I'm all too aware of the danger in repeating myself, but the blame for all this time being spent doing other stuff was not placed firmly at the door of OASys, the Offender Management System that makes grown men and women weep and drives them to drink, or worse. It's not just me that thinks this. Take a look at this article from the Guardian yesterday by a colleague with 10 years experience and their thoughts on it. The Justice Affairs Committee really don't understand what OASys is in reality and the damage it is doing to the Service. The trouble is that words are really insufficient to adequately describe the futility of the whole damned thing. Not only does it take hours and hours to fill in, it really doesn't deliver what it is supposed to: -
"It's remarkable that the justice committee largely confines discussion of eOASys to a single section, bizarrely entitled "the management of risk". eOASys do not provide a statistical calculation of the risk of a person causing serious harm to others, merely a "rubber stamp" of reliability for an officer's own comments, entered repeatedly under pages of headings. Seeing eOASys and risk assessment as synonymous does practitioners a disservice: it's a demoralising sign of how little trust is placed in our judgment and experience, and can rob us of confidence in our own abilities by institutionalising reliance on a limited tool."
On occasion I have been accused of being an old stick-in-the-mud, a dinosaur unwilling to move with the times and embrace change. The other day I had reason to read a file on a case that I was unfamiliar with. This happens all the time and it can be important to get up to speed quickly. The age-old method is to pick up a PSR. On this occasion I forced myself to resist and read the OASys instead which helpfully, if in unfriendly environmental fashion, had been printed out in it's unumbered entirety, including full risk assessment. I'd estimate over 60 pages in total, not of narrative - if only - but confusingly laid out pro-forma question boxes with associated text boxes varying in position, size and length. At every stage it's not always clear what is pre-printed text and what is a response.
This OASys had been prepared by a very experienced and capable officer of many years standing, initially for the purpose of preparing a PSR for court. It had subsequently been updated as the person progressed through their prison sentence, thus adding further layers of text to the original. One of the things that hits you is the sheer repitition. Every entry beginning with 'Mr X this or Mr X that'. It has to be like this because each answer to a question is written in such a way that it can be stitched seamlessly into the finished Pre Sentence Report when the 'create report' button is pressed. Now if you believe in fairies, this might be a reasonable view to hold.
The author later confirmed to me what I know to be true. That in reality the computer-generated text is not fit for purpose and has to be redone. But I digress. In essence, was it possible to understand a case effectively from reading the OASys? Answer 'No!' Not in any reasonable time frame and not without taking notes as part of a forensic search of the document for key information. So, can someone please explain why we are all wasting our time, silting up vast computer data-bases with almost meaningless crap that almost certainly will never be read from end to end, except by inspectors when the shit sometimes hits the fan? Until this elephant in the room is dealt with, until the Emperor is recognised as having no clothes, we will still be spending 76% of our time not seeing clients.
This is so accurately put Jim. As an officer of over ten years experience I knew what the job was like before OASys, but the problem now is that even the very good newer oficers can not imagine what it would or could be like without it. Thus they proclaim its a useful or even an essential tool for them to make a comprehensive assessment of someone and their situation. But that argument is just plain daft. A professionally qualified person doesn't need a list of questions to ask someone, especially when it is the same list of questions irrespective of who they are interviewing, which in essence is all that Oasys is. I had one returned to me for reworking recently because I hadn't answered the question about the vulnerability of the victim, even though it was a drug trafficing offence and I had discussed the effects of such crimes individuals, communities and wider society. My answer was that ther seemed to be more important things to ask him in the interview, but was then told just to put something in or it might not get through quality assurance. The countersigner of course had never worked in Probation pre-OASys. In my honest opinion writing up Oasys asessments is just a waste of a career. A No1 prison governor told me recently that he never liked OAsys an dthat it wa s acomplete waste of resource. She put it quite succinctly - you spend hours inputting for it to tell you the guy needs an anger management course, which you already knew. What is reassuring though is that many senior managers are now willing to sat that it's days are numbered and that some of us are actively working on that. The Good Lives Model is what underpins what is coming and this is based on helping people to achieve teh things that underneath we all want in life - health, appreciation, worth, happiness and personal contribution.
ReplyDeleteThe metaphor of an elephant in the room is one I often use, Jim. For me, an officer of 21 years experience (who can remember Probation before it had computers, never mind OASys) OASys is a means of 'objectively' confirming what is pretty obvious to anyone with a shred of experience in dealing with people who offend. A guy walks in looking like an elephant and introduces himself as Mr Hathi. He is big, grey and has tusks and a trunk. I quickly form the opinion that he is an elephant and conduct our first interview with that idea firmly in mind. I have a ready supply of peanuts available and have alerted the office mouse to be ready to come and back me up if needed. The elephant leaves, singing 'Ho, the aim of our patrol Is a question rather droll For to march and drill Over field and hill Is a military goal' and leaving behind him a subtle odour of sticky buns. I them spend 2 hours completing an OASys assessment (I'm quick) which confirms that Mr. Hathi is, in fact, an elephant and that I can, after all, treat him accordingly. The tragedy is that only I will ever read this assessment and, despite my irrefutable qualitative research, everyone else he ever meets will jsut have to assume he is an elephant and hope for the best.
ReplyDeleteYou'll have to excuse me now, Jim. There is some Dumbo in reception with huge great ears who says he has just flown in for a psr interview. Could be a bird? I'll do an OASys and find out.
With regards to the printing of an eoasys report, why not make a change request asking for the data to be formatted in a more sensible fashion - the printed version does not need to include 'check boxes' and the like and could be much more condensed. Advantage: saves time to read, saves printing costs, saves trees and is more energy efficient.
ReplyDeletepeople are people not a series of boxes to tick! what a waste of public money all this seems to be
ReplyDeletewhat sorts of questions and assessments are asked anyway? ad what do they prove?