Facilitated by HM Probation Inspectorate, here we have Professor Rob Canton taking just 5 minutes to explain the essence of probation. Sadly, the fact of the matter is it is simply not achievable whilst under civil service command and control and shackled to HM Prison Service.
Reflections from research
These five minute reflections from research videos are aimed at all those interested in the key lessons from probation and youth justice research studies. Reflecting upon their work, leading academics set out their top pieces of advice for the delivery of high-quality probation and/or youth offending services. The videos help to provide a rounded view of the evidence base, assisting with informed debate and aiding understanding of what helps and what hinders service delivery.
That should be played on a loop in the waiting rooms, and the staff kitchens, of every probation office
ReplyDeleteAnd on a loud speaker in and outside MoJ HQ
Renationalisation was one peirce of the jigsaw. Separation from one HMPPS and the civil service are the next peices of the jigsaw. The peice after that must be a cultural change from probation driven from within the service itself. A reinvention and a return to its original ethos.
ReplyDeleteThat might prove to be the hardest part of the jigsaw to find in my opinion.
I quite like and agree with the quote from the following article,
"changing the culture of a probation agency is much like the work probation officers do in trying to change the offending behaviour of offenders."
Probation needs to redeem its professional status, and stop been seen as just a job that anyone with keyboard skills can do.
Being able to complete an OASyS on time doesn't make people probation officers.
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/reinventing-probation-organizational-culture-and-change
'Getafix
Getafix probation is not a profession. Not like a science like architects. Teachers nurses doctors lawyers even dentists. The charges for professionals are called fees . We are on salaries public wage slaves and as ramshackle a bunch as you can see. We all know the numbers of staff in our job aimlessly wandering around offices corridors and what have you. They cannot ever be regarded as professional anything but. Always late mumbling on about entitlement . Some fall asleep in team meeting now you just turn off the screen. Scruffy bunch in certain quarter of the unions . Profession without identity or standards getafix come on your flying a kite with that garb.
Delete16:35 If it is not a profession then why is a lot of time and effort being put into setting up a professional register? One of the great wrongs that has been done to the probation profession over the years is that proper professional recognition has been avoided because it would mean paying professionals the market rate for their services. This would be about 40% higher than current remuneration. However, current arrangements for professional recognition are very much watered down and almost meaningless without external validation and scrutiny. One wonders if the scheme is merely designed to facilitate the senior person promoting it to get a gong when she eventually retires - all previous failures washed away.
Deletehttps://www-mirror-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/prison-guards-fume-new-teletubbies-32096061.amp?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17075873294235&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mirror.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuk-news%2Fprison-guards-fume-new-teletubbies-32096061
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Prison Service, the new, brightly coloured uniforms aim to calm kids under the Youth Custody Service. However, officers are less than keen to wear the brightly coloured blue and green outfits.
DeleteThe proposals have been outlined in a questionnaire to staff, with the aim that the new uniforms go on top of their classic, black trousers.
And it hasn't gone down well.
Colleagues were laughing and telling each other they would be dubbed Tinky-Winky if they wore the blue outfit inside the jail. It just feels a bit woke for all the wrong reasons ...
Excellent Rob. Very concise and upbeat! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteSteve Collet on Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"Very few people can talk from their experience of practice and research with the authority, intellectual clarity, humanity and accessibility as @RobCanton1 -there are messages here that go beyond Probation to the operation of an authoritarian state and its services."
From Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"Never seen a more pointless document than OASys, an eternity to complete and never read. Pointless cover your a**** document. Spending time f-f and visiting homes give you a far better insight into people. Talking on phones and filling in useless document don't."
Totally agree with the Twitter comment.
DeleteIf risk is dynamic, then why spend so much time and resource asking an algorithm to predict it?
https://theconversation.com/a-black-box-ai-system-has-been-influencing-criminal-justice-decisions-for-over-two-decades-its-time-to-open-it-up-200594
'Getafix
The former owner of The Body Shop Natura & Co has written to the retailer’s new owner Aurelius over unpaid bonuses worth up to £3m owed to former employees.
ReplyDeleteThe beauty giant’s legal counsel has contacted the private equity owner to enquire why previous staff have not received the long-term incentive grants they were due in their severance, Retail Week reported.
The former employees of The Body Shop were owed their share of Natura’s long-term incentive scheme at the end of January after the group offloaded the struggling business to Aurelius last year.
We all love the body shop but they perhaps might realise Aurelius broke and sunk working links finances by taking every cent while depriving probation workers and destroying all contracts within. Too late for the body shop alarm bell then with these crooks in suits signed on for the asset stripping down.
From Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"I work in an IIRMS team within the OPD Pathway. We have low caseloads and can spend much more meaningful time with SUs, more often than not outside of an office. I genuinely feel that I am able to get to know somebody more that when I was ever in an OM role."
From Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"To really get to know someone and find out what makes them tick you need time. Time to reflect. With rising caseloads and the target driven agenda the one thing staff don’t have is time."
Jake Phillips on Twitter:-
Delete"Absolutely- this was one of our main findings in relation professional curiosity and a key point in my presentation yesterday."
Professional curiosity. What's that mean a title for nosing. Nothing professional about asking questions the trick is not telling anything to a po about much they use it against you.
Delete"Professional Curiosity" has itself been open to interpretation. I thought it was about exercising genuine interest in the person, their story, their aspirations, their potential, and their needs and problems. The term is banded about in briefings, where it seems to have morphed into ... a determination to believe nothing the individual says to you, and to ensure you have ticked every possible avenue of enquiry as to the risk they might pose and whether their story checks out. I dont have a problem with risk assessment and checks, or realistic cynicism.
DeleteI do have a problem where the whole approach is based on suspicion and mistrust: and no acknowledgement whatsoever that the person on the receiving end of this will have very good reason to mistrust the pratitioner. We just become yet another obstacle the individual has to skirt round somehow.
I'm tired, JB. Older & tired-er by the day. I'm ground down by the lies, the revisionism, the misdirection & the abusive behaviour; behaviours that are exacerbated by the fact that the liars, the revisionists & the bullies celebrate that they are profiting at everyone else's expense. The crass unspeakable corruption is everywhere. Probation are seemingly very happy to follow the fuckwits down the rabbithole of doom.
ReplyDeleteI'm exhausted by the same old same old. New people trotting out the bleedin' obvious as if it were newly discovered and yet, whether its forty or twenty years old, or posted/twixted/published last week, NOTHING CHANGES ... except that it does, all the time, but...
... the only changes we can expect are those imposed by whoever holds the power, the means of implementing the changes *they* want, e.g. political idiotologists & their lickspittle acolytes with nasty agendas, the greedy brown-nosers & the natural-born bullies. Good practice, professional practice, meaningful practice - these are phrases that mean shit to the present incumbents.
The invasion of Gaza: 130 days of death & destruction, all of which was predicted, all of which could have been stopped many times, all of which was unnecessary... so now, after months' of lies, misdirection & war crime judgements it seems 30,000 civilian deaths is starting to become a bit too much for some stomachs, let alone the prospect of full-scale modern military invasion of a tented encampment of 1,000,000 displaced civilians.
cameron & others are starting to feel queasy, but too late for 30,000+ civilians & the infrastructure of a whole country. By the time this is published (assuming JB thinks its not too un-publishable) there may well be even bigger numbers being written about after the so-called 'Superbowl Massacre' (i.e. air raids on Rafah carried out overnight while the US was distracted by its favourite football game in Las Vegas, including paid-for pro-israel adverts flashing around the stadium).
The illegal invasion of Ukraine; putin; trump; modi; sunak; infosys; the upcoming GE in the UK; covid; theft of public finds; the post office treatment of SPMs; musk; bezos; murdoch; etc etc etc.
When. Will. It. Stop?
When will the 1% stop needing to collect your money?
How much is enough?
I'm curious to know.
I read azah Ali gets labour protection for the most outrageous grievous attack on the Israel campaign. On that basis starmer should hand back the whip to Diane abbot. Oh I'm thinking equality and fairness but I doubt this will be labour.
ReplyDeleteFrom Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"Being a PO is just a numbers game, long gone are the days of developing meaningful relationships with clients. How are you meant to support rehabilitation when we just see them at our convenience to complete reports!"