Time to say 'no'!

Some recent contributions:-

There's growing disconnect between the wellbeing message coming from HMPPS nationally and the day-to-day experience being described by many frontline staff. If people consistently feel that targets take precedence over wellbeing, then the issue isn’t the message, it’s whether that message is translating into practice.On the removal of the WMT, the FAQs repeatedly refer to line management discussions, professional judgement and management oversight. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with that. The WMT was never perfect. But it did provide a shared reference point. PP and SPO could both see the same information and have a discussion based on objective evidence.

From September, the emphasis appears to shift much more towards SPO judgement informed by dashboards, operational data and discussion. That inevitably changes the power dynamic.

Im sure a lot of SPOs will continue to act fairly and professionally. But good systems should be designed to protect people when relationships become difficult, not only when they are good. If a PP believes their workload is unsafe and their SPO disagrees, what independent evidence is there to resolve that disagreement? A good governance system shouldn’t rely solely on trust between individuals; it should provide transparent evidence that both parties can rely upon.

For me, that’s the real concern. We seem to be moving from an evidence-based conversation about workload to a relationship-based one. If trust is high, that may work well. But if trust has already been eroded, it risks creating inconsistency, discouraging challenge and leaving some staff feeling they have little objective basis on which to question workload decisions. That, more than the removal of a percentage figure, feels like the real cultural shift taking place.

--oo00oo--

HMPPS has completely lost touch with what it feels like to be a frontline PP. Every answer seems to be another dashboard, another AI tool, another restructure, another “holistic approach”, another management conversation. What nobody ever seems willing to acknowledge is the obvious: there is simply too much work.

No amount of dashboards will create more hours in the day.
No amount of management discussion will reduce an impossible caseload.
No amount of corporate wellbeing rhetoric will undo the damage of years of relentless pressure.

We’re expected to carry more risk, more responsibility, more bureaucracy and now, apparently, accept that if we feel we’re at capacity we’ll just have a conversation about it. What happens when that conversation ends with “I think you can take another case”? That’s not workload management. That’s asking PPs to negotiate their own breaking point. And let’s stop pretending this is about modernising the service. It’s about normalising overload.

The WMT may have been flawed, but at least it gave practitioners something objective to point to. Now even that is disappearing, replaced by assurances that everything will be fair because managers will use their judgement. Forgive me if I don’t find that reassuring.

Every year we’re told the next reform will fix things. Every year workloads increase, experienced colleagues leave, sickness rises and the people left behind are expected to absorb even more.

At some point HMPPS needs to stop telling us to be resilient and start admitting the truth: the system only functions because frontline staff are sacrificing their own health, family life and professional wellbeing to keep it afloat. That isn’t leadership. It’s exploitation.

--oo00oo--

Good points, all the things that we try to as POs such as building trust, discussions, focus and understanding the offenders we work with has unfortunately not only reduced in that work but also relationships between frontline POs and the SPO’s who sit in their offices dishing out work to those they know can take pressure and on the other hand protecting their friends with the easier cases. 

Possibly a delicate subject but how many of us are holding extremely high caseloads because others cannot cope? I am sick to death of people receiving a full wage when they are on a reduced caseload because they are ‘stressed’ we are all stressed and adding to my caseload stresses me more and more especially when so many people appear to be working from home more than they should be and those of us in the office have to deal with the fallout from their cases. 

How many times do you see your SPO out of their office? How many times is the SPO in after you and left before you? A lot of the new SPO’s are freshly qualified can make up a good story for interviews but never asked the basic leadership questions and that is why there is no leadership in the NPS just a full on ‘do as I say, not do as I do’. 

I no longer can have serious risk based conversations with the SPOs in my team as they are hardly there and so inexperienced, what happened to the five year post qualification rule? I hear you ask why don’t I get an SPO role, well it is because it does not pay enough for me to listen to moans, record sick and holidays and at the same time make life easier for some and not others.I also enjoy working with people who need my support and guidance and I am good at that and dealing with the violent ones who other people will not work with. 

However, a warning for those further up the greasy pole, people like me are now rare in probation a dying breed, a dinosaur some may say, however with three months left to go, I can already hear the voices, 'I cannot take that case', 'I won’t be taking that' and just the other day, ‘miserable bast*rd why are they taking early retirement, how can they do this to us.‘ 

I say, time to pick up the gauntlet, baton or the reins and get on with it, time to stand up and be counted and it is alright to say no, which is a lot harder than saying yes. What does the future hold, I don’t know but will be watching the next episodes from outside.