Yesterday's mailout to members highlighted a number of pay issues:-
Napo is aware of a number of issues that have emerged over the course of the week relating to pay, and we have received numerous emails from members regarding these. At the time of writing, most of these issues remain unresolved but we wanted to update members about what the issues are, and what progress has been made to date. There are several sticking points, in that the Trade Unions and the employer have different positions on what was agreed and negotiated as part of the three year pay deal. Its highly possible that some of these may lead to National disputes being lodged by the Probation Unions if agreement cannot be reached.
Market Forces Supplements (MFS)
MFS have been awarded to certain staff in some regions depending on the local difficulties in recruiting to the particular grade. The value of the supplements varies between these regions and it has always been the case that these would be subject to future review. Unfortunately, a great deal of confusion has arisen about the impact of the 3 year pay deal on these. The employer is absolutely maintaining that the removal of MFS on a mark time basis was explicit as part of the implementation of the pay deal.
Napo’s position is that these supplements would erode as the pay of the individuals in receipt of them increased as a result of the 3 year pay deal. However, it appears that this was not made clear to staff and the pay calculator provided by the employer did not reflect this. The trade unions are not satisfied that sufficient communications were issued to the affected staff of the impact on them prior to the pay ballot. Napo, along with our sister Unions will be entering urgent discussions with the employer to clarify the situation and we will update members as soon as possible.
Pay Progression for those promoted (this includes qualifying as a probation officer)
The employer maintains that payment of pay progression on promotion is restricted to those with six months prior service in their new role as per the 2018 pay modernisation deal, and this overrides the NNC handbook terms and conditions. This means that staff had to be in post by the 1st October 2021 in order to receive the pay progression on 1st April 2022. Again, the pay calculator did not reflect this when members used it to calculate the impact of the pay deal. The trade unions believe that this term does not apply post 2018 as a result of our joint dispute on incremental progression. Again we will be having further discussions with the employer on this issue.
Members who did qualify through the PQiP scheme before 1st October 2021 but whose formal contract was delayed are not affected by this and the employer agrees that an error has been made. Steps will be taken to rectify this as soon as possible. Napo urges anyone affected by this to make a formal complaint via SSCL so that the employer is aware.
Temporary Promotions
The employer agrees with the trade unions that anyone who has been temporarily promoted should receive incremental progression in line with their temporary role. Steps will be taken to rectify any errors and again we ask members who have not received progression to make a formal complaint with SSCL so that the employer is aware.
Unsociable Hours Payments (USH)
There is a further sticking point on the clawing back of USH payments for some staff in receipt of pay protection for annualised USH payments. The trade unions maintain that an agreement was reached with Senior Management that supersedes the mark time pay protection of those in receipt of USH payments. This is due to be discussed at the next Probation Programme Consultative Forum with a view to resolving this issue.
Needless to say, many Napo members will be extremely frustrated that yet again there have been varied and complicated issues with pay. The Napo HQ team are working tirelessly to achieve resolution of these issues as soon as possible. Please make sure that if you think there has been an error in your pay that you lodge a formal complaint with SSCL (and SOP if directed to do so). You can email info@napo.org.uk and whilst we may not be able to respond to all emails due to the high volume we are receiving, we will still be collating all the information we are sent in order to challenge the employer and achieve a resolution.
As stated in our mail out last week we will also be continuing the campaign to see SSCL removed as the payroll provider for HMPPS. Members have suffered from the impact of years of maladministration of their pay entitlements, but unfortunately Government Ministers seem unwilling or unable to take the necessary action.
--oo00oo--
This research project was also highlighted:-
Napo members will know that during the privatisation era there was wide variation in the approach to working with women, both between CRCs, and between CRCs and the NPS.
The current adjustment period in the service due to reunification provides a timely opportunity to consider how women practitioners are affected by the work they do with women, and to think about what support the employer should provide them. Napo members will know that during the privatisation era there was wide variation in the approach to working with women, both between CRCs, and between CRCs and the NPS.
It has long been the case within probation – and the criminal justice system more widely – that women clients, being such a small proportion of the criminalised population, have not often been high in organisational lists of priorities. This does not detract from the committed and excellent work that many officers and managers have been providing to women clients in recent decades, often without sufficient time, recognition or specialist training and support.
This is notwithstanding the comprehensive Corston Report (2007) into women with vulnerabilities in the justice system, which has set the blueprint for work with women in this sector, followed by the Women Offender Strategy (2018) and other documents which guide practice. These can be seen as broadly positive developments. However, as staff will be aware, the devil is in the detail. Healthy supportive working environments which enable best practice are often not the daily milieu in which staff find themselves.
Women on probation suffer from myriad difficulties, and are usually involved with multiple services, including child safeguarding, domestic abuse and mental health. The level of emotional support, vulnerability management and multi-agency working that most women clients require is phenomenally high.
However, given the service’s ongoing prioritisation of risk management, women clients don’t tend to be allocated as much time for casework, as their risk profile is usually substantially lower than men’s. This, combined with the emotional toll of supporting women who have experienced multiple and ongoing traumas, means that women officers working with women are at an elevated risk of overwork, work-related stress and even burnout.
Survey
Attenders at previous Women in Napo events (and those who read their Napo emails) may be aware of London South Bank University’s current research project into vicarious trauma for women working with women in probation. 145 Napo women completed this project’s survey earlier this year. It is not possible to publish headline findings yet, as the research phase is still in progress, but suffice to say that Napo women had strong views on this topic! (Napo will be receiving a bespoke report on the findings to share with members in due course.)
This research project needs YOU
The current phase of the project, running until mid-December this year, is the 1-1 interview phase. Some Napo members have already kindly given up their time to participate in this, but more are needed.
If you are a woman practitioner with experience of working with women clients – whether that is in a women’s team, supervising a substantial number of women on your caseload, being a women’s safety/partner link worker, or any other role working with women in probation – then do please consider participating. It is a 1-hour time commitment to a recorded interview using Zoom or Teams. The project is particularly keen that women of colour’s voices, and women with other protected characteristics, are heard in this project, to ensure full representation of the workforce. Please do alert your colleagues to this article if you think they would be interested. (Napo has been very helpful in publicising this project for LSBU but participation is not limited to Napo members.) If you would like to be interviewed about your work with women, please email me on (see article) with the subject title ‘Probation research project’.
Next steps
Once the research project is complete it will be written up for publication (all contributions from staff will of course be anonymous and any identifiable information will be changed), with the aim of encouraging HMPPS to see this time of reunification and change as an opportunity to provide comprehensive support and gender-specific training to women working with women in probation. One can only hope!
Becky Shepherd
The current adjustment period in the service due to reunification provides a timely opportunity to consider how women practitioners are affected by the work they do with women, and to think about what support the employer should provide them. Napo members will know that during the privatisation era there was wide variation in the approach to working with women, both between CRCs, and between CRCs and the NPS.
It has long been the case within probation – and the criminal justice system more widely – that women clients, being such a small proportion of the criminalised population, have not often been high in organisational lists of priorities. This does not detract from the committed and excellent work that many officers and managers have been providing to women clients in recent decades, often without sufficient time, recognition or specialist training and support.
This is notwithstanding the comprehensive Corston Report (2007) into women with vulnerabilities in the justice system, which has set the blueprint for work with women in this sector, followed by the Women Offender Strategy (2018) and other documents which guide practice. These can be seen as broadly positive developments. However, as staff will be aware, the devil is in the detail. Healthy supportive working environments which enable best practice are often not the daily milieu in which staff find themselves.
Women on probation suffer from myriad difficulties, and are usually involved with multiple services, including child safeguarding, domestic abuse and mental health. The level of emotional support, vulnerability management and multi-agency working that most women clients require is phenomenally high.
However, given the service’s ongoing prioritisation of risk management, women clients don’t tend to be allocated as much time for casework, as their risk profile is usually substantially lower than men’s. This, combined with the emotional toll of supporting women who have experienced multiple and ongoing traumas, means that women officers working with women are at an elevated risk of overwork, work-related stress and even burnout.
Survey
Attenders at previous Women in Napo events (and those who read their Napo emails) may be aware of London South Bank University’s current research project into vicarious trauma for women working with women in probation. 145 Napo women completed this project’s survey earlier this year. It is not possible to publish headline findings yet, as the research phase is still in progress, but suffice to say that Napo women had strong views on this topic! (Napo will be receiving a bespoke report on the findings to share with members in due course.)
This research project needs YOU
The current phase of the project, running until mid-December this year, is the 1-1 interview phase. Some Napo members have already kindly given up their time to participate in this, but more are needed.
If you are a woman practitioner with experience of working with women clients – whether that is in a women’s team, supervising a substantial number of women on your caseload, being a women’s safety/partner link worker, or any other role working with women in probation – then do please consider participating. It is a 1-hour time commitment to a recorded interview using Zoom or Teams. The project is particularly keen that women of colour’s voices, and women with other protected characteristics, are heard in this project, to ensure full representation of the workforce. Please do alert your colleagues to this article if you think they would be interested. (Napo has been very helpful in publicising this project for LSBU but participation is not limited to Napo members.) If you would like to be interviewed about your work with women, please email me on (see article) with the subject title ‘Probation research project’.
Next steps
Once the research project is complete it will be written up for publication (all contributions from staff will of course be anonymous and any identifiable information will be changed), with the aim of encouraging HMPPS to see this time of reunification and change as an opportunity to provide comprehensive support and gender-specific training to women working with women in probation. One can only hope!
Becky Shepherd
In Kent there are so many pay problems. Undervalued doesn’t even cut it
ReplyDeleteAgency PO staff have just had a pay cut of £1.10 an hour. Just one of the agencies approved by Probation supplies over 400 staff and had to contact all supplied POs to advise that the uplift which was agreed March is being removed as Probation wants to pay the agreed rate card, so how on earth did they agree and pay an uplift for months before unilaterally deciding to take it back? So in effect no increase for three years for them. Please before the trolls start just remember how we are operating on the margins now so no agency staff and the whole lots tips over and everyone’s workload really would be impossible.
ReplyDeleteYeah but agency staff been living it up on mega dollars for a very long time. You choose this life
DeleteAgency staff are the ones keeping the boat on the water. Don’t forget that!!!
DeleteStop fooling yourself! Most of the decent agency po’s left long ago for courts, remote work, etc. Rarely see much decent agency po’s in field teams these days.
DeleteOh 12:28 can we just go back to mature discussion?
DeleteThere are many reason why agency pos exist. Partly some had left because of in service issues. They just want to come back to work but not be held to a demanding career supervision from poor managers. They limit their own working. It provides contractual freedom. Work their own way and get premium pay yes but. The but is they receive no annual leave get no sick pay or pay into a contributory pension so in terms of on cost they are cheaper to employ. The flip of these staff is they undermine our terms our security and sell us out in terms and conditions as they work while we could not win a strike. If they are in role holding areas together then they should be ended and proper jobs appointed but the management like this mixed structure as it weakens us and bargaining strength.
Delete"...management like this mixed structure as it weakens us and bargaining strength..." and the govt like the agency options as, despite their public condemnation, it puts even more lovely cash into the pockets of tory sponsors, i.e. those who own/run the agencies.
Delete"we will update members as soon as possible."
ReplyDelete"we wanted to update members about what the issues are, and what progress has been made to date. There are several sticking points, in that the Trade Unions and the employer have different positions on what was agreed and negotiated as part of the three year pay deal."
Napo - always with the "updates", never with the delivery - of anything.
How can there have been agreement on pay if no-one agreed what people should be paid? It has echoes of TR & shafting & EVR, etc.
"The trade unions are not satisfied that sufficient communications were issued to the affected staff of the impact on them prior to the pay ballot."
So if the Pay Calculator was issued PRIOR TO the pay ballot why weren't the significant anomalies spotted by Napo BEFORE recommending staff accept the pay offer?
ALWAYS behind the curve. Never on top of any issue. Run ragged by MoJ for a decade or more.
Sorry to say this yet again but I think union members have to have the cahonas to refer matters to the Certification Officer. Napo has been worse than woeful, from Ledger through Lawrence, during which time fee-paying members have suffered substantial losses - ranging from terms & conditions, pay, annual leave & workload protection, to employment & careers.
Incompetence? Collusion? Carelessness? Intentional?
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/certification-officer
The trade unions are not satisfied that sufficient communications were issued to the affected staff of the impact on them prior to the pay ballot.
ReplyDeleteThis is why Ian Lawrence is grossly in important. It is his job to ensure the arrangements are clear yet it is him who dodged the the detail . It was left to members to vote on yet the union had not understood what was being proposed. Two short planks come to mind .
Anon 08:05 Should that read 'incompetent'? Just asking.
DeleteYes of course I was absolutely furious when I nearly smashed my keys reading that. Sorry. I hope readers appreciate this Lawrence fellah has fought out of Napo anyone that has a proper clue on what to do for membership protections.
Deletehow to resist pressure. Those who knew how to manage management by confrontation. Challenges were undone by Ian Lawrence. He failed to resolve or support branches in all their battles over the time of aggressive change. Local pay awards outside national negotiating even though better local deals were possible he held areas back. Here we are less than a year on the absolute stupidity of this guy he does not understand what he encouraged members to sign up to. If I were his chair he would be on capability to dismissal right now. Yet he has the confidence to write this mailshot . It is his job to know. It is his job to scrutinise the pay agreements to ensure no member detriments . It is his job to to ensure testing of the impact of the pay in a series of consultations. He failed again spectacularly at the staff transfer agreement protections. Note the word protections within that agreement he accepted it knowing dismissals of our colleagues via compulsory redundancy measures would come inside of months. This should have seen him dismissed then but he bullied out tom useless rendon. Of course he then ducked the blame . This guy has to be got rid of for the members sake or face an even worse future than if get a fighter with a brain than a coward without a spine .
It does make you wonder if Napo's pay negotiators were up to the job. With pay deals the devil is always in the details and it's extraordinary that before the ink dries, there are disputes about what was actually agreed. It comes across as amateurish.
DeleteNapo agreed the pay deal. Should have ironed this out in advance rather than agreeing the shoddy pay deal and being “neutral to let members decide”.
ReplyDeleteNapo also needs to call for 90% of probation officers to be immediately pulled out of OMiC / Prisons and permanently returned to understaffed probation offices.
“we ask members to make a formal complaint with SSCL so that the employer is aware.”
ReplyDeleteNo that’s what Napo is meant to do.
“Napo’s position is that these supplements would erode as the pay of the individuals in receipt of them increased”
ReplyDeleteSo in effect your pay increase is cancelled out by loss of the market forces supplement.
What is the point of that? Does Napo not understand basic math?
“This means that staff had to be in post by the 1st October 2021 in order to receive the pay progression on 1st April 2022. Again, the pay calculator did not reflect this when members used it to calculate the impact of the pay deal.”
ReplyDeleteDoesn’t matter what date the calculator reflects. What date did Napo agree?
“The trade unions maintain that an agreement was reached with Senior Management that supersedes the mark time pay protection of those in receipt of USH payments.”
ReplyDeleteProduce the agreement. Was it a formal document or scribble on the back of a fag packet?
Hahah Ian Lawrence negotiations formal he is the fool that still thinks writing on a fag packet will do. He is incompetant. Probations Boris.
Delete“Women on probation suffer from myriad difficulties, and are usually involved with multiple services, including child safeguarding, domestic abuse and mental health.”
ReplyDeleteAs do men too.
For a service predominantly staffed by women it’s surprising that women clients are considered to be unsupported.
The 'average' woman on probation is much more likely to be involved with multiple agencies than the 'average' man, and to have a higher level of need. This has been known for decades, so enough with the whataboutery please.
Delete.. averages vary, and in the ‘average’ probation office men on probation outnumber women 20x. You do the math of the relevance.
DeleteMany men have a higher level of need. I thought we had stopped pushing the myth that all men in prison and on probation are absent fathers, can’t be DV victims or emotionally unstable, and just need a bit of circuit training or a gym membership by way of support.
Let’s hope Ms Whaterboutery isn’t a probation officer. With that view you should not be supervising males.
DeleteMy wages were £2500 lower than the calculator predicted. People voted on false information. There was insufficient clarity on promoted staff which is unfair after two decades of service.
ReplyDeleteNo, people voted for this dodgy pay offer on the advice given by Napo, Unison and the GMB. They’ve failed us probation staff once again! Everyone should be getting something and nobody should be losing out, no matter when they started.
DeleteI voted against pay offer as despite the very leading skewed presentation which included contractual progression as a pay rise it was clearly insulting. However I am aware that many colleagues did not appear to understand fully and PQiPs due to qualify this year did not realise they would not be progressing to next pay point in April 2023.
ReplyDeleteI also note that the recent local government pay offer was not accepted by Unite members though GMB and Unison voted for. Unite was the only Union that published stats that demonstrated the offer was a real term pay cut given inflation and previous crap pay awards.
NAPO has failed its members.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_fourfm
ReplyDeleteSally Tilt and Dr Kerensa Hocken are forensic psychologists who work in prisons.
Their role is to help people who have committed crimes to look at the harm they’ve caused to other people, understand why, and work out how to make changes to prevent further harm after they’ve been released.
In Behind the Crime, they take the time to understand someone whose crimes have led to harm and in some cases, imprisonment.
In this final episode they talk to Ian*, who pleaded guilty to the offence of indecent exposure. Ian received a non-custodial sentence, was placed on the register of sex offenders and was ordered to attend a sex offender treatment programme.
Ian’s story is one of a compulsion that started early in childhood and continued into his adult years. By talking through the key moments in Ian’s life and upbringing, we can start to understand how he, and others, reach the point where they cause harm through shameful acts that cause disgust to society.
Ian's conviction led to him seeking further help to curb his compulsions, and he has successfully learned how to live safely. His behaviour has been under control for over ten years, and his successful treatment may have prevented further, far more serious harm happening in the future.
Ian engaged with a specialist charity called StopSO, which offers treatment to perpetrators and offers support for survivors of sexual offending. www.stopso.org.uk
*Ian’s name has been changed to protect his identity.
A warning that some people may find this programme distressing.
Not really interested. These programmes and services rarely reduce reoffending rates and the evidence is some do more than good.
Delete