"We currently have an establishment of 340 full time equivalent staff (which includes agency and fixed term contract staff) within Cumbria and Lancashire and we will need to move to the full time equivalent of 217 by the Autumn. This is a reduction of 123 full time equivalents."That included reductions of 17 Probation Services Officers (from 88 to 71) & 25 Probation Officers (from 56 to 31). These 40+ staff were hampered from returning to NPS employment by being re-branded as 'second-class' through the imposition of a range of hurdles, e.g. having to start at the bottom of the relevant scale rather than being transferred across on existing terms & conditions (as NPS to CRC transferees could). Some may have made it back, some may have taken agency work - many (if not most) would have had enough & are now happily engaged in other roles, e.g. making coffees
The whole disastrous, calamitous collapse of the Probation Service was a calculated structural demolition. To repeat the words of Anon in today's blog: "This situation is a failing at Executive and Senior Management level and given lessons are not being learned just when are THEY accountable?" Moreover, the intentional, injurious acts by Grayling & those who carried out his wishes must also be accounted for in giving the context of the tragic systemic failings we are now hearing about.
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I'm a fairly new SPO. Workloads are just unmanageable. I spend my day dealing with burnt out staff, I have never known so many staff to have mental health issues. I'm trying my best to keep them in work and wrap as much support around them as possible but it just feels like a sticking plaster.
Change must come from higher up but they just don't care. I've tried to express my concerns but was told "you can always leave if you wanted". This is not what I want. I did not join probation to be told that!
Because I'm dealing with staff issues all week and the constant emails full of actions "check this list, plan an event for tomorrow's disability day, audit these cases etc" I have zero time to do my own work. I'm logging on every single night and at weekends. I'm working 65+ hours a week. I've not done a time sheet in years and never claim any of this back.
I'm not doing anything exceptional, I'm just keeping the office ticking over. Do I get any thanks from senior managers? Nope! I just get told off for not completing my mandatory training. It's an awful organisation to work for right now. Still full of good people though (for the most part) and it's those who I stick around for. But I'm a long way from retirement and I'm not sure I have it in me to stay much longer.
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I have posted on this blog anonymously for fear of reprisals so it is refreshing that I no longer have to feel scared that I might accidentally reveal myself. I ended up going off sick at the end of May to care for my elderly father (who sadly passed away in June) I became physically and mentally unable to return to work knowing full well what I would be walking back into.
I can honestly say as an experienced CM/PSO this past 2/3 years have felt like living in hell. I class myself (as do my family) as quite hard core, but the changes and models that were introduced just made it impossible to remain on top of work, to manage risk and effectively support and work with service users.
Going home every night wondering if I would walk into an SFO the next day leaving me constantly emotionally exhausted, frustrated and angry with management for their complete and utter denial that none of what they'd introduced was working. Constantly send out email after email about targets, how we needed to do better and what we still had to complete, regardless.
On numerous occasions there may only be two members of staff in the office. Absolutely no exaggeration on lower than low staffing levels in some offices. CGM have lost and continue to lose staff but yet the higher powers-that-be appear to be deluded that the staff that are left can continue to manage big case loads and still meet ridiculous performance targets.
Going home every night wondering if I would walk into an SFO the next day leaving me constantly emotionally exhausted, frustrated and angry with management for their complete and utter denial that none of what they'd introduced was working. Constantly send out email after email about targets, how we needed to do better and what we still had to complete, regardless.
On numerous occasions there may only be two members of staff in the office. Absolutely no exaggeration on lower than low staffing levels in some offices. CGM have lost and continue to lose staff but yet the higher powers-that-be appear to be deluded that the staff that are left can continue to manage big case loads and still meet ridiculous performance targets.
I, along with three other people in pretty much the same month, made the decision to resign and left in September this year - this was a job that for the past 20+ years I have loved (well before TR) and envisaged that I would remain in this employment till I retired.
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HMIP report: "29% Percentage fall in the number of pre-sentence reports completed from July-September 2013 to July-September 2018"
That's 29% fewer cases where there is significant background information about an individual, a baseline of knowledge which contributes to the "intel" that informs sentencing, sentence planning, parole decisions, rehabilitation needs; a source of information that helps explain how an individual found their way to the interview, what happened to them, what deficits can be addressed.
These are issues the privateers don't give a fuck about because they ain't about rehabilitation, they're about monetisation, profitability & processing commodities. No Aussie capitalisation bank has any interest whatsoever in anything other than improving the financial return on the investment.
And these are issues the new NPS no longer give a fuck about because they're of no interest to the political classes, to the spads, to the career civil servants looking for their next lucrative gong-enhancing posting - New York? Brussels?
Today's Mirror picks up on the Tories plans to sell off the rehabilitation aspect of probation services to private companies.
ReplyDeleteAs long as you can say "we've learnt from previous mistakes" it's OK to just keep making them.
Infact, there not mistakes at all. There diliberate actions taken fully aware of what the consequences are likely to be.
https://www-mirror-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tories-privatising-more-probation-services-21049892.amp?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCKAE%3D#aoh=15757957960435&_ct=1575795763114&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mirror.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Ftories-privatising-more-probation-services-21049892
'Getafix
Convicted Al Qaeda jihadist Usman Khan, 28, was on licence after being released automatically halfway through a 16-year prison sentence in December last year for a pipe bomb plot on the London Stock Exchange - when he went on to kill two people in a terror attack last week.
DeleteThe London Bridge attack sparked a review of licence conditions imposed on 74 people who have been jailed for terror offences and released early.
Earlier this year David Gauke announced the 2015 reforms would be scrapped and the service re-nationalised by spring 2021, at an extra cost to the taxpayer of £467million. But he said that services worth £280 million a year - including drug and alcohol treatment and community services - would be sold off to private firms.
Now the Conservative are hunting new private companies to take over the work. The contracts include rehabilitative services for domestic abuse - despite victims being repeatedly failed by private probation service.
Ian Lawrence, head of the National Association of Probation Officers, said: “Leaving 20% of the contracts in private hands is catastrophic. “Lessons have clearly not be learnt - private companies put profits over public safety.”
Mr Gauke’s U-turn earlier this year revealed the management of 152,000 medium and low-risk offenders in the community would be brought back into the public sector under the National Probation Service (NPS) by December 2022.
The NPS currently manages 106,000 high-risk offenders. It means up to 6,000 probation officers, who transferred to the private firms, will return to the NPS. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has already agreed £467million in compensation to them for ending the contracts early and will have to spend millions more on reemploying the officers.
An MoJ spokesman said it had spent £2.3billion so far on the private decade-long contracts, but saved £1.4billion by ending them early. However, he refused to say if there would be a net loss for the taxpayer.
Under the new model, services worth up to £280million a year including drug and alcohol treatment, and some training and community services will still be contracted out to the private sector.
The £280m-a-year contracts will cover 12 regions and stretch over five years. There is the potential to extend the deals for a further three years. Companies are bidding to deliver rehabilitation services including “unpaid work, emotional management, domestic abuse and attitude, thinking and behaviours”.
Contracts will be allocated “based on the combined lowest price” - risking a repeat of past failings. And the Tory’s have confirmed contracts will be allocated under the so-called “Light Touch Regime” – a more relaxed set of rules for the procurement.
Richard Burgon, Labour ’s shadow justice secretary, said: “Just as with the NHS, our probation system should be in public hands where it can help keep communities safe, not acting as a cash cow for failing private companies. “You can’t trust the Conservatives with our justice system. Labour will ensure probation is back in the public sector where it can focus on public safety, not private profit.”
In March Dame Glenys Stacey, the chief inspector of probation, described the 2014 reforms as “irredeemably flawed”. After the part-privatisation, re-offending rates rose, prisoners were released with nowhere to live and some offenders’ rehabilitation was handled solely over the phone. Figures published last month found almost a fifth of murders in England and Wales are now committed by people who are on parole.
Experts claim failures by the probation service to supervise prisoners properly once they are released is now reaching crisis point with a 63 per cent increase in the number of homicides committed by ex-inmates.
Among the offenders who have slipped through probation’s net are Leroy Campbell, 57, who raped and murdered nurse Lisa Skidmore in her own home four months after being released on licence in 2016.
DeleteSix weeks before he climbed into the bedroom of the Wolverhampton property with a ladder, he had told the probation service he was “noticing open windows” and thinking about rape, but no steps were taken to recall him to prison.
Marvyn Iheanacho, 41, who beat his girlfriend’s five-year-old son Alex Malcolm to death for losing his trainer in a south London park, had a catalogue of previous convictions for violence against ex-girlfriends.
Alex’s mother was not aware of Iheanacho’s violent past and he broke the conditions of his licence - which included not having unsupervised contact with under-16s - with impunity.
Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Kim McGuinness said: “Boris Johnson’s latest con trick is to tell people he wants to cut crime while at the same time destroying the key public services that keep us safe. If you let the private sector run our probation services their priority will be profit when it should be about stopping people committing crime. We’ve seen re-offending rise under the private sector, we know already that Boris’ plan simply doesn’t work. The Tories urgently need to call off this billion pound failure before we see crime rise and more public money wasted. Instead, lets invest in local services and increase local oversight of probation services, so those neighborhoods affected by crime can have a say over how people are rehabilitated.”
Dame Glenys’ report found that one firm, Sodexo, holds meetings between offenders and probation officers in restaurant-style booths in open-plan offices. Artificial background sounds, known as “white noise”, are played to prevent people from eavesdropping.
Other criticism of private providers included supervising offenders by telephone only, usually after an initial meeting. She also said that housing needs are met less often (54% of private cases compared with 70% of public cases).
And Dame Glenys criticised inadequate protection for victims and their children when domestic abusers return to their community. It was claimed 22% of offenders released without knowing where they were going to sleep that night. And officers in the private sector are carrying higher caseloads than those in the public sector.
At the end of September, 258,157 offenders were on probation in England and Wales, either preparing to leave jail having just been released, or serving community or suspended sentences.
More than 150,000 were supervised by private Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRC), with the rest - deemed high-risk offenders - managed by the National Probation Service (NPS).
The National Audit Office also claimed problems with the partial privatisation of the probation system in England and Wales have cost taxpayers almost £500m.
The National Audit Office said reforms were “rushed” and the numbers returning to prison for breaching their licence conditions had since “skyrocketed”.
I don't think the Public realize how understaffed probation is and how dangerous this is.
ReplyDeleteNew Contracts continue eating away at probation tasks:
ReplyDelete3/12/19 - £2.1m contract awarded
Leeds Integrated Offender Management (IOM) Support Service
II.2.4) Description of the procurement - To provide targeted support to offenders who are identified by the Leeds IOM arrangements and the provision of conditional cautions and to help to rehabilitate and resettle offenders in the community by supporting them in addressing the issues that will promote their effective reintegration into the community.
II.2.5) Award criteria - Price
And the Winner is - Change Grow Live Services Ltd
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/13/david-biddle-change-grow-live-charity-pisses-people-off-we-are-very-businesslike
"Biddle, 62, is chief executive of the recently rebranded Change, Grow, Live (CGL), formerly Crime Reduction Initiatives (CRI), which more than doubled its turnover during the five years of the coalition government, when many other charities were struggling, and is poised to post figures showing a further 12% rise in income in 2015-16 to more than £158m.
Critics say this remarkable growth has been achieved at the expense of small, local charities that have been brushed aside by CGL’s relentless contract-winning machine. Having cut a swath through the drug and alcohol and offender services sectors, it is turning its sights on social care, mental health and public health – hence, in part, the rebrand – and prompting charity and NHS trust chiefs operating in those areas to glance nervously over their shoulders."
Just prepping myself for going in to work (NPS) tomorrow. I feel like a frog just about to hit boiling point
ReplyDeleteI’m just going into my third month of being off sick with work stress. Currently I can not face the thought of going back to how things were just before I went off. I truly feel that NPS don’t have their staff’s best interests at heart; this includes some protected characteristics.. hidden ones in particular.
ReplyDeleteSo true they spout equality statements yet particularly with neuro diversity issues offer no support and even dismiss OH recommendations. It is simply disgraceful and they have the cheek to threaten us with poor performance or SFOs if we can't meet unrealistic expectations in the time we are paid for
DeleteFrom Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"You are absolutely right.. main grade officers mean nothing to the NPS.. this reality hit home 15 years ago.. since then I have continued to work hard for myself, my colleagues and the offenders / public.. the higher management are ego driven spineless cowards.."