Guest Blog 95

The Bob Hall Test

Well then. 38 years since I stumbled into a job in Community Service, here I am on retirement eve. A family bereavement has pushed this life event into the sidelines till now and puts me in a valedictory frame of mind.

I’m going a wee bit early, a year short of state retirement age. It’s going to be financially cramped but I had absolutely run out of steam.

Casting my eye back, a couple of snapshots: First up: catching a job in Community Service in Bristol in the 1980s. I had absolutely no idea what the job was. I was living on a boat in the chilly Bristol docks and the job came with a heating system, some cash, and was recommended by the lovely partner of the folksinger in the local pub. Only a few weeks in I was enthralled. I mean, wow, the State funded an organisation that worked alongside citizens who had fallen between the cracks of the state and broken its laws. We wanted them to do well. This organisation was imbued with a culture of social justice, a healthy suspicion of The State, and crucially, it was fun. It was actually fun to go to work. Uplifting. We liked each other, we respected our management, we took our responsibilities to our clients very seriously.

Second up: The Bob Hall Question. While I was training in Cornwall as a TPO, 2001- ish, I was mentored by the wonderful Bob Hall, PO. He was funny, brilliant, wise, humane. He called me “Grasshopper” (Kung fu, catch up younger readers). He had left his calling in the church but hung onto his pastoral mission. He was an old school Probation Officer, an inspirational role model with various sayings, one of which was “nobody in my caseload fails probation for not turning up” … he would drive home calling on any clients who hadn’t attended during the day to lodge the encounter in the records. He knew everyone on his patch. Another was “C’mon Su, we’ll do this the old-fashioned way”. This was to insert ourselves into the family home and “intervene” from there, counselling doting mums to try some tough love, persuade the landlord to hang off from eviction, trudge down to the CAB office to sort out benefits, check on how the kids were doing. As Bob neared the end of his days, he asked, poignantly “Did I make a difference?”

Spending most of my career in Probation management, I kept The Bob Hall Test in my head for the duration. Will it make a difference? While battling increasing managerialism early this century, at one point the Bob Hall Test was formally written into the analysis of new initiatives and any assessment of how much the team would sign up.

Did I make a difference is the question we should all ask ourselves every day. Top down. “Did I hit the targets?” is an incidental, secondary issue, and if the first test isnt met, the second is irrelevant.

Nearly four decades in, I reckon I can count on the fingers of one hand, maybe two at a stretch, the people I have worked with where I have assisted a really positive difference – and, sidenote, all of them clients with whom I had long lasting relationships. That is maybe a good enough tally. There are plenty who I have just eased through the system with as little mishap as possible. I can also number on the fingers of one, maybe two, hands the number of people on whom I have inflicted Enforcement, be it breach or recall.

I have been and remain, a signed up, subs paying Napo member, rep, and activist. Sadly, I can no longer represent individual members, but there is a fight to be fought for the heart and soul of Probation. I will endeavour to keep that up, but the ability to represent something you are no longer part of is difficult. The Bob Hall Test applies to all that work too.

I don’t believe in any hereafter, but should I have got that wrong, when challenged by St Peter (other religions are available) I will call up as witnesses those few wonderful, courageous people who turned themselves around, against all the odds, while I was on their case: hence my nom de plume Pearly Gates.

I am off to my lovely Probation team tomorrow for a last day. Don’t know whether I will laugh or cry.

Over and out

Su McConnel