Thought Piece 9

There is a casm between new qualified staff and older gen po. The new only learn to say yes ok sure what have you.

******
I don’t think it’s as simple as “new staff just say yes.” There is a gap, but it isn’t about age or character. It’s about culture. Many newer practitioners have entered a service that is already overstretched, target-driven and short on experienced mentors. They’ve trained in an environment shaped by SFO anxiety, compliance metrics and constant performance scrutiny. In that climate, you quickly learn what feels safest: follow the direction given, escalate upwards, don’t rock the boat. That isn’t weakness. It’s self-preservation.

Those who trained 15–20 plus years ago came into something different. There was more reflective supervision, more protected space for professional judgement, and more confidence in constructive disagreement. You could push back on an SPO or even a PDU head and it was understood as professional discussion, not defiance. That space feels so much narrower now.

The real issue isn’t whether newer staff “say yes.” It’s whether anyone, new or experienced, genuinely feels able to say, respectfully, “I don’t agree,” or “This allocation isn’t safe,” without fearing consequences. A professional service must have room for challenge. If practitioners can't question workload, allocation or risk decisions without worrying about performance measures or reputational damage, that’s not a generational flaw. That’s a psychological safety problem. The question isn’t why some say yes, it's whether the system makes it safe to say no.

******
Recruitment numbers look reassuring on a spreadsheet.

“1,300 trainees onboarded.”
“FTE up this quarter.”
“Shortfall reduced.”

But probation is not a call centre. It is not a processing factory. It is a profession built on judgement, risk formulation, relational skill and accumulated experience. You do not learn that from a target. Experience in probation isn’t just about years served. It’s about pattern recognition. It’s about having seen escalation before it escalates. It’s about knowing when a compliant presentation masks something more concerning. It’s about understanding local services, local courts, local patterns of behaviour. It’s about confidence to challenge poor decisions including from above. You cannot fast-track that.

Recruiting thousands will plug a numerical gap. It does not plug an experience gap. And here is the uncomfortable part: when the system is overstretched and inexperienced at the same time, risk doesn’t disappear. It just becomes harder to detect and harder to manage. That’s bad for the organisation. It’s worse for new staff. Because where exactly are they meant to learn from?

If experienced practitioners are carrying overload, leaving, or being performance-managed for structural failings, the informal supervision that actually builds competence erodes. E-learning modules don’t replace corridor conversations. They don’t replace reflective debrief after a near miss. They don’t replace a senior colleague saying, “I’ve seen this before , slow down.”

Probation used to develop people through apprenticeship in the truest sense. Now we are onboarding at scale while simultaneously hollowing out the very people who hold the institutional memory. You can’t run a risk critical public protection service on enthusiasm and PowerPoint. Numbers matter. Of course they do. But if experience is treated as optional, we are storing up problems that won’t show on a recruitment dashboard until they show somewhere else. And by then, it’s too late.

******
So let's just look at what the numbers actually mean on the ground. Yes, recruitment is up. Yes, trainee numbers are high. Yes, FTE figures can be presented as improving. But there is a difference between headcount and experience. If 1,300 trainees enter the system while hundreds of experienced Band 4s quietly leave or step back, the spreadsheet looks healthier. The skill mix doesn't. What you end up with is:

• Teams heavy with PQiPs and newly qualified officers
• Fewer long-serving practitioners at the top of bands
• Middle managers supervising people who are still learning the craft

On paper: recovery. In practice: fragility.

Probation is not a production line. It is a judgement profession. And judgement is learned through experience, through seeing risk escalate, de escalate, surprise you, and sometimes outwit you. That can't be accelerated through e-learning modules. When experience thins out, which is happening now, practice naturally becomes more procedural. People lean on templates. Risk assessments become defensive. Recalls increase because discretion feels dangerous. Oversight tightens. Anxiety rises. That shift doesn’t show up neatly in workforce statistics. It shows up in:

• Rising recall numbers
• Over cautious decision making
• Burnout in new staff who don’t feel properly mentored
• Middle managers stretched between targets and reality

And when something goes seriously wrong, it won’t be framed as a structural experience deficit. It will be framed as individual failure. That’s the risk.

The Sentencing Act only works if probation has the depth of experience to manage complexity safely in the community. If we plug gaps numerically but hollow out institutional memory, we create a system that looks staffed but behaves brittle.

Recruitment is necessary. Retention is critical and that what those at the top either don't recognise or choose to ignore. Probation doesn’t fail slowly. It fails when judgement margins narrow and something tips. And at the moment, the conversation feels very focused on the numbers and not nearly focused enough on the experience behind them.

All contributions Anon