Guest Blog 57

After a near 15 years in the Probation Service, my decision to resign
from the Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) that I work for as a
Probation Officer may on the surface have appeared sudden but it has
been in the making for several years. However, more recently the sense
that I need to move on has increased.

The Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) revolution that fractured the
Probation Services has played a significant part in my thinking but not
the whole of it. Like many, given the seat I was sat in at the time, I
had no option but to accept that I would be working in the CRC. I
consoled myself with the idea that being in either the National
Probation Service (NPS) or CRC was at the outset of their creations an
unknown and with my own preference for working with people maybe the
CRC might turn out to be the better of the two for me. It has to be
said that before TR that the ability to work with people was
diminishing, ever increasing workloads then lessening our ability to
actually work with people but ever more so now. I remember nearly two
years ago expressing to a line manager that it was bizarre to see
everybody sat feverishly feeding their computers for the vast part of
their working day and that it made no sense. Ever more I have found
that the volume of work I am expected to complete and the fear of
falling behind or missing a target has driven more frenzied work such
that I can tell my work and life balance is plainly out of kilter and
my well – being as a result adversely effected.

I have enjoyed a good career overall, moving to different assignments
every 3 – 4 years. I now find that my career possibilities are vastly
diminished. The thought of being desk bound in front of a computer
trying to manage in excess of 70 cases (a nod here to my Probation
Service Officer (PSO) colleagues some of whom have over 90 cases) is
not only unappealing but a cause of considerable angst for me. I am
grateful to my managers for doing their best to work as sensitively as
they can with us given this back drop. For me personally though I
cannot condone the idea that I might aspire to be a manager in this
untenable climate, I am witnessing too many of my colleagues including
managers being made to suffer with the burden that is placed upon them
and often in a way from which they are struggling to recover; yet this
seems to be my only option for a variation in my career where once they
were plentiful. I once heard a senior type education figure say of
teachers, in a TV interview, we need people who can do volume and get
results with the inference that if they could not deliver then maybe
they should think about moving on. I fear that given the circumstances
that I am presented with that is exactly what I have decided to do
which is a shame because I have developed a great skill set for working
with people around their learning and with that change.

TR has undoubtedly been a huge cataclysm for the Probation Services and
the people who work within it. On a daily basis I can see examples of
the way my work is being made more difficult in a way that often
beggars belief. What of the people we are primarily tasked to work
with? Indeed, what of them, with such high case numbers for individual
workers and a very limited scope to get to know those cases in a
meaningful way, what of them?

I think that sets out the main reasons why have decided to leave. It
is not a very positive valediction, times have been better I would say
and it is these times, experiences and the people I have met that makes
leaving harder. In all the frenzy and further changes to come, I hope
you all remember to be kind to yourselves and each other.

Anon