TR Week Twenty Seven 1

Most SFOs emerge from low to medium risk cases not because high risk cases are "well managed" but because there are vastly more medium/low risk cases to be supervised. Rare events are largely unpredictable and we end up feeling guilty as though we have failed and more worryingly subjecting far too many individuals to too stringent restrictions for fear of a rare event occurring. There was a time before our preoccupation with risk and perhaps there will be a time after it also.

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My office is in such disarray and despair that colleagues are starting to turn on each other. Several on long term sick, added to high caseloads, means that everyone is at the end of their tether. We dare not mention Christmas leave as there just isn't any time for people to take off (particularly when we are told we won't be leaving early on Christmas and New Year's Eve!) The only people who have any time are the PSOs who don't have enough work, aren't trained to write PSRs and are being told they can't undertake work with high risk clients.

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This is very sad and all too true. NPS blaming CRC, CRC blaming NPS. Shoddy transfers and shoddy case management. Not because people don't care; they very much do! The organisation (in Manchester is particular) was already in despair with a weak senior management team that shed their values long ago. It was desperate before the split. The split just magnified the weaknesses that were there before. I feel for the officers on the ground. I see so many passionate people around me who are fundamentally there to help people; they've been ground down for a long time. The split is just the most recent wave in the tsunami of change that has hit them over the years.

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Regarding hostility towards clients. I began to see a major change when "offender management" was introduced and there was a demise in the importance of the individual relationship. The service then went through its hard nut phase of "confronting offending" without realising that someone has to trust before they are able to really explore and accept the poor decisions they've made. It's the essence of attachment theory, good old Bowlby, a man whose work was pivotal to the theory I was taught on my CQSW course in the late 70s and which is still at the forefront of my mind today when working with clients.

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My line always was that NOMS had not managed to re-write or re-frame either labelling or attachment theory which ran contrary to many of their stances regarding offending behaviour and the work probation staff were instructed to undertake with service users.

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It really annoys me when Probation Staff talk about custody being inevitable. It is only inevitable in mandatory life sentences for murder and setting fire to the shipyards, and maybe treason. Judges already know they can send people to jail, it has always been my experience that they expect us to offer them something helpful, a tangible suggestion to encourage change. 

It also suggests that once sentenced a full SDR is written it isn't of any use - well it is if Life is passed, for the initial post sentence lifer report. I recall a colleague in a prison suggesting that a PSR could be read by anything up to 20 different people in custody including, healthcare, discipline, security, Safeguarding (Child Protection officers) and the usual interventions teams, offender supervisors etc. Let's not be too quick to dispense with them, as they are and have always been our opportunity to be heard by the Judiciary and be creative and informative.

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I prepared a PSR for a previously violent offender who had recently completed an anger management programme (and done really well). He was doing so well, but committed a fairly minor offence because he was scared for the first time in years of not having probation around. Given his past, the court wanted to give him a hefty sentence. I wrote in my report that we had set up all the support in the community he required and that he did not need probation, just the confidence that he could do well without us. He received a conditional discharge and we didn't see him again. PSRs can be powerful if we have the time to do them properly.

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Am sick of the constant lies, propaganda and misinformation pouring from ministers who care not a jot for anything other than their own greed and self interest. I have more than 15 years service and I am suffering, my colleagues are suffering. If anybody says things are going well they are lying, stupid or wilfully blind. Things are not "on track" be very sure they are firmly off the fucking rails and hurtling towards oblivion.

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All 'new' POs in the CRCs are from the NPS and all new POs in the NPS are from CRCs. It's all smoke and mirrors.

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He must be getting confused with the 100s of agency temps the NPS had to employ to deal with all the new shit IT systems which have replaced the logical, straightforward and INNOVATIVE way we used to do things before it was fucked.

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He does realise that if a temp PO moves from one office to another it doesn't count as 2 new POs... erm... doesn't he?!?

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The Labour front bench should be all over this. Where are they?

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More likely burying their heads in shame because they made this possible with their stupid bloody 2007 OM Act. And be ashamed they should be. Blair, Brown & Straw - they even sound like a parochial firm of estate agents. The writing WAS on the walls (or at least, in the manifesto); and from 2006 onwards there were policy documents paving the way for this shit.

However, it is also true that whilst I and most other frontline staff were beavering away doing our jobs, others were being sly and underhand by feeding into or even driving this new paradigm. Most were, of course, those privy to the situation in hand and many have either taken the Judas coin & fucked off (Norfolk? Provence? Balearic's? Devon?) or moved full steam ahead into the fray - somehow believing they can run with the wolves. Some got kicked into touch. Some made hay while their secret sun shone brightly. Make no mistake, colleagues, we've been well & truly had.

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Sadiq Khan is the only one who has really done any work on this. Contestability is NOT privatisation was the mantra under New Labour, lest we forget. Does anyone really believe they are going to put things right?. JR has to be our only chance. The political parties in Westminster pose and fight phoney wars (you grunt, I'll groan) with each other. That's why Ukip are giving false hope. They may have a different name but, so far, they are just MPs who've swapped sides.

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Grayling and Spurr said that caseloads' have gone down by 20%. Send Napo your caseload numbers asap so that can be contested openly. John McDonald did a great job. So did the fella to the right of him. We need case load figures. We need number of experienced PO's leaving vs number of new recruits going through 18month training and not being able and carry high risk or full caseloads for some months, as with the case of the NQO with the SFO. Let's teach him and others what they don't know about probation and give them on the ground statistics rather than Noms made up ones.

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Hear hear. I was 18% over in October and Nov felt just as bad. Had bad week so far. Can't sleep, am stressed and angry for various work related reasons.

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Later today we are promised a Commons statement by this incompetent, arrogant and ignorant minister as to whether probation privatisation is deemed safe to proceed with, despite all the lies, misinformation and making stuff up as he goes along, like the 500 'extra' probation officers and caseloads having reduced by 20%.   

And will it attract any media attention? No! Graylings deliberately chosen today to give a statement on the sell off because Osbournes Autumn statement will mean there will be hardly a mention of any other news for the next two days. He makes my skin crawl.

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What an odious little wretch he is. In what other field of life could anyone be so spectacularly bad at their job, yet continue without any apparent fear of the consequences? Each day my contempt for him - and the rest of the Tories - grows to new heights.

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Which plonker came our with this pile of shite? BIONIC. What a load of crap.

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'Bionic' also carries unfortunate overtones of human activity being replaced by technology... or maybe, given London's previous flirtation with biometric 'reporting kiosks'. Is this is an early signal of their intentions?

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The more depressing bigger picture is that recent Governments have been able to get away with deliberately misleading Parliament. Cross bench Parliamentary committees are meant to provide scrutiny to Govt policies. It's a potentially dangerous road we are going down, and with a press that seems reluctant (complicit?) to fully investigate and cover these abuses in detail, it's likely to result in UK citizens being well and truly shafted to a greater degree than we have been to date. 

The anger of some of the disadvantaged we deal with, could be multiplied in a number of years time as the self serving policies of the powerful come increasingly into play. I am talking to those I supervise about why they don't vote and suggesting to them that Govt's will not make policies that help them unless they consider there's a political consequence in continuing to ignore their needs. The depressing aspect is that a number of those I speak with consider UKIP as a viable alternative, although hopefully if they take more interest in politics, it may help them to be more questioning of all political parties and recognising the spin/lies.

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2 million private sector jobs created during this Parliament said Cameron at PMQs. Created is not the word you would normally associate with the action of picking names out of a hat. My CRC private sector job was 'created' on 1 June and ceases 31 December on VR. I wonder what 'creative' process will mask the fact that people like me have been added to the unemployed figures?. We'll probably be considered 'willfully jobless' and therefore not counted.