It Needs To Go Higher

Feelings continue to run high on the subject of unmanageable caseloads with a war of words breaking out between PO and SPO:-

Outrageous? Or truthful? Keep clapping. There IS a very distinct divide. Let’s not gaslight and pretend there isn’t. The divide is frontline POs / PSOs are drowning and SPOs just keep dumping more work on them instead of taking it higher and finding a solution. SPOs seem to be completely confused over their exit into management from casework. They don’t manage cases anymore. They manage staff who manage caseloads. They don’t have to do the level of work POs are literally sinking in. Because SPOs just add more on a daily basis.

If you don’t like the divide, go back to being a PO. See how long you last before you run off back to a non-caseload role, and continue to damage your colleagues. You are part of the problem. SPOs need to grow a backbone and take the problem higher. Stop punishing your teams for being humans. We’re not robots. We don’t have endless mental, emotional and professional capacity. SPOs aren’t ‘one of us.’ You're managers. We’re just the lowly frontline fools keeping you in a job. Your sense of entitlement that you can command how your broken staff - staff you helped to break - should feel is outrageous.

*****

On the basis of Probation Service Instructions Vs health and safety, duty of care, employment tribunals and general morality, I do not think SPOs should be overly confident that asking crumbling POs over 110% WMT “Where do you suggest the cases go instead” is a defensible position. My response would be, go ask your Head of PDU and RPD “Where do you suggest the cases go” and stop giving them to me!

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But I don't understand why the issue isn't very firmly being passed up the food chain to PDU heads, Regional Probation Directors and now Area Executive Directors. I think we need to see some evidence they are doing something useful to justify their £100,000 plus salaries because a shedload more work is coming down the line for an already severely stretched probation service. 

Postscript

Thanks go to a reader for pointing me in the direction of an article from the European Journal of Probation published in November 2022 ‘Pushed from above and pushed from below’: Emotional labour and dual identities amongst senior probation officers in England and Wales. 

I'm tempted to say something heretical, such as I'm not at all sure what the purpose and relevance of this kind of endeavour is, not least because the language is often impenetrable, its readership I suspect is tiny and one must wonder how it might benefit practice. However, having thoroughly irritated academics, I'll restrict myself to quoting a couple of passages from the conclusion:-  

Our analysis sheds light not only on the role of the SPO in England and Wales but also on the PS itself. The probation service has become increasingly managerial in recent decades (along with myriad other public sector institutions) and the experiences of SPOs serves to underline how this is manifesting on the ground. That SPOs are responsible for performance management as well as developing practice and supporting staff, demonstrating the influence of 30 years of new public management and the challenges this brings to a staff group which is and remains value driven (Grant, 2016).

Ultimately, our analysis points to the demands of high workloads which are currently endemic across probation in England and Wales for both practitioners and SPOs. Whilst the impact of this on the quality of probation practice is recognised by HMI Probation (2020), it is clear from our research that high workloads present similar issues for frontline managers. There are – it would seem – significant risks to SPO well-being that have their roots in the tensions that exist in the SPO role and the emotional labour that is demanded from them. One solution here would be to introduce a clearer definition of the SPO role and reduce the amount of work they do. Another solution may be the introduction of a senior practitioner role which is often seen in the context of social work. This would have the effect of improving the amount and quality of support they can provide to frontline practitioners and, in turn, improve the quality of work done with people on probation.

SPOs find themselves stuck in the middle of an organisation which itself is dealing with high workloads, difficulties in recruitment and retention and questions over its legitimacy amongst the media and general public. However, SPOs play a crucial role in holding the two ends of the organisation together by being the link between what the organisation is trying to do, and the frontline workers who are responsible for putting policy into practice. Our research highlights the need for the probation service to do more to support SPOs as they navigate the ‘intrepid path’ between being held to account by senior managers, protecting the public, supporting staff and helping people on probation to desist from offending.

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The mention of 'Senior Practitioners' made me smile as I recall the last time this idea was mooted. I well recall a conversation in the pub with a trusted colleague "hey, this sounds like you and me seeing as we're top of the pay scale and have no interest in being SPO's". Little did we know it just created an extra layer of managers that were eventually culled when spending cuts hit the old Probation Trusts.