Fancy Being a Probation Officer? 3

As a prison crisis necessitates emergency early release of prisoners up to 60 days early, it rapidly turns into a probation crisis, thus making a terrible situation even worse:-

Tragedy and my condolences to the victims of these horrific crimes.... We should contrast the significant time and resources available to the Probation Inspectorate to produce this report with that of the frontline Probation Workers who have to deal with terrifyingly high caseloads with no time and little experience of how to do so.

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I note that the HMIP report concerning this tragic SFO references the lack of experienced staff due to them leaving the Probation Service. I am one of them, having retired early after 3 months shy of 41 years as a probation officer (CQSW trained). Having given some months notice of my desire to retire early, I repeatedly raised with senior managers in the area in which I worked, that nothing was being done to retain staff. I left due to the impossibility of being able to work reasonable hours as an OMU PO.

On another point, I am aware that other posters have referenced more experienced probation officers being unwilling to offer support to trainees and less experienced probation officers. As an experienced probation officer, I did my level best to help others and to offer opportunities for learning but I was very aware that my own workload considerably reduced my capacity to assist less experienced staff and this was something that did not sit well with me as I previously supervised students as a practice teacher via their attendance on CQSW/Diploma in Social Work courses.

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Interesting comments regarding APs. Where I worked, we were encouraged to spend as much time with the 'Residents' . But things changed. No longer were we to spend time with them, just observe via CCTV. The amount of useful 'Int' gathered over a coffee and smoke was more useful than any structured meeting, just glad I'm out of it all now.

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APs are shockingly under resourced. The same number of Residential Workers in each AP regardless of whether it accommodates 10 or 40 residents. One manager, who is normally the only qualified officer in the building, but their brief is to manage the building and the staff. One part time admin staff for the whole AP!

APs are now part of a separate directorate so don't routinely get sent the comms that go to PDUs so miss out on what changes are taking place. APs are the forgotten section of a forgotten service. The new referral process is horrific, with many managers now having limited overview of who is sent to their AP. The focus is on filling beds rather than appropriate placements. Gone are the days where you'd leave a few days between one resident leaving, before placing someone else in that room, just in case accommodation isn't sourced in time and they need an extension.

More and more leaving APs homeless, shocking given that most referrals state they need an AP as the alternative is being released homeless or it will increase risk. Indeed, CRU will often allocate with a note to say the AP manager will need to reduce another residents stay in order to fit them in. We won't start on the leadership in the CRU but there is no support for AP staff there. The Early Release Scheme is placing more pressure throughout. APs are getting more and more emergency referrals, with no time to do pre-arrival work - the bedrock to a successful stay. APs are an invaluable intervention but are more and more being treated like B&Bs. But no one cares and no-one listens.

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Lots of panic about in HMPPS right now. Early release scheme being increased from 18 to 35 days. Announcements also coming around not supervising PSS or those in the final 1/3 of their orders - to try and ease pressures.

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You’d be lucky to find a genuine J-Cloth these days. It is a bit of a Cinderella service and convenient punch bag for vile Tory blamists. We used to complain about not being recognised or noticed but now we are front page news as if we actually have any control or influence over anyone these days. It is common to blame the unions for not doing enough but the Chief Probation Officer seems missing in action. Kim Thornton wotsit was MIA. Why wasn’t she doing the rounds explaining crushing workloads, the necessity of binging in young inexperienced staff because experienced staff won’t put up with the crap. Let’s ask what the heck she is doing first then ask whether the unions have also asked her to act. Don’t put it all on the unions. She needs to earn her title otherwise she is just another fat cat civil servant.

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I'm unconvinced that the early release scheme will reduce the prison population. In fact it may have the reverse effect. They will fill any empty spaces with new prisoners, and there will be a significantly greater number on licence that will be subject to recall. I'm guessing that many that are released early will be from the 12mth and under cohort, and in my view, they are the very cohort that are most likely to get recalled.

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The ECSL has reduced some of my colleagues to tears this week. It was already stressful and only getting 24-48 hours notice of release is a joke. Escalating to try and get gold command to look at it impossible. No duty of care given to individuals being released early with no accommodation and the only support being probation. Experienced staff will continue to leave while this is happening and ministers make decisions on a sector they have no experience or knowledge about. It’s going to end up with more overcrowding due to recalls and then the SFO’s. AP’s are at breaking point and there is so little accommodation that the early released will be street homeless or residing in unapproved addresses. This is not the service I came into and I really don’t know how long I will last with a caseload of over 150% and the added pressures of ECSL.

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Probation relies on a fully functioning well resourced welfare state and fully functioning local authorities with local services to be effective. Probation cannot compensate for years of neglect and lack of services. Levelling up was a huge con job perpetrated against the north. The Red Wall was feared by the Tories with its erosion the Tories have been able to get a foothold and attack Labour strongholds. This will mean less investment not more.

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High risk cases are already being released under ECSL. They have from the start. Soon all non-high risk recalls will be released after 14 days. Probation officers expected to arrange housing, drug service, mental health support at short notice and blamed when they can’t. It’s a joke.

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Very vulnerable young person released homeless on ESCL. We tried to plead with the powers that homelessness would increase his vulnerability in relation to required health medication. The powers that be released him anyway. Tearful and scared he wandered to his licence induction. A reception member took pity and gave him a tent and a sleeping bag. Reception member received a verbal warning after the local council complained to senior management about ‘how that made the local town centre look’. Suffice to say, his sleeping bag and tent were removed and the whole PDU were given strict instructions not to help homeless people in this way.

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Here we go again. Another recall yesterday as another high risk had successfully completed 8 weeks in an AP. The problem was there’s no move on accommodation that would support the 4 months he had left on HDC. We congratulated him by allowing the HDC to recall him. An awful way to treat a human life. We do try to negotiate with the HDC escalations team as to why we try and avoid early releases for this reason but it falls on deaf ears. I agree we should not keep them longer in custody than absolutely necessary but we desperately need move on accommodation, mental health support and adult social care. Housing stock is barely existent. MH and ASC have been all but decimated. We simply don’t have what we need to support the reintegration of people in society, so we send our successful clients back to prison instead. We all cry at night.

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If staff are crying at night, they should visit their GP for support ASAP instead of trying to soldier on. Do not destroy your mental health by attempting to function in a system which is broken.

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Interesting comments about ‘what happens to caseloads when officers are off sick’. One of the other offices in my PDU is short staffed due to a lot of them being off sick with burnout. They’ve decided the SPO over there should manage the cases himself. I think he has about 200 of them now but it looks like he is still managing what’s left of his team as well. They send ISP’s to our office to complete for him. There’s still a lot more cases just dangling in the names of officers who are off long term.

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There are many young people and young women who have life experiences. When I joined probation I had been in detention centres, in gangs. I failed at school and had been on the streets for a long time. I knew what it was like to have nothing and to fend for myself. I work many dead end jobs, put myself through university and later joined probation.

The difference back then was the variety of life experiences and personalities when I joined. This included younger and older people who did and did not have a clue. Length of service rarely equated to mean good probation officer. Burnout was a thing back then too. Sometimes the longer serving the probation officer the more they were best avoided. The exception were the ones that went above and beyond for everyone. The ones we all learned from.

Probation offices could be just as toxic and discriminating as when I joined, but everywhere I worked we were a team. Over the years the pressure of the lack of staffing and resources has stripped away staff resilience and camaraderie. Trainees are expected to learn from managers who never properly learnt to be probation officers and from ‘elders’ who are too fed up or busy to be probation officers. This won’t change until probation offices cease being run on shoestring budgets with skeleton staff.

Probation must reset and decide what a probation officer should be. Put the relevant degree or social work training back in place, require prior relevant work experience and work out how to bring in the young, old, life experienced and life inexperienced alike. Until then, my advice to those thinking about probation is that it’s a job, but there are better paid and more rewarding careers out there.

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I trained new officers for ten years or more and it was always a two way exchange of ideas. Then one morning my SPO sent me a message saying that they were no longer going down the mentor route , and I was no longer to do it, by lunchtime I had two new cases…..the osmosis style of learning is now king….i would suggest that the attrition rate has increased accordingly as new officers don’t have a named mentor, least not in my corner of the probation universe……..

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Senior and line management obsession with performance management and so-called quality assurance has condemned the workforce to a life of unbearable stress and a laptop probation service. Result: exit experienced and newly-qualified staff under demoralised mega-stress. NAPO must build a fight back and show campaigning leadership as opposed to simply turning up to negotiations knowing they are paper tigers.

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I have never accessed the EAP stuff. The trust between me and the employer is zero, so why would I in any state of vulnerability and distress dial in to their shitty and doubtless cheap and outsourced EAP? Would I feel safe? Be safe? It's there to tick a box. And box ticking does nothing for anyone other than the bean-counter and the manager blissfully thinking they're more powerful than the counter of beans.