I notice that Napo have supplied written evidence to the Justice Select Committee inquiry into the future of the probation service:-
Written evidence from Napo the Professional Association and Trade Union for Probation and Family Court Staff
Question 2 - The new model aims to strengthen integration between prisons and probation by integrating through the gate roles, processes and products with sentence management. What is you view on this and do you anticipate any gaps?
Responses:
- Through the gate has not worked in the past - a lot more work needs to be carried out to make it effective.
- I think it is a good idea and will offer more opportunities for staff.
Question 3 - How can the NPS ensure that it maintains the innovation and best practice achieved during Transforming Rehabilitation reforms?
Responses:
- Hand the cases in prison back to probation officers in the community as they were before so that work is done for release by trained professionals who complete the work and don't lock it off to simply tick a box with nothing in it.
- Keep the partnership working achieved by CRCs in place.
- By having productive dialogue regarding what works. MTC has, to be fair, worked hard to raise standards.
Question 4 - CRC and NPS staff are being brought back together under the new model. In your view how is this transition being managed?
Responses:
Lots of unknowns at the moment so it is hard to comment. I think CRCs are more in the dark than NPS colleagues, as all communications regarding the transition are coming from the NPS and many of the links on the documents the CRC staff can’t access as we are not on the system. Poorly so far. Despite less than a year to go information is not being shared so staff know what to expect. Lack of confidence in transition plans.
Question 5 - What support is being offered to you by your current organisation?
Responses:
Emails from Napo.
Question 6 - How are probation clients being supported through transition by your current organisation?
Responses:
- I don’t believe they are being supported as yet. Staff don’t really know what's going on with the transition so it's difficult to support the Clients
- They aren't being told anything and staff have no information to share as we are in the dark.
Question 7 - In your view what is the most significant impact of Covid-19 on probation?
Responses:
- The immediate impact and the anticipated long- term impact. The most significant impact is that the service has seen that they can trust their staff to work effectively from home. This trust was lacking before. It has also reduced the stress of travel and improved work life balance and for me, it has resulted in me being happier.
- With regards to service users, they have been more open during contact and we are all aware of our own vulnerabilities. In the longer term it is hoped that remote working will continue as it has been beneficial to the service and service users.
- Working more from home - not being able to have face to face with service users – Covid-19 within NPS has been all about ticking boxes - dotting the Is and crossing the Ts.
- Proven ability that staff can work from home more often. However, there is a significant impact in the courts in terms of adjournments for breaches. Unpaid Work and Programmes also have a significant backlog which will further impact the court when Offender Managers have to apply for extensions of orders.
16 September 2020
Is that really their submission? Are you sure its not a spoof document?
ReplyDeleteIf anyone wanted proof Napo don't give a shit & have thrown in the towel... who else would think an A4 side of casual notes constitutes a professional body's written submission to a parliamentary select committee.
It is not appalling when you consider the calibre of the inept GS and the self involved top table . Napo has lost its rudder and fails its members . This submission is remedial and fails all the professional standards clearly the respondent has no idea of what is required. I guess a pay rise for them then.
DeleteSomebody before phrased them Napo Crapo I like that it's fitting.
DeleteAppalling submission from Napo. Expect things to get worse for probation.
ReplyDelete“England’s probation service at risk from cash squeeze, watchdog warns”
https://www.ft.com/content/526fec7a-6537-4979-a45c-606d1f168372
Higher reoffending rates and worse risk management will be among the “real-world consequences” for probation services in England and Wales if the government does not increase funding in its forthcoming spending review, the head of the sector’s watchdog has warned.
DeleteJustin Russell, the chief inspector of probation, also said in an interview that the system would need extra cash because of the extra work likely to be generated by the plan to recruit 20,000 new police officers in England and Wales by March 2023. That programme had produced more than 4,300 new recruits by the end of June this year.
Meanwhile, the probation budget per service user fell 40 per cent between its peak in 2003-4 and 2018-19, Mr Russell said.
The former justice ministry and Home Office official made his plea after delivering his submission to the spending review, which will cover the early termination next June of the contracts given to private operators in 2015 to run services overseeing low and medium-risk offenders in England. Mr Russell’s predecessor, Glenys Stacey, criticised the part-privatisation, made when Chris Grayling was justice secretary, as “irredeemably flawed”.
All supervision of offenders in Wales was transferred to the state-run National Probation Service last year.
The NPS, which manages high-risk offenders, has largely fared well in inspections, despite some high-profile mistakes. The errors include the failure to spot that Usman Khan, a convicted terrorist who killed two people at Fishmongers’ Hall in central London in November last year, represented a continuing threat.
Mr Russell said the poor record of the private community rehabilitation companies (CRCs) had “real-world consequences”, including violent and property crimes that would otherwise not have occurred.
“One of the worst areas of performance we’ve seen is around how some of these services are assessing risk of harm,” Mr Russell said, adding that some providers were failing to do checks they needed to carry out with police and social services about offenders’ records.
The system had become “almost like a three-tier probation service” with most of the seven NPS geographical areas in England and Wales performing well and some of the CRCs doing well but others performing very poorly. The worst-performing CRCs have been starved of funding, made significant cuts in the number of people employed and replaced experienced staff with more junior employees.
Mr Russell, who has been chief inspector since June 2019, declined to give a precise figure for the extra funding needed to restore the worst-performing services. But he highlighted a 2019 National Audit Office report said that the Ministry of Justice expected to pay providers £822m less over the seven-year life of their contracts than originally envisaged.
As a result, providers had been receiving about £100m less annually than the Treasury intended to spend, Mr Russell said. The shortfall represents around 22 per cent of the value of the CRCs’ contracts and pushed one provider — Working Links, which held three of the 20 contracts to operate CRCs in England — into administration in February last year.
“A shortfall of £100m a year is a big shortfall that’s difficult to take,” Mr Russell said. “That’s why staff numbers have been falling in these services and the big impact you see is bigger and bigger caseloads [for each officer]. That makes it very difficult to supervise people.”
Mr Russell said it was necessary to take account of that underspend in the government’s comprehensive spending review due this year and ensure it was compensated for in future.
It was also important to factor in how the recruitment of extra police officers would result in extra arrests and convictions. That would mean more people either leaving prison under supervision or undertaking punishments such as unpaid work that probation officers oversee.
Delete“That will generate extra business for probation,” Mr Russell said of the recruitment drive.
Andrew Neilson, director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, a charity, welcomed Mr Russell’s warning, saying probation had long been the “Cinderella service” of the criminal justice system.
“Chris Grayling’s botched privatisation cut costs to disastrous effect,” Mr Neilson said. “Reversing those reforms was a step in the right direction but only proper investment, and a properly local and independent structure, will create an effective and creative probation service.”
The Ministry of Justice said it had increased the probation budget by 17 per cent this year compared with last, to more than £1.1bn.
“We . . . will ensure it continues to have the resources it needs to protect the public and reduce reoffending,” it said.
Today the Butler Trust and HMPPS directors are celebrating the achievements of probation staff whilst ignoring the problems we face. Calling us #HiddenHeroes one day a year won’t make up for the poor pay and dire working conditions.
ReplyDeletehttps://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2020/09/guest-blog-79.html?m=1
Have you got any information as what what Unison submitted ?
ReplyDeleteNo - the only other written submissions published are from the Revolving Doors Agency (44 pages) and the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody (6 pages).
DeleteCynical perhaps, but Johnsons announcement today on college courses and training for all as a consequence of enevitable job losses as the pandemic continues and Government support drys up, creates a situation (in my opinion), where short courses and training can be tailored to allow the Government to stream a less qualified workforce into areas of employment where there's already a shortage of staff and that are difficult to fill. I see the justice system, the NHS and social care as some of those posible areas.
DeleteHaving to deal with high unemployment rates, whilst having large scale vacancies in particular areas that they can't fill, why wouldn't they?
Become a nurse or a probation officer within 6mths perhaps?
'Getafix
'
Getafix, a story that backs-up your Deloittes observation:
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/29/whitehall-infantilised-by-reliance-on-consultants-minister-claims
Official data shows that, after the 2016 Brexit vote, government spending on consultancy firms increased rapidly to approximately £1bn, and to more than £1.5bn in 2017-18.
ONE POINT FIVE BILLION OF YOUR TAXPAYER POUNDS handed over to chums of the Tory party - for what?
Covid-related spending on consultants:
PricewaterhouseCoopers £20.9m
PA Consulting Service 18.3
MullenLowe London 16.0
23red 10.0
Deloitte 6.7
Boston Consulting Group UK 6.0
Ernst & Young 5.2
KPMG 4.3
UMI Commercial 3.0
Newton Europe 2.0
Yes, £92.4Million is the covid-related spending on consultants in 2020 - so far...
FranK.
14:25 - I am certainly concerned about the wrong type of person joining probation for the wrong reasons now unemployment will be rising. I worry there could be more people who are more angry generally and only want it for a career, older but stuck in their ways of thinking, for example the “the criminals must suffer and pay” ex private sector managers who expect to reach SPO in a few years post qualified. In the new times £30k year plus benefits will look more attractive to people who have mortgages to pay and status to keep. In some cases their previous private sector managerial and budget management experience will make them attractive candidates above those who want to help people. The furious battles of private sector promotion wars that start on day one will rage, everyone else being viewed as either competition to be beaten or a tool to be whipped and stepped on. The main difference could be these new types may be more experienced at doing it then most of our present ambitious greasy pole risers and there could be a lot more of them. If they hate the job and its purpose (example, rehabilitate rather than punish and torment child sexual offenders etc.) but they can’t financially leave they will likely become bitter and resentful creating a worse atmosphere for both colleagues, but worst still, for service users.
ReplyDeleteIn answer to the poster on yesterday's blog who said: "Frankie boy, I’m sure there’s a better outlet for your panic and threats."
ReplyDelete1. No panic, no threats, just expressions of concern & dismay at the stupidity of people
2. Since early 2020 I have been a vocal advocate of managing the pandemic within the UK by closing the island's borders, restricting travel within the UK, the mandatory use facemasks outside the home (free issue), normalising physical distancing across the UK, online education at every level of education, and paying a flat-rate living wage to everyone rather than picking/choosing who is 'viable' & opening up £billions to calculated fraudulent claims by clever criminals.
3. The last 24 hours have seen 7,143 new positive cases recorded out of 198,402 tests. That's 50,000 tests fewer than recently achieved, so the figures exclude the results of the thousands who couldn't or wouldn't get a test; and a further 71 deaths.
We still lead the way in Europe with more than 42,000 deaths by the government's reckoning - others estimate the actual figure is now close to 60,000, with many unknown thousands experiencing 'long covid'.
So no, no panic. And no threats. Just dismay.
Dismay at the useless fuckers in government who have facilitated the spread of the virus through a combination of inaction, delay & political imperative.
Dismay at the stupid fuckers who think they are somehow special or immune and are enabling viral loading in their communities.
Dismay at the myopic attitudes that fail to plan for the long game; no strategy, no vision, just playing the instant gratification card time after time after time and LYING.
We have a PM who is incompetent beyond description, who is vulnerable - financially & morally, and a team of psychopathic arch-manipulators yanking his chain.
No panic. No threats. Just tearful.
If the government was more competent, perhaps more people would listen. In the meantime, you cannot credibly accuse the masses of “stupidity” for failing to comply with government guidelines that are non-sensical and poorly explained.
DeleteI am saying people are stupid for failing to curb their own wants & needs & going to large wedding events, going to house parties, getting on crowded trains/buses/planes, going to crowded pubs & getting pissed, not wearing face coverings because they don't want to.
DeleteThe incompetent govt & their nonsensical, confusing bollox isn't helpful but there are some very obvious, basic things people are failing to do because of an inability to control their own selfish wants/needs.
If PPE stops the virus, ie medical grade masks with visors, then face coverings are useless.
DeleteIf face coverings worked, then social distancing and the rule of 6 is not required.
If social distancing works, then the government should have been reduced this from 2m or ignored it on public transport, in offices, etc, and which means a rule of 6 and face coverings are not required.
I do not dispute there are idiots in the population, lots of them, but it is then more needed for the government to explain its guidelines which are constantly changing.
Today's Napo mailout:-
ReplyDeleteAs we get ready to host our first ever fully digital AGM, we thought it only right that we debunk some of the misconceptions about the event taking place next Thursday 8 and Friday 9 of October.
1. It's just a two day Zoom meeting
The short answer is no. We have partnered with digital event agency, Live Group, to design and build a tailor-made events hub packed full of features to honour as much of the traditional AGM elements as possible.
The event hub is designed to allow you to not only watch, but also participate in the event in ways that typical virtual meeting software would not allow.
Fringe meetings will be hosted on Zoom, but this is so you have the flexibility to move around the meetings as you please.
2. It's going to be difficult for me to get involved
Not difficult, just different. As long as you have an internet enabled device, you should have no problems navigating your way around the event hub.
Members will even be able to raise points of order, propose, second, speak for or against AND vote on motions!
You will also still have the ability to contact steering and monitors.
It is probably easier if you are accessing from a tablet, desktop PC or tablet, but certainly not impossible by smart phone.
We urge you to register as soon as possible so you can get a feel for the event hub before AGM.
3. The social element will be missing?
Making sure that the socialising and networking usually present at AGM translated well into a digital format is something we worked hard on. That's why we have set up a forum so members can meet and talk to those they may never have had a chance to - even at a physical conference.
You will also be able to set up a profile (with your social media handles if you wish) so that you can keep up with colleagues during and after the event.
Don't forget that attending fringe meetings are a great way to meet other members, and we have a range of informal ones planned during lunch.
4. Entertainment and stalls have been cancelled
We are so pleased that we have been able to keep and even enhance this feature of AGM!
We have a range of digital stall holders who can be visited with access to their websites and other content they carefully selected for Napo members.
We also have some fantastic entertainment. A DJ set from Huey of the Fun Lovin' Criminals and a dance master class and music mix from Cuba Solidarity campaign.
Registrations for AGM opened last week and you should have received an email from Live Group. Please check your spam or junk folders if you can't find it in your inbox. Still can't find it? Email napoagm@livegroup.co.uk
latest from NAPO re RRP CRCs pay talks - insulting and derisory offer
ReplyDeleteDear member,
Pay talks started at the beginning of the year but were very disappointing. RRP said that they could not offer anything to improve members pay citing financial strains. However, Napo representatives were of the view that members deserved a pay rise to reflect their hard work and dedication. Napo General Secretary Ian Lawrence, wrote to the RRP board to ask them to review this decision and that it was disappointing that RRP were not able to reward staff for their tireless efforts. As a direct result of this intervention RRP agreed to go back to the drawing board and see if they could come up with an offer. Finally, after a few months waiting for the MOJ to sign off the proposal, we are now in a position to update members. The one off pay offer is outlined below. Napo representatives in East Midlands and Staffordshire West Midlands have approved this offer (as it is a one off payment and not a change to pay points a ballot is not required). Members should receive this payment at the end of October 2020 back dated to the 1st October 2020.
Pay Offer: All staff to receive a one off lump sum equal to 2% of the pay from 1st October 2020 – 31st March 2021. There are no changes to pay scales or spinal points.
Kind Regards
so about three hundred quid or thereabouts?
Deletewhat chance that's tax free?
While the NPS 'excellent leaders' are getting £1500 extra each & every month to sit on their well-fed arses in their comfy chairs in their fromt rooms?
Ian Lawrence achieves a bung to shut the members up. Save your Napo fee and you save about the same . I'm ashamed a union asks for pay instead of demands pay for continuity continued goodwill. Pathetic Napo.
DeleteHowever pathetic the offer, CRC staff in RRP are in a better position than NPS colleagues who have heard nothing ( other than being told to ‘grow up’) about a pay rise that should have been in the bank from April.
ReplyDeleteIt’s October later this week. Where’s the money?
I said earlier this year, they will Make a derisory offer in a week or so and say you can have it for Xmas if you agree to it.
WRONG NPS several thousands in front of all CRCs on Pay except 1 or 2 and the new pay deal for new staff protections will see all new framework provider staff shafted under the Nafo recommended deal.
DeleteThe response to question 3 is utterly demoralising for OMiC POs who are currently working tirelessly to ensure risk is managed well upon release. OMiC has not had time to ‘bed in’ and we are already being written off by our own trade union! As a PO in a prison (since January) I have encountered untold difficulties with prison staff and probation staff and yet, myself and my colleagues continue to put risk management first. We have been directed to have face to face contact with cases throughout the covid restrictions and even with a current outbreak in our prison, continue to work, unwavering in our goals, to ensure that Parole hearings aren’t delayed and release plans are robust. I am so offended by your response that I must question how you can represent my rights objectively.
ReplyDelete*Should read NAPOs response (sorry).
Delete“OMiC POs who are currently working tirelessly to ensure risk is managed well upon release”
DeleteThis statement shows how deluded and conceited probation officers can be. In reality you do not “manage” anyone except for yourself.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but most released prisons would go straight whether or not you did a risk assessment and sent a few emails.
“continue to work, unwavering in our goals, to ensure that Parole hearings aren’t delayed and release plans are robust.”
DeleteParole hearings have been months behind for year. Impossible to “ensure release plans are robust” when you don’t provide permanent jobs and housing, nor possess a crystal balls.
Tbh the response makes a fair point because OMiC is a dodgy cost cutting measure to reduce the community caseload.
“Hand the cases in prison back to probation officers in the community as they were before so that work is done for release by trained professionals who complete the work and don't lock it off to simply tick a box with nothing in it.”