A new path to becoming a probation officer
Work with Offenders looks at new government plans to outsource probation training
2021 is set to be a big year for probation and everyone that works in it. As regular readers will know, the Ministry of Justice has finally abandoned its plan to part-privatise the probation service under its Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) programme and the 21 private Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) will be wound up in June this year with all offender management responsibilities and most interventions being taken over by the public sector National Probation Service (NPS).
One of the main criticisms of both the NPS and the CRCs in the almost six years for which TR has been in place has been chronic understaffing with many probation officers having unworkable caseloads. The MoJ acknowledged this issue back in July last year when it launched a new Probation Workforce Strategy with the target to get a thousand additional probation officers in training by March 2021.
The PQiP
Almost everyone who becomes a probation officer starts off as a Probation Services Officer (PSO) learning on the job and studying to achieve the Professional Qualification in Probation (PQiP). This approach, in practice the equivalent of a probation apprenticeship, combines theory with practice with time both in the classroom and working directly with offenders. The PQiP programme takes 15 months to complete for people who have a level 5 (or equivalent) qualification that included modules relating to criminal justice and the rehabilitation of offenders. For people without that qualification, the PQiP takes 21 months to complete. On completion, people not only gain a Level 5 vocational qualification diploma in Probation Practice, but an honours degree as well.
New training providers
Yesterday (4 January), the MoJ showed its ongoing commitment to increasing the number of probation officers. It published a procurement notice asking for bidders to “develop, accredit, deliver and award” the PQiP. The notice shares the information that the NPS is increasing trainee recruitment (from c.600 to 1200-1500 annually) in order to qualify probation officers at the scale and pace needed to match the Criminal Justice System demand.
There are six separate contracts (“Lots”) with a value of between £22 million and £38 million each separated into distinct geographical areas which are coterminous with the 12 newly formed NPS regions (eleven in England and one covering the whole of Wales). The contracts are designed to run for seven years from July 2021 onwards.
Initially, contract winners will deliver the PQiP in its current form, but one of the successful bidders will also be appointed as the “Lead Designer” of a new curriculum framework. There are no details of the new curriculum in the contract notice although there is a commitment that the qualification will continue to be at level 6 (degree level) in line with the government’s strategic priority of professionalising the probation workforce. This, and the additional information provided in the contract notice – some of which is detailed below – suggests that the new qualification will continue to be a blended model with most teaching done via distance learning.
Successful bidders will qualify Learners joining the NPS during 3 academic years, with an option to extend to cover those learners joining in a fourth academic year starting from the October 2021 academic year. Up to 4 cohorts will be admitted in each academic year on a quarterly basis and there will be a run off period following the final intake in 2024 (or 2025 if contracts are extended) to enable the cohorts to qualify.
Clearly the MoJ plans have been somewhat delayed owing both to the late decision to abandon Transforming Rehabilitation and the, understandable, impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Organisations looking to bid to deliver the PQiP must return their bids by 3 February and the procurement is clearly going to be expedited – in technical terms it is an “Open Procedure” governed by the “Light Touch Regime” under Section 7 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.
Work with offenders will keep you up-to-date with the results of this procurement competition when they are announced.
Prediction
ReplyDelete1. wow! hey! its an opportunity to raise the standards, to take back control, to make probation great again
2. usual suspects will get the contracts
3. everything will be dumbed ever further down to the dumbest level of dumber than dumb
Its just another shambolic scam. Did somebody say probation had been returned to the public sector?
The pathway OUT is becoming more important than the pathway IN.
DeleteSocial Work is not mentioned - is it no longer part of probation practice?
ReplyDeleteWell it's not been a real job since we lost social work it's all admin and order now.
DeleteHi Anon 19:18. I know many social work qualified officers believe DipPs and PQUIP qualified staff have little understanding of 'the real job' but that's simply untrue. I'm DipPs qualified but it was by working with social work trained colleagues that I was inspired to become a PO in the first place. I had then - and retain now - many of the same values as earlier qualified officers, and the notion that I don't do a 'real job', or only do admin tasks is frankly insulting. And it's getting tired. There is much valid discussion of the deskilling of officers but please don't assume that there aren't still staff out here doing the best we can for our clients. It's demoralising to hear those with more experience belittle a job into which many still put a huge amount of work and commitment.
ReplyDeleteThank you - I respect all who come into probation in recent years and have social work as their profession - once the training was diminished from after Michael Howard as Home Secretary abolished it altogether & eventually Jack Straw introduced a scheme that was not shared with social workers I discouraged applicants from taking the probation route suggesting they consider doing the Local Authority approved social work qualification (I have not kept up with the details)
DeleteThat means folk can still switch between a Local Authority and Probation job and be fully qualified - as I was when I left probation in 1988 & initially took on a locum senior social worker post in a London Borough specialising in what was then still the Juvenile Court & then the following year return to a probation job, when the locum contract was completed.
Hello Audrey and others....I'm so relieved to hear you have the values and ethics which matter, and hope you are surrounded by trainees who have the same - that is not, however, my experience. I also trained via the DIPS route; as I recall it we (or at least in my area) did training on skills like CBT, solution focussed work, Trotter's working with involuntary relationships, pro-social modelling and the famous "motivational interviewing" - the involvement of the service user in their own "journey" via meaningful sentence plan goals became the bedrock of my day to day sessions; at that time I felt I had a good grounding in skills, with academic background, coupled with 1-2-1 support via a PTA who really encouraged/discussed both my ethos, attitude, skills and I was able to work with a relatively small group of service users whose offence/risk profiles were on the "lower" end of the risk scale...not to mention of course we would write regular PSRs, and built up to more complicated matters towards the end of our 2 year period.
DeleteWhat I find now is that within weeks PQUIPS are suddenly dealing with DV, sex offences, and gangs, with little support and lots of ego.... Sentence plans have become little more than stock phrases about "addressing my drugs use" or "managing my risk", and one to one appointments deliver little meaning other than "monitoring", "interrogating" and "questioning", "checking" they have done certain things, or "referring" them off elsewhere. Is it me, or has probation become little more than a referral and triage service, pushing the person's issues off to another organisation "with more expertise". The ethos of probation training has become about completing wonderfully well written OASYS, marking CRISSA entries, and ensuring "risk is managed"....god forbid that people are encouraged to get to know the wider family unit, involving those individuals in the sentence plan or the person's "journey", or involving the person as their own agent of change.
Please people tell me if I'm wrong, but that's how I see it. Just take a look at the "mandatory" training we are all threatened with sacking if we don't do - what a pile of shite! Did any of the modules on DV, child and adult safeguarding encourage any meaningful supervision sessions, or any of the social work ethos and skills which many of us lament the loss of. Nope! It was all "soundbites" and "anacronyms" - we all knew we could pass the test at the end without wasting our time reading the shite which preceded it, and it's this kind of thing (in my view) that angers and belittles the workforce and creates the resentment so palpable on this blog.
The competency of the people is not the issue, but the training ethos very much creates the officers values and ethics.
Pretty sure this is just about the university contracts for the academic part of PQIP rather than anything more insidious, at least at this stage.
ReplyDelete