Thanks go to regular contributor 'Getafix for pointing us in the direstion of this video as part of the MoJ's recruitment drive:-
House 337 unveils powerful film showcasing the extraordinary impact of Probation Officers - Emotive 360 campaign highlights the life-changing role of a HM Prison and Probation Service career
Showcasing how Probation Officers work with individuals on their rehabilitation journey, managing risk, supporting positive change, and ultimately contributing to safer communities, the film captures how the role combines pastoral care with public protection, requiring both compassion and professional judgement, and highlighting the extraordinary impact that this role can have on a person, and the lives of their loved ones. Through authentic storytelling, we see the profound impact of this work from both sides; how Probation Officers find purpose and fulfillment while genuinely transforming the lives of those they support.
“Probation Officers do extraordinary work every single day, work that genuinely changes lives and protects our communities. But too many people don’t realise this role exists, or that they could do it themselves.” said Josh Green, CCO, House 337. “Our film shows the reality of the job: the challenges, the small wins, and the profound
sense of purpose that comes from helping someone turn their life around. We wanted to create something that would make career changers stop and think ‘I could do that. I want to do that.'”
Targeting career changers with life experience, the campaign specifically speaks to people aged 30-55 from sectors including health and social care, administration, education, customer service, and hospitality who are looking to change their careers, and who can bring valuable life experience and transferable skills to the role.
Unlike many public sector careers, Probation Officer roles don’t require specific qualifications, just the right personal qualities, including the ability to build relationships, communicate effectively, and stay calm under pressure.
James Evans, Deputy Director of Communications, Ministry of Justice said:
“Probation Service roles are incredibly varied, reaching into every corner of the criminal justice system. This campaign celebrates the extraordinary work that takes place across probation every day – showing how seemingly small actions by staff can create real-world impact. One plan, one decision, one conversation can spark a ripple of change, beginning with an individual and extending outward to families, neighbourhoods and entire communities.”
The campaign launches with high-impact OOH placements in key locations across the UK, supported by the film and a provocative audio campaign- all designed to reach career changers at moments when they’re considering their next move. The creative approach emphasises aspiration while maintaining realism, showcasing the genuine impact of the role without glossing over its challenges.
Steve Hawthorne, Creative Director, House 337 said:
The campaign launches with high-impact OOH placements in key locations across the UK, supported by the film and a provocative audio campaign- all designed to reach career changers at moments when they’re considering their next move. The creative approach emphasises aspiration while maintaining realism, showcasing the genuine impact of the role without glossing over its challenges.
Steve Hawthorne, Creative Director, House 337 said:
“From speaking to people in the Probation Service we realised that the incredible impact they have starts with very small, human interactions. Honest conversations. Listening. Empathy. Skills that plenty of people have. The positive change then ripples out from there. Change for the offenders they work with and for the community at large. By showing this ripple effect and where it starts, we hope to show career changers that working in Probation offers the chance to make a real impact.”
A more accurate campaign would be
ReplyDeleteGuest Blog 26
Advise, Assist and Befriend.
https://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2015/02/guest-blog-26.html?m=1
This “extraordinary work by extraordinary people” line is absolute bollocks, the same hollow, self-congratulatory nonsense as the Butler Trust’s “hidden heroes” shite. It’s propaganda, not reality, designed to make senior leaders feel good while frontline staff absorb the damage.
ReplyDeleteThe video airbrushes out the truth: poverty pay, no meaningful career progression, and a workplace culture riddled with bullying, harassment, racism and discrimination. It ignores unsafe buildings, poor security, and the daily risk staff are expected to accept as normal.
There’s no mention of the pressure of carrying caseloads of 50 offenders with next to no resources, or an organisation permanently poised to throw practitioners under the bus for the slightest perceived misstep.
Training is rushed, shallow and box-ticking, built to churn people through rather than build competence, which is exactly why most leave soon after qualifying.
If staff are lucky, they get to beg for a 2% pay rise once a decade, framed as generosity, in return for quietly accepting relentless government “reforms” dumped on them every six months , changes their leaders latch onto without question and then enforce without support.
This isn’t recognition. It’s gaslighting. Slap inspirational music on a broken service, praise the people holding it together, and carry on doing absolutely nothing to fix the conditions that are driving them out.
Spot on !
DeleteWell articulated, I concur.
DeleteIn other news …. Another “update” that says nothing. Still secretive, still evasive, still hiding behind process while management and unions congratulate themselves for simply turning up to talks. Everyone knows what’s coming: a derisory 3% insult dressed up as an offer, with the expectation that staff should be grateful for it. Anything below 25% is another real-terms pay cut. No movement on workloads, no movement on caseloads, no acknowledgement of the reality breaking this service. This isn’t negotiation … it’s managed decline, and frontline probation staff are once again expected to carry the cost while everyone else hides behind empty words.
ReplyDelete“Update on 2025 Probation Pay Offer (Joint Statement Probation Service and
recognised Trade Unions)
Following HM Treasury and Cabinet Office approvals, pay talks have resumed this week with recognised Trade Unions Napo, UNISON and GMB/SCOOP.
A formal pay offer is expected this week which the three unions will first refer to their respective committees and then consult all members on a timetable to be confirmed shortly.”
Any optimism needs to be tempered by what Kim Thornden-Edwards actually told staff. She was explicit: “any pay award will take into account both a headline percentage increase and the competency-based framework progression payments already made… the total pay award comprises both elements combined.”
DeleteThat wording matters. It signals that CBF progression is not additional; it is being counted within the overall settlement. For many experienced staff, particularly those at the top of the scale or who did not receive progression, that immediately raises the risk that the “headline” figure will be diluted in practice.
We’ve been here before. A process-heavy update, strong language about advocacy, then an offer that looks reasonable until you break it down and see that much of it has already been paid to some and never reaches others. Averaging CBF into the award may balance a spreadsheet, but it does not address fairness, retention or morale.
So yes, movement in process has happened. But the substance still points towards another settlement that redistributes existing pay rather than meaningfully lifting it. Until there is clear, written confirmation that experienced staff who received no CBF progression will get the full uplift, scepticism is not cynicism, it’s realism.
Trust isn’t restored by saying the right things. It’s restored by who actually benefits when the numbers land.
What’s striking is how consistent the gap has become between how probation is described and how it is actually experienced.
ReplyDeleteThe language of “extraordinary people” and “life-changing impact” is not wrong in itself, but it has been weaponised. It is used to romanticise endurance, to reframe harm as vocation, and to substitute praise for protection. Calling staff extraordinary becomes a way of justifying why ordinary safeguards, pay, workload limits and honesty never arrive.
If this campaign reflected reality, it would show not just empathy and purpose, but constraint: capped caseloads, time to think, experienced supervision, safe offices, and leadership willing to absorb risk instead of pushing it downhill. It would also acknowledge that constant reform, churn and surveillance actively undermine the very relationships being celebrated on screen.
The frustration in these comments is not cynicism. It is the response of a workforce that recognises propaganda when it sees it. When inspirational messaging repeatedly arrives without structural change, it stops motivating and starts insulting.
Probation doesn’t need another glossy narrative. It needs the conditions to make the narrative true.
‘Unlike many public sector careers, Probation Officer roles don’t require specific qualifications, just the right personal qualities, …’
ReplyDeleteYet another undermining of the role and the hardships most people go through in order to qualify.
I note that the narrative above makes no mention of the mind numbing bureaucracy and the endless OAsys assessments, the ‘free,’ overtime just to keep up, and the risks which result from processing people rather than engaging properly with them.
Propaganda indeed.
Its really basic stuff. Ladybird book of orgnisational management, I remember doing this during SPO training. HMPPS failing on both fronts. Get the pay sorted! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-qbGAvR4EU&t=218s
ReplyDeleteIts just blatant false advertising. Their selling unicorns in a desperate bid to boost recruitment whilst forgetting that retention rates is probably a bigger problem.
ReplyDeleteThose that are attracted by the rethoric are unlikely to stick around for long once they realise the reality.
'Getafix
CBF is not worth the paper that it’s not written on and woe betide you if you are at odds with your SPO !
ReplyDeleteThis isn’t a misunderstanding or a communications misstep. It’s intentional.
ReplyDeleteProbation is being deliberately redefined downward: fewer qualifications, thinner training, template-driven judgement, outsourced “risk”, and pay structures like CBF that reward compliance over competence. Experience is inconvenient. Professional challenge is expensive. Attrition solves both.
The recruitment film isn’t lying by accident — it’s advertising the new probation. One where emotional labour replaces expertise, where churn is normalised, and where those who remember what the job actually required are slowly priced, managed, or performance-reviewed out.
Senior leaders would never accept these conditions for themselves. They would never carry these caseloads, absorb this risk, or work under this level of scrutiny for this pay. Yet they sign it off daily for others, then call it “resilience” and “purpose”.
This isn’t reform.
It’s managed deskilling.
And everyone pretending not to see it is complicit.
Deskilling has been shouted at POS on this blog by those encroaching cheap psos for years. It is not new. I'm amazed it's dawning on everyone this late. Role boundaries do not exist and despite the admirable expulsion of non qualified spo grade by the NPS that ridiculous hybrid of wannabe without any formal skills is now past. Thanks for that mess from crcs however the same discern is not applied to po protections. The stifled po role debate needs a new direction and we need to illustrate the real difference in what tasks are specialised to each grade
DeleteThe same things happening in the NHS. One of the techniques I've observed being used to undermine workers, is the use of identity politics. Rather than improving pay of existing staff, the trust I work in paid thousands to a third sector organization for 'peer workers'. This has allowed managers to avoid the issue of low pay, exploit more workers that they don't even pay for (they're paid by third sector), outsource work, and appear inclusive and just because they now have staff with 'lived experience'.
DeleteThe NHS is just a name above a door at this point.
I don’t think this is “dawning on people too late”. Each new change reopens the wound. Every reform that strips time, depth or autonomy reminds people what has been hollowed out. That’s why the anger resurfaces, not because we didn’t notice before, but because the consequences keep landing.
DeleteThis isn’t resistance to change. It’s fatigue from watching the same mistakes repeated under different names.
One of the reasons the probation officer role has been so easy to hollow out is that it is largely invisible.
DeleteMost of the public have no idea what a probation officer actually does unless they have direct contact as an offender or a victim. There is no shared understanding of the skill, judgement and responsibility involved, only a vague sense that probation is administrative, or “supportive”, or something that happens quietly in the background.
That invisibility matters. Roles that are understood and valued by the public do not have their qualifications diluted, their core tasks fragmented or their professional judgement replaced by templates. Social workers, nurses and teachers are restructured, but their professional status remains intact. Probation’s hasn’t.
When a role is poorly understood, it becomes easy to redefine it downwards, cheaper, faster, more generic. What we’re seeing isn’t accidental deskilling; it’s what happens when a profession is allowed to exist without public recognition, political protection or a clear professional voice.
The move to have PSRs written at court was the start of the de-professionalisation process.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Restricting PSRs to court based roles was a turning point. For one, experienced practitioners writing reports on their own cases mattered. It widened professional judgement, deepened understanding of relapse and escalation, and gave real variation to the role.
DeleteThen came the truncated reports and oral reports, all justified in the name of speed. You cannot form a balanced, defensible view of a person in a rushed interview designed to clear a court list. What was lost wasn’t just quality, but confidence in professional judgement.