Excellent piece, particularly the acknowledgement that sometimes the difference between becoming the subject of an SFO review and never experiencing one is not necessarily professional competence, but luck.
Risk assessment is not clairvoyance. Practitioners make judgements using the information, resources and time available to them at that moment. Yet after an SFO almost every action of the individual PP [Probation Practitioner] can be reconstructed: what was recorded, what wasn’t, whether an assessment was updated, whether information was acted upon and whether recall should have been considered.
The question is whether the organisation is examined with anything approaching the same forensic intensity.
And that question becomes even more important with everything now being introduced through OFPS, [Our Future Probation Service].
HMPPS is attempting to release around 25% of practitioner capacity. A new tiering model will determine how supervision is targeted, with seven tiers and maximum rather than minimum contacts. Practitioners will have to review all of their cases as the new arrangements are implemented, including ensuring the relevant risk indicators are captured. At the same time there are changes to supervision packages, increasing reliance on actuarial tools, the removal of practitioner access to the WMT and the additional pressures coming from sentencing reform and electronic monitoring.
These aren’t simply administrative changes. They are organisational decisions about risk.
If HMPPS determines through OFPS that a particular category of case should receive less practitioner resource, and a PP manages that person within the supervision framework HMPPS has designed, what happens if that person subsequently commits an SFO?
Will the review ask whether the model itself allocated sufficient professional time to that case? Will it examine whether the tier was appropriate, whether the supervision package was sufficient, what workload the PP was carrying and what other work they had been instructed to deprioritise?
Or will we once again work backwards through the individual practitioner’s records looking for something they might have done differently?
There is a particularly uncomfortable contradiction here. HMPPS is redesigning probation specifically because it accepts there isn’t sufficient capacity to continue doing everything currently expected of practitioners. Yet practitioner access to the WMT is disappearing just as these changes arrive.
Potentially, therefore, the individual PP becomes more retrospectively measurable while the organisational constraints around their practice become less objectively measurable.
That is exactly how defensive practice is created.
And perhaps this is the real test of whether SFO reviews are genuinely about learning. If HMPPS wants practitioners to embrace a new model that deliberately targets finite professional resource according to assessed need and risk, then HMPPS must be prepared to own the consequences of that model too.
Accountability cannot stop at the practitioner when the parameters within which that practitioner was working were designed much further up the organisation.
The question is whether the organisation is examined with anything approaching the same forensic intensity.
And that question becomes even more important with everything now being introduced through OFPS, [Our Future Probation Service].
HMPPS is attempting to release around 25% of practitioner capacity. A new tiering model will determine how supervision is targeted, with seven tiers and maximum rather than minimum contacts. Practitioners will have to review all of their cases as the new arrangements are implemented, including ensuring the relevant risk indicators are captured. At the same time there are changes to supervision packages, increasing reliance on actuarial tools, the removal of practitioner access to the WMT and the additional pressures coming from sentencing reform and electronic monitoring.
These aren’t simply administrative changes. They are organisational decisions about risk.
If HMPPS determines through OFPS that a particular category of case should receive less practitioner resource, and a PP manages that person within the supervision framework HMPPS has designed, what happens if that person subsequently commits an SFO?
Will the review ask whether the model itself allocated sufficient professional time to that case? Will it examine whether the tier was appropriate, whether the supervision package was sufficient, what workload the PP was carrying and what other work they had been instructed to deprioritise?
Or will we once again work backwards through the individual practitioner’s records looking for something they might have done differently?
There is a particularly uncomfortable contradiction here. HMPPS is redesigning probation specifically because it accepts there isn’t sufficient capacity to continue doing everything currently expected of practitioners. Yet practitioner access to the WMT is disappearing just as these changes arrive.
Potentially, therefore, the individual PP becomes more retrospectively measurable while the organisational constraints around their practice become less objectively measurable.
That is exactly how defensive practice is created.
And perhaps this is the real test of whether SFO reviews are genuinely about learning. If HMPPS wants practitioners to embrace a new model that deliberately targets finite professional resource according to assessed need and risk, then HMPPS must be prepared to own the consequences of that model too.
Accountability cannot stop at the practitioner when the parameters within which that practitioner was working were designed much further up the organisation.
Anon
From Daily Mail:-
ReplyDeleteAndy Burnham's top mandarin is facing questions over her own role in the prison overcrowding crisis that is leading to thousands of criminals being released early.
Dame Antonia Romeo, now Cabinet Secretary, was in charge of the Ministry of Justice for four years as problems mounted with the plan to build more cells.
She was accused by MPs of presiding over a 'ticking timebomb' as her department knew that existing jails were rapidly running out of space yet the construction of new sites was delayed.
On her watch the MoJ built just 6,518 new places were built out of a promised 20,000, and the target will only be reached five years late according to the National Audit Office.
When grilled by the Public Accounts Committee last year, Dame Antonia admitted there had been a 'degree of slippage in the delivery' but blamed unexpected developments including planning hold-ups.
She was also challenged over the MoJ's decision to sign a 10-year least on HMP Dartmoor despite knowing the site had high levels of radon gas, meaning that hundreds of much-needed cells cannot be used.
Former prison governor John Podmore told the Daily Mail: 'She dug a big hole and Andy Burnham jumped right into it.
'While she was at the Ministry of Justice she watched it all go wrong. I didn't see any intervention that she did.
'The overcrowding crisis has been around for a long time but they haven't taken any responsibility.'
He said the department could have created more room by stopping so many suspects being held in jail on remand ahead of long-delayed trials, or by reducing the large number of released prisoners being recalled to jail for minor licence breaches.
Instead, the Prime Minister is now having to consider more radical proposals to free up space - in order to prevent the killers of PC Andrew Harper being included in the looming early release scheme - such as putting men in women's jails.
Another ex governor, Prof Ian Acheson, pointed out that Dame Antonia was previously responsible for the disastrous £4billion part-privatisation of the probation service, which later had to be reversed.
He said: 'The connected upper class of the Senior Civil Service giving the PM advice on this political crisis bear some of the blame for the mess the criminal justice system is in.
'Romeo now sits at the side of the Prime Minister and represents continuity of the administrative class who have presided over chaos with no answers apart from 'No, Prime Minister'.
'The Ministry of Justice in a tight field is one of the worst departments in Whitehall. When the dust settles on this latest debacle, Andy Burnham would do well to consider a wholesale clear out of officials who have served him so poorly.'
But a Government source insisted: 'It is totally ridiculous to claim that anyone is responsible for the prisons crisis Labour inherited other than the Tory ministers who ignored repeated warnings from officials and refused to take action.'
Insiders said that key decisions that led to the overcrowding crisis, including increasing prison sentences as well as failing to provide enough funding, were taken by Tory-era ministers rather than officials.
A Government spokesman added: 'As Permanent Secretary at the MoJ, Antonia led the programme for new prison places, which included opening three new prisons with over 4,500 new prison places and plans to deliver 14,000 by 2031.
'She and her team consistently worked to prevent the prison system reaching maximum capacity, including during the summer riots in 2024 where she led the response of the Criminal Justice System to bring offenders swiftly to justice.'
I've read this before, 'who ignored repeated warnings from officials and refused to take action.' but I've yet to see any evidence recorded by Antonia in meetings that suggests she was one of the officials doing the warning. If she was and was ignored by Conservative ministers then prove it at least, until then she's deemed culpable.
DeleteThe way in which the service deals with SFO reviews is all smoke and mirrors, the smoke to obfuscate the work pressures, the stress and protect the service at all costs and the mirrors to hold up the fact that you sent a letter late 18 months ago, which according the the investigation team, could have prevented a tragedy from occurring…….
ReplyDeleteFrom previous thread:-
ReplyDelete"The move from systemic to individual blame has been a slow and steady one designed to protect reputational damage and more specifically damage to Senior Managers….the creation of SFO investigation team has created the “there must be something to find” mentality so that so called ‘learning points’ can be provided to show that we have our house in order. The personal stress generated by these investigations is ignored and sometimes seen as a tacit admission of guilt………imagine if the SFO investigators continued to find nothing but OK practice…..they don’t want that, they want a head, yours, mine, it doesn’t really matter, just so that workloads, poor man management, the way in which everyone interprets the notion of risk differently, staff sickness, bullying of inexperienced staff, is not blamed……."
There is an interesting contrast between the discussion about Antonia Romeo and the SFO discussion above.
ReplyDeleteWhen accountability reaches senior organisational level, suddenly context matters enormously: political decisions, funding constraints, planning delays, competing pressures and decisions made elsewhere in the system.
And actually, context should matter. Complex systems fail for complex reasons.
But surely the same principle has to apply when examining the actions of an individual PP.
If a practitioner was carrying an excessive workload, covering sickness, working within an organisational supervision model, unable to access accommodation or treatment, dealing with poor information sharing and making decisions within the time and resources available, those aren’t excuses to be stripped away before examining their practice. They are part of the evidence.
Perhaps genuine organisational learning starts when we become as interested in the context surrounding frontline decisions as we apparently are in the context surrounding decisions made at the top.
A significant Twitter thread:-
DeleteI've absolutely avoided the tittle tattle around Romeo's previous conduct mainly because of my own experience of being a pushy outsider in CS. I've focused on aspects of her performance which have been effectively memory holed. 'Transforming Rehabilitation' is exhibit A.
Romeo while DG at the MoJ was Senior Responsible Officer for this part privatisation of the probation service which was a total disaster from start to finish. Government ideological vandalism certainly but implemented by her.
She assured parliament the doomed transformation programme “is going to work and isn’t taking on any unnecessary risk” It was a total fuck up from start to finish when Probation was returned to public sector after wastage of £467 million underestimated costs and bail outs.
The probation union said the process was a “shambles” with “zero communication”, increased paperwork, fragmented risk management, deskilling and demoralisation of staff, and poorer outcomes for offenders being supervised. In other words it put the community at greater risk.
£9 million alone was spent on consultancy trying to gild this turd while probation officers had their pay frozen. The National Audit Office demolished the programme finding 'systemic failings' in design and implementation, aspects she was fully responsible for as SRO.
So it's for this reason and this alone I have serious reservations about the spin that says she's equal to the task of 'rewiring government.' It doesn't matter that she's a women and ambitious (oh no!) or all the fluff around her media profile. What matters is *delivery*.
But airbrushing serious failures won't cut it either. The systemic rot in the senior lanyard class in public service is a 'mediocracy' - people promoted up to and well beyond their level of competence. Not sure she's the best exemplar of how to tackle that. We shall see.
Ian Acheson
https://www.civilserviceworld.com/in-depth/article/interview-antonia-romeo-moj
ReplyDeleteWhen there's glory to be grasped, Alpha Romeo is more than happy to be in the spotlight.
“To get large transformation programmes working, you’ve got to have really good assurance in place so that you know you’re not believing your own hype”
“My job as senior responsible officer is to make sure we deliver the benefits of the programme. We need to really understand what’s going on – and there are no prizes for not listening.”
Most offenders, she points out, have “a very complex and intractable set of problems that need to be looked at holistically.”
As the new system is established, these will be identified using what Romeo calls an “actuarial tool”: a piece of software that “looks at all the indicators and does something rather complicated and determines what level of risk someone is.” ... Romeo emphasises that the final decision will be made by NPS professionals – as will decisions over whether to recategorise offenders once the system is up and running.
There is clearly a political timetable behind the pace at which the MoJ is moving... Romeo acknowledges that the ministry hasn’t trialled its final proposals anywhere. “You have to turn on the statute once nationally,” she says.
“The Cabinet Office has a very clear process for awarding contracts.”
"I personally listen very carefully to what people tell me; and I go out all the time and talk to trusts, and to local authorities, and to police and crime commissioners.”