to discuss sentence length and prisons. Crime and the state of the economy are linked. The crisis in prisons and probation are conjoined, but the two services should not be, and until the crisis in probation is fixed, meaningful and credible community sentences are not going to happen.
Posted elsewhere but seems more appropriate here:-
ReplyDeleteGood grief. https://www.ft.com/content/ccf9c260-a98a-4b89-b604-4fa19a9f6a7c?shareType=nongift "Suella Braverman pushes to restrict tents for rough sleepers. Proposals include new civil penalty for charities giving tents on public nuisance grounds"
ReplyDeleteSuella Braverman is seeking to restrict the use of tents by homeless people in urban areas as the government grapples with rising numbers of rough sleepers on Britain’s high streets, according to Whitehall insiders.
The UK home secretary’s proposals also include a new civil offence to deter charities from giving tents to homeless people. Charities could be fined for doing so under the plans if the tents cause a nuisance.
Braverman has pitched the policies for the government’s legislative programme that will be outlined in the King’s speech on Tuesday, people with knowledge of the proposals said.
The plans are being considered for inclusion in two clauses to be inserted in a new criminal justice bill that applies to England and Wales, the people added. The potential legislation would apply to tents that cause a nuisance, following concerns in government about issues such as the obstruction of shop doorways.
The people said the proposals were designed to replace elements of the 1824 Vagrancy Act, which criminalised rough sleeping and begging. The government pledged to repeal the act last year.
“Braverman has formally pitched a ban on tents in urban areas — except on your own land or the back garden — as well as a new civil penalty for charities to stop them giving out tents to homeless people for free,” one of the people said.
UK charities have warned of a growing homelessness crisis caused by a combination of rising rents, a shortage of social and affordable housing and the cost of living crisis leaving more people vulnerable to eviction.
Government figures show 298,430 households received help from their councils or were threatened by homelessness in the year to April 2023, a 7 per cent increase on the previous year and 3 per cent above pre-pandemic levels of 2019-20.
Shelter, the homeless charity, has estimated that on a given night in 2022, more than 270,000 people in England will have been recorded as homeless.
The Red Cross also last month warned the government’s plans to clear a backlog of more than 60,000 historic asylum claims before the end of this year will leave up to 50,000 refugees at risk of homelessness.
The government committed to repeal the 1824 Vagrancy Act in August 2022 alongside a strategy to end rough sleeping for which the government pledged to spend £1bn over three years.
Whitehall insiders stressed enforcement of the proposed tent restrictions would dovetail with support being offered to homeless people affected, including help to move them into shelters.
Since pledging to repeal the act, the Home Office — backed by key Downing Street aides of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — has been drawing up plans to crack down on what it sees as a rise in antisocial behaviour.
The Home Office published in March a 48-page antisocial behaviour action plan with a foreword by Sunak promising to give “the police and other agencies the tools they need to act and restore pride in our communities”.
The document promised new powers for police to move on rough sleepers from shop doorways and pavements “and to clear the debris, tents and paraphernalia that can blight an area”, while ensuring those “genuinely homeless” were offered support.
The Home Office said on Friday: “We want to ensure our communities feel safe and secure.”
It added that the antisocial behaviour plan included “a package of new measures to better equip the police and local authorities to respond to nuisance begging and rough sleeping which can be harmful to individuals themselves and to the wider public”.
Shelter and Crisis, another homelessness charity, said they had not been consulted over Braverman’s plans but had been anticipating new measures following the decision to abolish the Vagrancy Act.
DeletePolly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said record homelessness in the UK reflected a decade of failed housing policy, including government failure to build genuinely affordable social homes.
Crisis chief executive Matt Downie said draconian laws to criminalise the use of tents would do nothing to tackle rough sleeping but risked pushing vulnerable people further into destitution.
“Ending rough sleeping is absolutely possible but it requires government to step up and make the changes needed that will actually achieve it, including investing in housing benefit so people can afford their rent. Stripping people of their only protection is not the answer,” he added.
Orla in the latest Time programme was released from HMP with a tent !
DeleteIn response to Anon 4 November 2023 at 14:58 -surely that is a fictional programme?
DeleteNo surprise probation staff are resigning. The pay is peanuts and the work is relentless. According to this survey our pay is average and on par with travel agents. Think about that when sitting in your toxic probation office listening to your bully so called leaders.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67308318
The average full-time worker in the UK was earning nearly £35,000 a year in April, official data shows, a rise of 5.8% on the previous year.
DeleteThe size of that rise varies from job to job, with travel agents getting a pay bump of 21%, while sport coaches saw their earnings fall the most.
Despite the increases in pay, most workers' wages rose by less than inflation, the rate at which the cost of goods and services rise.
This means that in real terms, wages fell by 1.9% for full-time workers - a sign of the continued cost of living squeeze.
Use the lookup table below to see what the average pay is in your job group, how that has changed from the previous year, and whether a pay rise has topped inflation.
daughter's friend is a 'bespoke' travel agent in London; spends about 6 months of the year travelling the world, clears £6k a month + pockets regular cash tips from grateful clients.
DeleteLast month she says she was gifted a £5k thank-you from one client for whom she spent 3 months planning their 2024 roadtrip (10 months covering 4 continents - total cost was £"you don't want to know!").
And probation staff think they're hard done by...?
Not sure what your point is here . That's a great reward for job like you describe.
DeleteMoral of the story: Probation is a shite career choice. Bad working conditions, zero career progression and abysmal pay. For those considering becoming a Probation Officer as a ‘professional’ or well paid career, look elsewhere. You’ve heard it from the horses mouth!
Delete@14:12 - sorry, I didn't fit a "taking the piss" alarm to my post at 13:26
DeletePoint being, if it helps:
Probation (see also social work, nursing, teaching) are supposedly constructive & statutory elements required to secure the fabric of society, yet they are regarded as 'menial' with limited reward & staff are treated with utter contempt.
However, organising holidays for the obscenely wealthy is highly regarded, seen as praiseworthy & merits substantial recognition.
Thus, the world we live in is focused upon luvverly treats for some, & shit-all for everyone else.
So, if for any reason you find yourself in a pop-up tent in the doorway of Poundland eating cold beans from a can & drinking from a 2 litre bottle of Frostys to shut out the pain - that's now regarded as a *lifestyle choice* & you're utterly fucked, backside upwards.
cruella's mind must be craaawling with some hateful parasitic worms.
From Twitter:0
ReplyDelete"Feed back to your line manager during Perf. Review etc Dev. a range of metrics which indicate what’s happening. Repeat this each review & it will build evidence & YOU WILL HAVE REPORTED IT. In effect it pushes the pressure onto the Org. Resource, Process or Resource issues!"
No point mate unless you have the knowledge and skills to fight capability performance grievances and then take appropriate legal steps as your contractual rights are breached daily and you have made the right complaints in a timely way. Then if you are well skilled can you negotiate the legal framework to attempt to expose these shits. Talking of shit braverman states a tent in a high street is a lifestyle choice. Wtf. In a Tory controlled country where her ilk have stolen all the money to chumocrisy private companies on gov contracts. I know a street cleaner works 45 hours a week and is appointed to a job whereby it should be council run and paid . Yet he cannot afford a bedsit on his pay. Often takes to a tent. Braverman what planet Ru from.
DeleteIn agreement with 16:56 and assuming I'm correct in my belief that Suella Braverman comes from Planet Fxxx You??
ReplyDeleteProbation is no longer a good career choice. There is a marked disconnect between what we say we do, or rather what HMPPS states in the published values, and what any practitioner, however skilled and motivated can deliver under HMPPS and the Civil Service. So the altruism at the heart of many of us can’t drive our work anymore it simply is something to be cynically exploited both in recruitment and by our excellent leaders demanding we deliver the impossible in allocating work far over our agreed workloads. Next there are our salaries which have been cynically eroded both by net negative ‘increases’ over time which mean we earn less now in real terms ( I saw a figure of 15k below where we should be for a PO). Remember we are a graduate profession. Followed by our pensions, something we really never should have accepted is that we are not allowed the Civil Service Pension Fund, yet prison are ….. one HMPPS in name only. Most of us don’t even consider this until too late and retirement looms. Finally, there is the disrespect shown to front line practitioners who after all deliver the day job, and in return the utter breakdown in trust with senior leaders ( disguised compliance here me thinks, as most staff are afraid, yes afraid, to disclose their true thoughts). Do not join the Probation Service it is not what you are led to believe by HMPPS, who want to lay claim when it suits them to our former values at recruitment but have done everything to trash and negate them until we have the current sorry state of Probation. Shameful…….
ReplyDeleteTo the author of 08:56 - many thanks indeed - your cogent contribution, along with other similarly well-crafted pieces that regularly stand out and authored either by yourself and/or others gives rise to several thoughts.
DeleteFirstly, they stand in remarkable contrast to the current vacuum of serious commentary and analysis from any authoritative source, including trade union, professional association or significant probation voice.
Secondly, I'd like to think we have an opportunity of trying to fill this void and especially in view of the current crisis and it being election year.
Thirdly, staff everywhere are in a desperate state and are being seriously harmed by both the impossible workloads and the utterly toxic nature of many workplaces under a culture of bullying and ruthless centralised civil service control - they need support and a voice.
So, this all leads me to make a suggestion. Would some commentators be interested in contributing more regularly, with possibly more space and time for considered pieces and published under agreed pseudonyms? I have at the back of my mind the success of the Secret Barrister - anonymous but able to gain attention as attributable.
It's only an idea, but I'd welcome thoughts either here or via jimbrown51@virginmedia.com
Very kind the silence from the union is based largely on the leader. He is holding out for gong of some kind obe MBE he fancies the lord's I shouldn't wonder but he has no grasp in his lowly level in the grand scheme. Besides he won't ever become a lord as labour will abolish the scroungers 500 pounds a day to turn in for an hour. British joke while braverman criticizes people in tents. This country has lost its identity when the police are scared to deal with minorities delivering hate speech. Anyway Tories out and it will take a long time to recover the culture of Britain to be caring. For us it's too long a wait.
DeleteI cannot believe Ian Lawrence has any expectations of (as far as I am aware) becoming the first Napo General Secratary to be made a Lord/Dame.
DeleteAnd still the super rich continue to tell the struggling and sinking working class and the street homeless ‘let them eat cake.’ Put Braverman in a cold damp tent for a week with no comforts and a couple of sandwiches that are past their eat-by date, and see if she thinks it’s a lifestyle ‘choice’. Let’s see how safe she feels. The super rich cannot make the lives of ordinary people more liveable. They go back to their toasty homes and their millions every night. They have no manner of comprehension with which to understand the plight of the ordinary person. They have never struggled. They would need compassion and empathy for even the most basic understanding, and we all know in order to be a politician they must be hardwired to have neither. Their only interest is to keep whipping the less privileged harder and harder in order to sustain their indulgent lifestyles. As we all know, when people break, fall upon hard times, struggle daily to feed their kids by not feeding themselves, lose their homes etc, they’re just not trying hard enough and don’t have enough ‘pride’ in their country. Tents cause a ‘blight’ on society because they’re unsightly. Get rid of tents, do nothing about the housing crisis, and just leave the poor to suffer and die. Out of sight, out of mind. If these people owned their own land or back garden on which to pitch a tent they wouldn’t need a bloody tent would they? Then there’s the asylum seekers. Plonk them on boats and forget about them. She probably hopes they will eventually drift off into the horizon and just disappear. Out of sight, out of mind. The red hot rage that woman fills me with could make the sea boil.
ReplyDeleteIt breaks my heart to remember the training I had. Ask questions. Challenge what isn’t right. Think for ourselves and make professional judgements. Make a positive change. Fight for justice. All been beaten out of us and taken away. There is no justice. The new mantra of the day is ‘be silent, be grateful for the terrible pay that barely covers the bills, manage the impossible, say thank you for the abuse and when your rights are violated, and do as you’re told or face the consequences.’ If I had known decades ago what I know now I would never have applied. We have all been sold a lie and we are now trapped inside our own ‘professional’ prison. It’s called Probation.
ReplyDeleteNo, you're not trapped, you choose to stay
DeleteThe service is so toxic now. We're being rewarded with vouchers to complete the staff survey and then promised even more vouchers if the results are positive.
ReplyDeleteFrom Twitter:-
Delete"It’s my union’s policy not to complete it, and every time our managers send out comms to encourage us to complete it, our branch secretary sends out emails reminding members of conference policy!! Our union has done their own survey this year!"
"One year we were offered a chocolate bar to complete it, I collected my paper survey and returned it sealed and received said chocolate bar…… most were returned blank, never offered a chocolate bar since!!!"
From Twitter:-
Delete"An indicator that the staff survey is significant to the hierarchy. Perhaps its the yardstick by which they measure their bonuses? If so, even more reason not to complete it."
From Twitter:-
Delete"It beggars belief that someone in a highly paid position seems to think hardworking professionals can be persuaded to complete a questionnaire with the promise of a chocolate bar..."
Hi 10:31. Which area are you in? Bribery Ito complete the staff survey undermines every probation employees true experiences. It highlights under hand and manipulative behaviour to undermine true results to make self serving managers look good at the expense of making genuine change to improve a public service and poor treatment of staff.
ReplyDelete11:00 unless you know someone’s personal circumstances I don’t think you’re in a position to make that judgement.
ReplyDeleteAs a then 20+ year probation officer from about 1995 when I learned Glasser's "Choice Theory" discussing most human behaviour in terms of choice was an often used technique of helping probation client's examine their behaviour.
DeleteOf course getting up each work day to go to a job is a choice.