Monday 23 May 2022

Latest From HMI

On 17th May the House of Commons Justice Committee took oral evidence from four HMI's and this is what Justin Russell had to say about probation:-  

Q79 Chair:
Thank you for that, Mr Cayley. Mr Russell, what about probation? 

Justin Russell: Thank you, Chair. As you know, we inspect both probation and youth justice services. We have done that through the pandemic, and we have seen a very different picture between those two services. 

To start with probation, they have had a very tough year. They have had the twin challenges of implementing the unification structural reform, at the same time as recovering from covid and having to go in and out of the exceptional delivery arrangements that were required by covid lockdown. In spite of some very dedicated staff—like Andy, I pay tribute to the commitment of probation staff—they are still a long way from performing at pre-covid levels. Four out of the six of our recent local probation inspections have been rated inadequate and the quality of the work we are seeing in individual cases is down against all our quality standards. 

Although the proportion of cases being seen face to face by probation officers has significantly increased over the past year, which is positive, we are finding on our inspections that those face-to-face interactions are often little more than a brief check-in, with not enough real work being done around offending behaviour. We are finding that 70% to 80% of accredited programme requirements still have not started. Almost a third of unpaid work orders are not being completed within the first 12 months. 

Underlying all the impacts of covid are some deeper structural issues that we were finding before the pandemic. We see acute shortages of staff at all grades in some areas, in particular the south-east. For example, in Essex north, in a report we published this morning, we were told that the vacancy rate for senior probation officers and more junior probation service officers was 60% at the beginning of this year. In Kent, Surrey and Sussex— 

Q80 Chair: Perhaps we can explore that in a bit more detail: a big issue with staffing and vacancy rates. Anything else on probation? 

Justin Russell: In the Kent, Surrey, Sussex region, the overall vacancy rate for probation officers is a quarter. There are significant numbers of new recruits coming, and they have set some ambitious targets for recruitment, but it can take up to three years to recruit, train and settle in a new probation officer. We have to acknowledge that the number of people leaving the service is also going up, so the attrition rate is high. 

Q81 Chair: Can we move on to the youth justice side? We will come back to probation. 

Justin Russell: Youth justice has again had a challenging year but, interestingly, performance has held up. Two thirds of the YOTs we inspected we rated good or outstanding in the past year, and we have not found any inadequate. Their scores on leadership and management of out-of-court disposals are going up. They have been able to respond much more flexibly. The key issue is that they already had quite small caseloads and the caseloads have got even smaller. That has helped them to keep the standard of service going. 

Q82 Chair: That is very helpful, thanks. Mr Taylor, over to you.

--oo00oo--

Q123 Rob Butler:
Fine, okay. Mr Russell, you touched on the fact that the probation service was unified in 2021, at the time of the pandemic. You expressed some reservations about how things have gone so far. How well do you think the probation service is operating as a unified model? 

Justin Russell: At the point of unification at the end of June last year, I said unification by itself was not a magic bullet for all the underlying problems we found with the service, and that has certainly proved to be the case since. The staff we are talking to do not feel all the problems have been solved. They say that the service seems to be operating in survival mode. 

There are three crucial things we are still finding as issues. First, in relation to the assessment and management of risk of harm to the public, potentially posed by people on probation, performance is at an unacceptable level. We are finding 60% of the cases we are looking at are unsatisfactory on that key aspect of practice; 40% of domestic abuse checks are not being done where they think they should. There is an issue around risk of harm that has not gone away and, if anything, is getting worse. 

The second issue is around delivery of practical support and interventions to people on probation, where we see courses not started, even by the end of a sentence. Domestic abuse perpetrators with requirements to start a course are still not completing that. At 30% to 40%, commencement is well down on that. The externally commissioned services to provide support around accommodation or education, training or employment activities, are again heavily over-subscribed, so we are starting to see some backlogs around that. 

The third issue, which I have referred to already, is around the acute staff shortages. The great majority of staff we are speaking to are saying that staff levels are simply not sufficient, and they feel their case loads are unmanageable. That problem has definitely not gone away and, if anything, is getting worse. 

Q124 Rob Butler: Have you seen any decrease in staff from the old CRCs, who did not want to join the newly unified service? 

Justin Russell: We can’t make a direct comparison of total staff numbers now with before unification, because we had no idea of CRC staff numbers. What has become evident, as we have seen the unification of the services, is that there were some big gaps in staffing at all grades. I certainly hear anecdotal evidence that some CRC staff are leaving. Published attrition rates have gone up in the last quarter of last year, and are particularly high in the south-east. 

Q125 Rob Butler: When I spoke to CRCs prior to unification, concerns were raised about whether, in the newly unified model, they would have the freedom that they had enjoyed in the CRCs. Examples were about types of flexible working. That was pre-covid times, so that was flexible working that suited where they needed to be for their clients. 

There were also things as simple as having an iPad, or similar tablet device, that they could work on while travelling, rather than have to go back to the office to get on a desktop monitor, as they had had to do previously with the former structure of the probation service. There were also concerns that some CRCs had more up-to-date software systems that gave real-time information about offenders, which were not going to migrate into the new unified model because the national probation service didn’t have one. Have you been able to assess whether there has been any impact of that move to unification? Have some of the advances that were made in CRCs been lost? 

Justin Russell: There are two issues. In terms of the autonomy that service leaders in particular have, because of covid there has been quite rigid control from the centre of what the delivery model should be under these exceptional delivery arrangements. When we have talked to service leaders, they have said that they have found that quite constraining, and that they are looking to acquire more freedoms as things return to normal. 

In terms of the systems that the CRCs developed, I have said to this Committee before that there were some rather good case management systems in London, the Thames valley and the KSS regions that have been lost as those staff have had to migrate on to OASys and then Delius, the public sector systems. Some of the CRC staff are struggling to cope with that, as they didn’t have long to get to know those systems and that learning still needs to be consolidated. 

Q126 Rob Butler: What is the impact of that on the service they can provide and on keeping people safe? One of the aspects that I was particularly worried about in the inspectorate review that we were sent is that there were real concerns about public safety. 

Justin Russell: Certainly, the scores in relation to the quality of assessments being undertaken by probation staff in some areas of Kent, Surrey and Sussex, and in the east of England, were worrying. In an inspection we published this morning on North Essex, we felt that only a quarter of the cases we looked at were satisfactory, in relation to the assessment and management of the risk of harm. That is a big concern for us. Misallocation of cases can result if you get that risk assessment wrong at the beginning of the process. If you don’t do the necessary domestic abuse checks, the public can be at risk. That is still our biggest area of concern in the inspections we are doing. 

Q127 Rob Butler: The number of people who have not completed their unpaid work requirements remains incredibly high. Why do you think that is, given that community restrictions have been lifted? 

Justin Russell: You are right: there are about 14,000 people who have been given an unpaid work order but have still not completed it within 12 months of the order. That is clearly an impact of the pandemic. In the period between March 2020 and the end of last year, there were eight months when it was literally impossible to deliver unpaid work because of lockdown restrictions on the use of minivans or social distancing requirements around placements. They have removed those restrictions since the beginning of April, but there is a huge backlog of work to get through, and that will take quite a bit of time. They have set a target of increasing delivery to 155% of pre-covid levels by September, but that is already pushing back the original trajectory, and they are quite a long way off that level at the moment. 

Q128 Rob Butler: How confident are you that they will reach that target? 

Justin Russell: I think more needs to be done. If you look at what they have got in hand, they are recruiting 500 more unpaid work staff. As I said, they have suspended all the restrictions and a wider range of placements has come on stream. Those new staff don’t really come on stream until June or July, but from that point you would hope to see quite a significant improvement in productivity and performance. The other thing they need to get right is compliance with unpaid work orders. They have seen a big drop-off in the proportion of people actually attending the sessions they are supposed to be doing. Merely by improving that rate of compliance, you would significantly increase the delivery of unpaid work. 

Q129 Rob Butler: On that note, I read, I think only today or yesterday, that in some areas they have invented something that is essentially unpaid working a box. People were sent almost a project that they could complete at home, so they could complete their hours that way. Is that really what the courts intend? 

Justin Russell: I think this was an innovation at the time of total lockdown, when it was literally impossible to run outdoor placements for unpaid work. Rather than not have any unpaid work happening, the alternative was, as you say, to provide projects that people could do at home. I think the focus now has to be on those outdoor placements— agreements with people like the Forestry Commission or the Canal & River Trust—to get people out and about doing visible community payback. 

Q130 Rob Butler: Ultimately, do you think the unified model of probation is going to be an improvement? 

Justin Russell: Yes, I think it was the right thing to do. I think people working in the service thought it was the right thing to do, but it will take at least two or three years to get to a steady state and see performance really improve. You need to fill these great staff vacancies, you need to improve the IT systems that they have, and you need to work on a credible set of programmes as well, so it is certainly some way off before we get to that point. 

Q131 Rob Butler: You touched briefly earlier also on youth offending teams. I think you described two thirds of them as doing well—not least because the case loads are smaller—which is a great tribute to all the people who work in those youth offending teams up and down the country. Are you concerned that case loads might increase with the move away from lockdowns and restrictions, and also with the increase in police numbers? It is certainly a concern that I have had expressed to me locally, in my own constituency, by the police. 

Justin Russell: As crime rates go up, you would expect case loads to increase as well. The interesting thing is the changing balance within case loads. We are seeing fewer and fewer court order cases, and more and more out-of-court diversion work. If police numbers do go up, the likelihood is that it will lead to more out-of-court diversions and community resolution work, which is actually now the majority of the case loads in many of the youth offending services that we are visiting. 

Q132 Rob Butler: Are you content that the funding model for those youth offending services properly reflects that shift in emphasis? 

Justin Russell: I think you have a combination of Youth Justice Board grants to the YOTs plus local funding coming in. They are actually reasonably well resourced at the moment. As you said, we are seeing very small case loads. It is not unusual to see a case manager with only six or seven cases on their books. If you compare that to a probation officer with 40 or 50, there is a huge gap, so I think there is an issue with where those resources are best targeted. They are quite rich in things such as adolescent mental health services, speech and language facilities, and specialist education workers. Could those workers be made available slightly further up the age range? I would like to see YOTs looking at maybe working with 18 or 19-year-olds, for example. That is something that would be worth exploring. 

Rob Butler: You’d be knocking at an open door with me, but I am not the person who makes the decision. I suspect Mr Taylor would like it as well. 

Chair: Many thanks, Mr Butler. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. That has been very comprehensive, and we are grateful to you. The session is concluded.

15 comments:

  1. From Twitter:-

    "Why are so many new and experienced staff wanting to leave then?"

    "Because the pay doesn’t make up for the huge caseload and emotional impact the job entails. There’s so much more to working for the probation service these days then used to be but the pay, terms and conditions don’t match up!

    Take overtime, they are crying for report writers yet will only pay standard hours. The police, our CJS counterparts make a mint doing overtime, not worth it for us!!"

    ReplyDelete
  2. "First, in relation to the assessment and management of risk of harm to the public, potentially posed by people on probation, performance is at an unacceptable level. We are finding 60% of the cases we are looking at are unsatisfactory on that key aspect of practice; 40% of domestic abuse checks are not being done where they think they should. "

    "In an inspection we published this morning on North Essex, we felt that only a quarter of the cases we looked at were satisfactory, in relation to the assessment and management of the risk of harm."

    How many businesses would survive if 60% of their work was 'unsatisfactory'? Or if 40% of essential checks weren't being done? Or if only 25% of their risk management work was satisfactory?

    Would an F1 driver get in the car? Would you get on a bus? Would you buy their product? Would you eat their food?

    It is beyond scandalous that the probation service has been so drastically & intentionally injured by the government, just to expedite the political will of a handful of right wing loons.

    It is an ongoing scandal that this level of incompetence continues to be tolerated & excused - & the incompetents at the helm continue to be generously funded with public money.

    They simply do not care.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "it will take at least two or three years to get to a steady state and see performance really improve"

      By the current measuring stick of the Inspectorate we will have to put up with a service operating at 60% at best, 25% at worst for the next three years.

      So probation's performance median is at 40%

      The annual staffing cost (per 2020/21 figures) is £2.45bn

      In 2020/21, out of a staff complement of about 51,000, some 84 members of staff were earning in excess of £70,000 a year

      The median wage in 20/21 was £28,200

      The top 9 earners cost approx. £1.5million in 20/21, 7 of whom were given BONUS payments!

      How many CEOs get paid six-figure slaries & bonuses for performing at 40%? Or even 60%?

      "What has become evident, as we have seen the unification of the services, is that there were some big gaps in staffing at all grades."

      This was the most spectacular & deliberate own goal scored jointly by Grayling, Romeo, Spurr et al. The ball was passed all the way back to the 'keeper, who threw it into the net & celebrated.

      TR dismembered the probation service, made hundreds of skilled & experienced staff at all grades unemployed, & pretended that those who remained could cope.

      They couldn't. They can't. They aren't.

      Not even with £50m being shovelled to staffing agencies.

      Not even with "an extra £300 million investment in the Probation Service over the last 2 years"...

      Its a scam, a racket, smoke-&-mirrors - endorsed by politically motivated committee members, mildly critiqued by state-appointed inspectors with no teeth - & ALL paid for by our public money.

      And guess what?

      They. Don't. Care.

      https://www.gov.uk/government/news/1-500-new-probation-officers-to-protect-the-public

      Delete
  3. From Twitter:-

    "The Gov don’t invest in people. All services which deal with humans care/risk/need is underfunded. Support workers and carers.. low paid. Csc underfunded, CJS underfunded. They literally don’t care about clients/service users or staff."

    ReplyDelete
  4. From Twitter:-

    "Rarely will I agree with someone who has grumpy in their bio. But today I make an exception. The probation service is falling into disarray… and all to the detriment of the public at a time when violent crime is of the scale."

    ReplyDelete
  5. Why are caseloads stupidly & dangerously high? Why is morale rock bottom? Where is our pay? What the fuck is happening?

    Total HMPPS staff in post: 58,437 FullTimeEquivalent staff in post (as at 31 March 2022)

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/her-majestys-prison-and-probation-service-workforce-quarterly-march-2022/her-majestys-prison-and-probation-service-workforce-quarterly-march-2022

    Please also see:

    https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org.uk/files/Probation%20Resources%2C%20Staffing%20and%20Workloads%202001-2008%20revised%20edition.pdf

    It shows that in 2002 there were 5,966 main grade probation officers, 1,566 trainee POs & 4,083 probation services officers.

    But just look at the change of emphasis as we progress towards £-consciousTrust status. In 2007 the figures are 6,254 POs & 6,262 PSOs.

    Its no wonder the Chiefs of so many Trusts abandoned PO/PSO role boundaries.

    Now?

    4,338 FTE band 4 probation officers in post: a decrease of 152 FTE (3.4%) compared to 31 December 2021.

    In addition to the band 4 probation officers, there were 6,103 FTE band 3 probation services officers: an increase of 364 FTE (6.4%) since 31 December 2021. This has mainly been caused by the transfer of CRC staff in June 2021.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Before I say this I want to emphasise that i broadly have nothing but respect for my PSO colleagues, underpaid and disrespected at so many levels!! My point is the obvious “dumbing down” of risk assessments so cases can be transferred over and balance the books to the detriment of PO professional judgement. This is compounded by a lack of evidence trail in that senior management get middle managers to lean on POs, some of whom comply and others who retain their integrity at an undetermined cost. It raises serious and ethical questions. My advice is record everything and if need be bypass the block on screen saving by taking photos of e-mails ensuring service users names are redacted. 28 years service and I have NEVER felt so suspicious of management, I can honestly say that I was genuinely inspired by middle and senior management during those halcien early days. I am in a time and space when I could take early retirement but fuck them I will become an unlancable boil on their arses to the last possible moment

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What is the block on screen saving?

      Delete
    2. POs are underpaid and disrespected too. You say you can leave but choose to stay to be troublesome. Doesn’t sound like you’re in a healthy place.

      Delete
    3. From Twitter:-

      "Can’t help thinking that I wonder what negative impact you may be having with this attitude sat alongside many who want nothing more than to do their best."

      "Well said. I’ve met very few probation practitioners over the years of any grade (inc management) who don’t want to do there best to protect public &support rehab. Everyone’s doing their best with minimal resources. But creating a practitioner v management divide helps no one."

      Delete
  7. My piss boils! I am a veteran who got my degree in psychology before Pquip and have quietly watched a 30 year plus PO, who was a fountain of knowledge and a truly good person to me and everyone around him, go on the sick with stress only to have a fresh faced middle manager describe him as a “fossil”. No doubt my outburst on hearing this will have been logged and passed upstairs and my file marked “troublesome “ They can have it I am out of here!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. PQiP isn’t really probation veteran. If you had said DIPSW, TPO or even PQF then maybe.

      Isn’t a “fresh faced” manager better than a stressed out glum looking one?

      Delete
    2. Probably mean army veteran, or with regards to their age.

      Delete
  8. From Twitter:-

    "So what would help? Big increase in pay to tempt staff to stay? Are we not targeting the right people? Do we need to accept the new world and adapt the training process again to account for shorter turnovers?"

    ReplyDelete
  9. The managers need to grow a pair and stop pandering to the Aces and the ridiculous, unnecessary tasks they are basically bullying us all into doing with saying everything is mandatory, a target, and on a spreadsheet!!. It is so obvious they are going to link all these additional tasks up to the new incremental pay system next year and then use it to get rid of staff. They want to force staff out who won't get any pay increases and hope they won't see the point in staying! They know it will all be chaos as SSCL is not fit for purpose and constantly making mistakes with people's pay. Can you imagine the chaos when pay is linked in with incremental pay increases and this person is getting the increase and this other person isn't and this other person is appealing the decision and is now getting it. It's going to be absolute chaos and they are hoping that this will force more PO's out. I believe they want to shrink the probation service massively and make it voluntary for the majority of offenders and farm the work out to other sectors. They are doing a slow kill making the job as undesirable as possible...

    ReplyDelete