Moaning or Highlighting?

The research Jim has highlighted about ‘complicated loyalty’ is particularly interesting, because I suspect it explains why so many experienced PPs remain in a service they have become profoundly disillusioned with. Their loyalty isn’t necessarily to HMPPS. It’s to probation, to the people they supervise and to the belief that skilled, meaningful intervention can make a difference. But there’s a limit to how long an organisation can continue relying on that commitment while simultaneously undermining the conditions needed to sustain it.

And I think we’re overlooking another consequence of losing experienced PPs: who is going to develop the professional judgement of the next generation? There’s a great deal of emphasis on modernisation and technological efficiency, but I wonder whether we’ve properly considered what might be lost in the process. Take Justice Transcribe. Newer practitioner's may never experience having to listen, reflect, identify what matters and construct their own analytical account of a supervision session in their write ups.

Writing a case record isn’t simply an admin task. Done properly, it’s part of the thinking process. You consider what was said, what wasn’t said, how someone presented, what might be significant, whether your assessment has changed and what needs to happen next. The very act of deciding what to record, how to interpret it and why it matters helps develop professional judgement.

Of course, AI can assist with recording, and nobody wants practitioner's spending unnecessary hours typing. But there’s a difference between using technology to support professional thinking and allowing technology to increasingly perform the initial interpretation for us. If newer practitioner's become accustomed to reviewing polished, preconstructed narratives rather than developing their own accounts, how do we ensure they acquire the analytical skills needed to recognise what the technology has missed, misunderstood or overstated?

And who will help them develop those skills if experienced practitioners continue leaving, or are themselves so overwhelmed that meaningful mentoring and reflective supervision become luxuries? This is why the discussion about experience and professional mastery matters so much. Professional judgement isn’t acquired simply by completing a qualification, following a supervision package or progressing through management grades. It develops through experience, reflection, constructive challenge, learning from mistakes and working alongside people who know how to think critically about complex situations.

We seem very focused on developing systems that make probation more efficient, but rather less concerned about developing and retaining the people whose expertise makes probation effective.

The danger isn’t simply that we lose experienced practitioners, it's that we gradually lose the means by which professional expertise is passed on. And perhaps that’s the greatest irony of all. In our determination to make probation more efficient, we risk removing some of the very experiences through which practitioners learn to become effective professionals. You can't automate professional judgement and then wonder why the profession is losing its depth.

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Reading through these comments, I find something deeply troubling beyond the accounts of poor management, bullying and the loss of experienced staff. It’s the extent to which probation appears to have become divided against itself. POs against SPOs, experienced staff against newer colleagues, those who have progressed into management against those who have chosen to remain on the frontline. And somewhere in the middle, an increasing sense of resentment, mistrust and disillusionment.

How did a profession supposedly built upon empathy, reflection, understanding human behaviour and facilitating change become an environment in which some of those qualities appear so conspicuously absent in the way we treat one another?

The response telling a clearly distressed colleague to stop complaining, upskill or leave is particularly revealing. We spend our working lives recognising that people’s circumstances are individual and complex, that behaviour has context and that meaningful change requires support rather than judgement. Yet when a colleague expresses distress, the response from another member of the profession is effectively to dismiss them. Surely we should be capable of better than that?

I don’t believe all managers are incompetent or that every experienced PO is automatically an excellent professional. Nor do I believe newer colleagues lack the capacity to become outstanding POs or effective leaders. Those generalisations merely deepen the divisions. But I do believe an organisation has a serious problem when constructive challenge is perceived as disloyalty, experience is mistaken for resistance to change and staff begin to fear the consequences of questioning decisions.

A healthy professional culture should encourage respectful disagreement, critical thinking and learning from mistakes. It should be possible to challenge a manager without being labelled difficult, just as it should be possible for managers to make decisions without every disagreement becoming a personal confrontation. And leadership has a responsibility to create those conditions, not simply demand compliance and call it professionalism.

What concerns me is the apparent normalisation of hostility and distrust. We talk endlessly about improving performance, increasing productivity and retaining staff, yet how much attention is given to the damage caused when people no longer feel respected, listened to or psychologically safe at work? How much experience is lost because people become exhausted by the culture rather than the work itself? And what sort of professional environment are we introducing newly qualified POs into if division, cynicism and fear have become accepted features of working life?

The research on ‘complicated loyalty’ makes this particularly poignant. People can remain deeply committed to the purpose of probation while feeling increasingly alienated from the organisation employing them. That should concern every level of leadership. Because the real tragedy isn’t simply that experienced staff are leaving or that others feel trapped. It’s that people who entered a profession to help others are describing a workplace in which they increasingly feel unsupported themselves.

We cannot credibly promote rehabilitation, respect, constructive challenge and positive change as the foundations of our work while failing to demonstrate those same principles within our own organisation. And no amount of restructuring, professional registration or transformation will repair a culture that has forgotten how to value its own people.

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I'm a realist. Moaning on a forum changes what? I don't like the changes, I don't agree with turning a skilled trade into civil service nonsense. But it's happened, it's becoming more watered down and less skill required. You are replaceable by another PQIP off the conveyor belt. Do I agree? No, but it's a reality. So upskill, move sideways or if lucky enough, retire.

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I think the comment actually illustrates part of the problem. There’s a difference between recognising the reality of what probation has become and accepting that nothing can or should be done about it. Of course people can upskill, move sideways, seek promotion or leave. But why should those be the only realistic options for someone who wants to remain a skilled, experienced PO doing the work they originally entered the profession to do?

And describing newly qualified POs as coming off a conveyor belt risks directing our frustration towards the wrong people. They haven’t created the system they’re entering. Many will arrive with enthusiasm, commitment and a genuine desire to make a difference. The question is whether we’re providing the professional development, experience and support that will enable them to become the skilled POs we’re so concerned about losing.

The comment about TR is particularly relevant. We saw how organisational decisions could divide colleagues who previously shared a professional identity. Surely we should have learned something from that, rather than continuing to reinforce divisions between experienced and inexperienced staff, frontline and management, or those who stay and those who leave.

And I don’t accept that raising concerns is simply moaning. Critical reflection, constructive challenge and questioning established practice are supposed to be fundamental to probation. We encourage the people we supervise to examine their circumstances, challenge unhelpful patterns and recognise that change is possible. Yet when colleagues question the conditions in which they’re expected to work, some are told to accept reality or move on.

There is something deeply contradictory about that. Nobody is suggesting that a blog discussion alone will transform HMPPS. But dismissing professional concerns because they won’t immediately change the organisation merely reinforces the silence and resignation that allow problems to persist.

Perhaps what should concern us most isn’t that experienced POs are becoming disillusioned. It’s that we’ve reached a point where accepting the erosion of professional standards is being presented as realism, while questioning it is dismissed as complaining. Surely a profession worth preserving deserves better than that.