End of an Era

Yesterday saw publication of the HMI Annual Report thus marking the burial of TR:-  

Chief Inspector’s overview 

This has been a year of extraordinary and unexpected challenges for the probation service; of major shifts in strategic long-term direction, but also of familiar and recurring issues as well – around resources, staffing and working environments. 

It is the end of an era, as Transforming Rehabilitation makes way for a return to public sector control, and we reflect on how the past five years have shaped, developed and challenged the probation service. 

Many have welcomed the upcoming changes, but we acknowledge that for some – such as senior leaders within Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) – there is disappointment. CRCs have worked with severely hampered budgets to bring innovative and experimental operating models. This annual report recognises this positive work, as well as providing an honest take on how performance has laboured under the weight of resource constraints. 

This year we have widened the scope of what we offer the probation service; not just to identify areas for improvement in individual services, but also to highlight and disseminate effective practice too, for the benefit of all service providers. Our thematic inspections of accommodation for people under probation supervision, and the quality of Serious Further Offences (SFO) reviews are evidence of how bringing together the expertise of our inspectors across England and Wales, with our research, can provide a ‘big picture’ perspective on key areas of probation. 

A vital – although unexpected – thematic inspection this year looked at the impact of Covid-19. As detailed in this report, probation providers are to be applauded for the compassion and professionalism they have shown in changing their working methods quickly and effectively, almost overnight, in response to the pandemic. This is true for all levels of the probation system, although not without its challenges. 

Once again, public protection and the effective management of risk of harm have been at the forefront of our work. They were certainly the focus of our response to the Lord Chancellor’s request that we conduct a detailed review of the case of Joseph McCann, who committed a series of appalling sexual and violent offences while under probation supervision. Our two-part review does not just point out flaws and failures, but also provides learning with the aim of influencing the service for the better. The fact that the management of risk remains one of the weakest areas of performance for both the National Probation Service (NPS) and CRCs is a major concern, and one which we explore in this report. 

Resourcing 

For more than 15 years, probation funding has been on a downward trend; government spending per person under supervision is down 40 per cent in real terms since 2003/2004 (to just £3,550 in 2018/2019) – and flaws in the recent CRC contracts mean that this is likely to be worse for medium/low-risk offenders. By March 2018, CRCs were forecasting losses of nearly £300 million on their contracts, compared with expected profits of £269 million – a gap of over £560 million. The wider effects on the entire system are clear to see; major cuts in probation officer (PO) numbers and stalled investment in information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and in buildings maintenance. 

We know that probation services are part of an ecosystem which is also suffering from declining investment, and, more recently, from the impact of Covid-19. They rely on many other services to provide support to the people they work with, such as community mental health services, drug abuse treatment services, and mentoring and employment support charities. 

Perhaps the biggest concern for service users has been in regard to the provision of accommodation – more than 11,000 prisoners are released into homelessness each year. The loss of ring-fenced supported housing for people on probation; changes to benefit rules; and other barriers have created a housing crisis for many supervised by the service. This must be a priority for government action going forward. 

There are some welcome early signs that things may be improving – albeit from a low baseline; an additional £150 million has been invested by the government in probation in 2020/2021. We know that an extra £22 million per year for CRCs has made a real difference to Through the Gate services for released prisoners – we rate rated eight out of ten as ‘Outstanding’ on the quality of this work. Also, extra government money, released for emergency accommodation during the initial Covid-19 lockdown period was widely welcomed by the probation staff we interviewed. 

Transforming Rehabilitation 

We are now in the sixth and final year of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, given the decision by the government – in May 2019 – to end these contracts early. 

It has been a bumpy road for this operating model, and the consequences of its flaws – such as the strain caused by flawed payment mechanisms – have been apparent throughout our inspections, as my predecessor recounted in her first annual report in 2017: 

‘…we see clearly that there is a two-tier and fragmented service’ 

‘…many [CRCs] have reduced staff numbers more than once… in some we find staff with exceptional workloads working long hours and still unable to deliver to the professional standards they know are right’. 

‘… overall, not enough is being done, or done to an acceptable standard, in about half of all CRC cases we have inspected’. 

The problems did not stop there. Our early inspections also found serious setbacks in the implementation of new ICT systems. A joint thematic inspection of Through the Gate arrangements with HM Inspectorate of Prisons found: ‘…only a handful of individuals had received any real help with housing, jobs or an addiction’, and that CRCs were making ‘little material difference to the prospects of individuals upon release’. There were examples of good practice in some CRC areas, but when inspected against our new standards and ratings, 19 out of 21 were rated as ‘Requires improvement’ (2018/2019). 

In her final annual report as Chief Inspector, in March 2019, my predecessor said: 

‘…it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to reduce the probation service to a set of contractual requirements’; ‘… significant flaws in the system have become increasingly apparent’; and ‘it will be virtually impossible to deal with these issues if most probation supervision continues to be provided by different organisations, under contract’. 

The government had reached a similar conclusion, announcing the early termination of the existing CRC contracts in 2018. In May 2019, it declared that it would be bringing the offender management function of the CRCs (representing most of the expenditure) back into the public sector by the end of 2020, and committed to this reform happening first in Wales from the end of 2019. Since then, additional investment in CRCs has produced improvements. 

Since September 2019, we have been able to complete nine inspections leading to an overall rating. All of these services were rated as ‘Requires improvement’ in 2018/2019 – three are now rated as ‘Good’. Supervision of unpaid work was also found to be generally satisfactory, with eight now rated as ‘Good’. 

For some services, however, things have not looked so rosy. In five areas, we have continued to find budgets being squeezed, staff under pressure and unacceptably high caseloads, and this has inevitably resulted in poorer-quality supervision. Five CRCs were rated as ‘Inadequate’ for the quality of their day-to-day offender management, against all our standards. 

The onset of Covid-19 brought abrupt change – with some services, such as unpaid work, halted altogether and the suspension of the usual CRC targets and penalties. In the face of mounting uncertainty about the future, the government announced in June 2020 that it was abandoning its plans to continue to outsource the provision of unpaid work and accredited programmes and other interventions to ‘probation delivery partners’, and said that these functions would also come back into the public sector from June 2021. 

I reaffirm my view that this type of structural reform is not a magic bullet for improving performance by itself. It must be backed by real extra resources. The future of the probation service depends on it being funded properly. The quality of probation supervision will not improve merely by shifting large volumes of cases from CRCs back into the NPS next year. Vacancies for POs must be filled, and staff properly trained for their new responsibilities. The positive innovations that CRCs have brought cannot be lost and the transition period must be expertly managed. 

NPS 

Although much of the focus has been on CRC performance in recent years, the public sector NPS has also faced substantial challenges. While, in overall terms, we rated five of the seven NPS regions as ‘Good’ in our first round of inspections against our new standards, every region had at least two quality standards on which they were rated as ‘Requires improvement’. We applied this rating to all seven in relation to our standards for staffing, and to six out of seven for the quality of information services and facilities. 

Although probation services officer (PSO) numbers in the NPS have increased substantially since 2014, PO numbers remain an issue, with over 650 vacancies in September 2019 and particular issues with vacancy rates in London, the South East and East of England. 

The government’s commitment to increase the number of trainee POs is welcome and there are signs that it is starting to pay dividends – with the number of POs rising by almost six per cent in the year to June 2020 and the gap in vacancies closing to 483. Our reinspection of the NPS North West region in January and February 2020 showed that this is starting to make a real difference on the ground. We found that 153 new PO trainees had been recruited, and a full staffing complement after a long period below strength – although it was concerning to see that 32 per cent of officers had workloads in excess of 110 per cent of their expected levels. 

Poor-quality office accommodation and approved premises have also been a real issue in the NPS, with many probation staff operating from buildings that are in disrepair, and approved premises bed spaces being lost through delays to basic repairs. In 2019, only 43 per cent of facilities management jobs were completed within the 10-day target. For example, on our return visit to the North West division, we found 700 outstanding work orders. 

Protecting the public 

It should be concerning and disappointing to all that the weakest performance area we have seen in our inspections is the quality of work to manage risk of harm. 

CRCs have invested substantially in retraining staff on the basics of risk management, but we simply have not seen this translated into better care of the cases we have inspected more recently. 

On every aspect of supervision in relation to risk of serious harm (apart from initial assessment), we have continued to find that, on average, fewer than half the cases we assess in CRCs are satisfactory in relation to planning, delivery or review of actions to manage risk of harm. 

Time and again, we are finding that some of the fundamental tasks of effective risk management have been missed, such as the checks that every responsible officer is supposed to run with their local police domestic abuse team at the point of initial assessment. We have found that, on average, these checks are not being done in over a third of cases. Our joint inspection with HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services of Integrated Offender Management – published in February 2020 – found that these promising arrangements had been downgraded to a shadow of their past shared priority. 

I do not need to spell out the potentially disastrous consequences if risk of harm is not managed properly, but the impact on victims and their families can be irreversible. It should not be the case that the only time the public hear about the probation service is when something goes wrong. 

A lack of professional curiosity, incorrect classification of risk, poor information-sharing with the prisons and police, over-optimistic assessments of progress and premature relaxation of controls are things that we find again and again in the cases we look at in our local inspections. Our review of the Joseph McCann case found all these issues combined, to become a catalogue of errors – not least eight missed opportunities to revoke his indeterminate sentence for public protection licence between 2017 and 2019. 

Much of our focus this year has been on the important lessons that can be learned when things go wrong in such cases. As such, I welcome the decision by the Lord Chancellor to give HM Inspectorate of Probation a role in the independent quality assurance of Serious Further Offence reviews from April 2021. We have also published an effective practice guide on undertaking these reviews, based on lessons from a national inspection of practice at the end of 2019. This is all part of our broader, renewed commitment to disseminating advice on what ‘good’ looks like. 

Conclusions 

While it is not true to say that the probation service as a whole is, or was, ‘in crisis’, it has undoubtedly been severely tested by the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms and the profound impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic earlier this year, to which it responded with admirable agility and commitment. 

Of the services we have been able to inspect over the past year, it has been encouraging to see signs of overall improvement in some, and the very real progress that has been made with enhanced Through the Gate services. 

For others, however, things are more difficult. Committed leaders are doing their best to engage staff and improve delivery, but they are often fighting a losing battle as resources diminish. There is a real risk to delivery over the coming six months, as attention is diverted by the demands of transition to the new structures in June next year. 

The new, unified national offender management model is not a cure-all. Adequate resourcing is crucial, and we cannot lose the innovation that Transforming Rehabilitation has unleashed in some areas. CRC leaders have enjoyed the freedoms to try new things; to move into decent office accommodation for the first time or to work out of community hubs; and to develop better case management software. There is no doubt that service users have benefited from the real commitment shown by many CRCs to listen to their views, and even give them a role as mentors, and ultimately as paid staff – an outcome any service can be proud of. 

The road to recovery for probation services will be a long and winding one to traverse, with huge challenges ahead still to negotiate. But with the right resources and leadership, it can be managed successfully, and we will be providing an independent and unbiased view of that progress every step of the way.

Justin Russell

HM Chief Inspector of Probation

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There's a lot in this Report such as the following, which I highlight given recent exchanges on here concerning role boundaries:- 

Role boundaries, the ratio of POs to PSOs and the impact on quality 

Newly recruited PSOs The approach to grading and allocation of work for PSOs varies and can be complex. In ARCC, MTC and Sodexo CRCs, we found a recognition of the importance of ensuring that novice PSOs complete core training and gain sufficient experience, before they are allocated complex casework. 

Reduced income across all the Interserve (Purple Futures) services prompted a decision to curb expenditure through a major organisational restructure at the beginning of 2019. This new operating model, however, works on the presumption of an experienced and skilled workforce. In Hampshire and Isle of Wight CRC, the restructure failed to take sufficient account of a predictable shortage of skilled staff or the time required to recruit, train and consolidate the training of new PSO grade case managers and develop the skills of existing case managers to manage complex work, including cases involving domestic abuse. We found that the number of skilled PO grade staff had fallen by 38 per cent since our last inspection. While the number of lower-grade case managers (PSO equivalent) had risen substantially, 45 per cent were new to the service at the time of our inspection. 

The quality of PSO and PO casework 

Given the right training and support, and when allocated the right number and risk level of cases, PSOs can do a good job of supervising low- and some medium-risk offenders. As the Hampshire and Isle of Wight CRC example shows, however, when inexperienced PSOs with large caseloads are substituted for more qualified and experienced POs, and asked to take on complex cases beyond their competence, the result can be a worrying reduction in the quality of supervision. 

Our aggregated results from CRC and NPS inspections show a substantial gap between our ratings of the quality of PO and of PSO case supervision – something that should be a priority for attention as the service transitions to its new unified model in 2021.