I Was There - Were You?

Hidden away in the dark recesses of the internet and only recently come to light thanks to a Facebook group, here we have a bit of Napo nostalgia from the heady campaigning days prior to privatisation. It was Napo at the London TUC demonstration 'A Future that Works' 20th October 2012. I was there - were you? 

Latest From Napo 229

Email to members this afternoon:-

PROBATION PAY UPDATE

• Unions reject final 2021/2022 pay offer
• Members to be asked to endorse a Trade Dispute and retain option of future industrial action over pay.
• Unions to plan protest action as part of the pay campaign.
• Demand made to Employer to implement Incremental Progression and AP Residential Worker back pay in December salaries.

Since the results of the earlier indicative ballots against the Government pay freeze and the derisory Probation pay offer for 2021/2022, eight meetings have taken place between unions and the employer in an attempt to secure improvements.

As expected, these discussions have been especially difficult and probably would not have taken place at all were it not for the resolve shown by members across the three Probation unions which brought the employer back to the table.

At a meeting of the National Executive Committee this week, (also attended by members of the Napo Probation Negotiating Committee), serious anger was expressed that the government have ignored the claims of our members yet again. They have refused to release new money to your employer and are using the vindictive and politically motivated public sector pay freeze as an excuse. This itself has been put in place to mask their disastrous handling of the Covid pandemic.

While the government has announced that the pay freeze will end with effect from next April it does not help our members whatsoever, as the pay remit for Probation in 2021/2022 only allows for a derisory increase in pay of £250 for those any staff on a pay point under £24k.

Next steps

As you would expect, your negotiators have made it clear to the employer that the final pay offer, which we will circulate to members along with ballot material next week, represents an unacceptable position.

After a full and frank debate on the outcome of the pay talks, the NEC overwhelmingly agreed that balloting for industrial action at this stage would not be in our member’s best interests. Instead, they decided that we should be asking members to reject the offer and endorse our intention to join with our sister unions in lodging a formal Trade Dispute. This means that industrial action would remain an option subject to progress in future negotiations.

This will be part of an ongoing campaign to secure a Multi-Year-Pay deal for the Probation Service with effect from 1st April 2022. Among other things this will need to deliver: revalorisation of pay points, an end to pay band overlaps and the creation of a new salary structure that addresses the huge pay gap between our members and the salaries of workers in comparable public-facing professions outside of the Probation Service.

We have been told by the Probation Minister, the Director General and senior management, that this is a top priority, and that they are committed to delivering such a deal. Members will be expecting them to deliver on this promise once the pay freeze has been lifted.

Future Protest Action

Meanwhile we are also planning a campaign of joint protest action to support this campaign and further details about how members can take part in this will follow in due course.

Unions demand the delivery of contractual entitlements

Over the last few weeks we have regularly demanded payment of three outstanding contractual issues, namely incremental pay progression to those who are eligible to receive it, the AP Residential Worker back pay and the agreement from the 2020 Pay award that would see staff at Pay Band 1 assimilated into Pay Band 2.

The employer has committed to write to us early next week, and it is our expectation that there will be some positive news in respect of the above which is a direct result of union pressure.

Please look out for more news on pay over the next week and any consultative meetings for members which may be organised early next month.

Ian Lawrence General Secretary 

Katie Lomas National Chair 

Guest Blog 84

Reflections  

Well, for a multitude of reasons it has taken some time to reflect on the circumstances and nature of my own departure from the National Probation Service after many faithful years of service.

Departing my main grade PO role earlier this year (I opted for early retirement) I then commenced a new, part time job a few days later. However, I feel the need to confirm that I qualified as a Probation Officer and completed my degree after attending face to face lectures. I also benefited from lively but healthy debates and guidance from established, long serving Probation officers (like Paul Senior) who documented and accurately forecast the dismantling of a Gold Star Service.

During my years of service I have worked across several regions, a handful of offices and a few Approved Premises. I have successfully delivered groups that included ETS, Think First, SOTP and IDAP. I have ‘acted up’ (SPO) and was always without hesitation willing to cover colleagues and the service at inter-agency meetings, gaps created by staff sickness and a Service inability to provided adequate report writers. A regular at L3 MAPPA I have over many years held and managed some very interesting cases! I was always considered to be a very safe pair of hands.

I spent some time developing an IOM team and actively worked within a proactive team before that. Back in the day, writing a detailed and meaningful Standard Delivery Report ‘on a weekly basis’ was a core skill, as was the ability to navigate the murky world of IPP sentences and the ever-changing face of Parole reports. I have had cases audited in numerous inspections and the feedback received was always complimentary and to the best of my knowledge rarely critical. But then, we were always given time to sanitise and prepare cases in advance of any inspection.

Over the years, I had the misfortune of becoming involved in 3 SFO’s, the first concluded that the ‘Offender Manager’ had done everything in their power to manage risk and they could not fault my work or that of the Service. My second interrogation was not as forgiving and I was criticized for not completing an OASys on time and the RMP was not in the correct format. The reviewing Officer made a point of telling me (prior to a 3 hour interview) that he would find something and bless him, he did! Regrettably he never explained how the RMP format or timeliness would have prevented further offending? 

My third SFO occurred about 6 months before I left the service. At the time, I calmly advised it was not an SFO because the ‘allegations’ made were so thin the matter would never meet a charging threshold and as a consequence it could never get to Court. As predicted the SFO was abandoned approximately 2 weeks before my departure and I never got the opportunity to say ‘Told You So’. However, the Service left the sword of Damocles hanging above me for almost 6 months, that decision in itself contributed to my departure.

So what was the point of this brief narrative? Well, having taken time to reflect and recharge my batteries, I am happy to confirm that upon my departure from the National Probation Service, I am satisfied that I had experience in abundance, I was a bloody good officer, I was truly a safe pair of hands that never turned work away or took ‘sick leave’ because things got difficult. I met deadline after deadline, I maintained the quality of my work despite the best efforts of the faceless bureaucrats and bean counters whose only aim was to deskill and privatise the role. The Service allowed me to 'burn out', they allowed me to believe I was failing and not meeting the 'new' exacting standards' being pumped out.

I realized the angst, sadness and fatigue I experienced at the very end of my Probation Journey was not of my making. I can now say I am proud of what I achieved. The Service is now desperately trying to train new officers and yet they have never considered why they have lost so much experience. The Service should hang its head in shame for driving the dedicated few out of the role. Was that deliberate or was it simple mismanagement I cannot decide. However, I can say that the accelerated promotion of newly qualified and less experienced officers through the ranks will inevitably create problems further down the line. I have not seen any evidence to suggest retention of staff was ever a real goal? Experienced Officers at the top of their pay grade can become quite expensive to maintain and newly qualified Officers are much cheaper?

Am I missed? Well, the Service didn’t come crashing down after my departure; however the good-will shown to the Probation Service (by me) continued and was arguably ‘expected’. I had to brief officers regarding impending Oral Hearings, the content of Parole Reports and even some case handovers almost 6 weeks after leaving the Service. All done in my own time, however, I was glad to offer my views because in every case we were discussing a third party, an individual who often remained in custody, my integrity demanded that all available information be shared.

So was I missed at all? Some service users expressed anxiety and concern at my departure. Some colleagues also expressed their concerns at the loss of experience within the Office; I suspect my line manager struggled to allocate those extra difficult cases for a day or two. However, life goes on, the Service has inevitably found other willing work horses and in reality my time was an insignificance to such a great Public Service.

I still have to ask how the service will manage staff that experience direct threats, intimidation, knives being pulled in interview? How do you react to an individual that calmly produces bits of his own body that he has hacked off? Is the new generation of Officer willing or indeed able to work late and sit with an offender whilst finding accommodation? I have many, many times.

It’s ironic that on my very last day with Probation, I called at one of the satellite offices to say goodbye to colleagues and whilst there I spotted an Offender I had recalled a couple of weeks earlier. He was unlawfully at large and clearly sleeping rough. I approached him, took him for a cuppa and bought him a sandwich; I then asked if it was ok to get the police to collect him? He agreed it was probably for the best and I sat with him until he was taken in to custody. ‘Old School’. I didn't claim the money for the sandwich, tea or my overtime!

So what now? Well I am several months in to my new role, I do remain within the judicial system and my risk assessment skills are still being used, but for different purposes. I have rediscovered my love for work, learning ‘new rules’ and ‘new standards’ within a new organisation has been a challenge but one that I welcome because it is allowing me to grow again. My partner and children all remark about the change in my demeanour and general well-being. I have time for others now and I am no longer consumed by my occupation. I am sleeping better because I am not worried about deadlines or the behaviour of 58 Offenders who clearly remain my responsibility 24/7!

Do I miss the work? Absolutely, being able to work with and motivate individuals toward change has been a privilege over the years. I have achieved success and many offenders I have worked with over many years have gone on to live very productive lives, I know because many of them stay in touch. It’s a shame the service never studied individual attrition rates (Newly Qualified PO’s v Experience PO’s) that is where you will find ‘Effective Practice’. The ability to exercise common sense without the fear of SFO’s or failing targets would yield undeniable results, but the Service does not want to measure that. I stand by my results, breach and recall clearly has its place, but it should be used wisely.

"A one-size fits all approach to outcome measurement – based principally on the proven rate of reoffending (while strategically and symbolically important) – is unlikely to be sufficiently fine-grained and nuanced to reflect the complex reality of probation provision." (Kevin Wong, Associate Director, Criminal Justice at the Policy Evaluation Unit, PERU, Manchester Metropolitan University). Any Probation Officer worth his or her salt could have confirmed this.

To be an effective Probation Officer (in the past) relied on the presence of ‘people skills’, you had to have an ability to be non-judgemental, firm but fair management in crisis with an ability to challenge ‘confidently’. Sadly these are not traits I see being taught. Sadly OASys and meaningless targets appear to be the order of the day!

Will I ever return…..? Yes because I genuinely believe Old School will come back in to fashion one day.

Anon

All's Well in Soma Land

Comment left this morning:-

Anyone on the national probation propaganda call yesterday would get the impression that everything is going well. We should all be grateful that we have such a dedicated and well motivated management team working tirelessly on our behalf. 

After the warm fuzzy soma land call it was back to the cold hard reality of an unmanageably large caseload, few staff and no pay rise despite rising costs. Remember work harder and longer for less because to them you are expendable and less than a number on a spreadsheet. Expect to be told you should be grateful for the opportunity to train new staff in addition to your work. Be grateful to do additional work politicians might dream up and the management agree to without question lining their pockets whilst we do the dirty work and get humiliated or fired if there is an SFO. Remember HR is not your friend. Your managers are not your friend. Only you colleagues are your friends. 

So the next time they have a propaganda call don’t fill the chat with sycophantic crap but rather ask questions such as ‘Will you be willing to take a 15% pay cut to help the lowest paid staff pay their heating bills this winter?’ ‘Would you be willing to donate your performance bonus to the Edridge Fund to help those probation staff losing their homes?’ Actions not words will show how much they care. I’m pretty sure not one of them cares a jot about any of us as they are absolutely fine in soma land where the sun always shines.

--oo00oo--

Watch out for the Civil Service Awards on Friday - A team in the Probation Reform Programme is a finalist.

A Gem Of An Idea

May I recommend “The Outlaws” on BBC 1, all available on iPlayer.

I matured professionally and personally In Community Service (what a positive concept) in Bristol in the 1980’s. I spent a lot of energy inviting a well-known but reluctant playwright to visit “my” projects. He taught me about the structures of sitcoms. For instance, the need to have a Trap, unlikely characters confined to a particular space. It seemed to me then that a Community Service project was a perfect trap, and a thing worth celebrating.

While I was dragging him fruitlessly around my workplace, admin Elaine Merchant was busy typing away on our state-of-the-art golf ball typewriter in the Fishponds (Bristol suburbs) Probation Office, while her husband Ron supervised clients on placements. Their boy has done not so badly and has a show on the telly which I highly recommend. It’s a slow burn and the blend of really funny (whitewashing an actual Banksy from the wall of a community building) with suspense and grit is unsettling. The Guardian review is here, and I won’t compete, but here are a few comments.

If you are looking for a fly on the wall observation about unpaid work, this isn't it.

It however gets the spirit of Community Service as I first encountered it. A joyful embracing of the weird and disparate people we were and worked with. An understanding that the State is not going to solve individual problems, mainly of its creating, only good connections and care can go anywhere near that.

Having said that, most of our clients were impoverished young men, badly dressed for the weather, rightly cross about the indignity of their situation with us. Aggressive and vulnerable in equal measure in their denim jackets in the freezing wind in a Bristol winter, more vulnerable than threatening. Back then, we would have formed a line with them against any suggestion that they wore hi viz jackets with a label on the back.

The head of Probation Administration (these were powerful people in those days) used to complain that the CS staff were indistinguishable from our clients. I always rather liked that. We identified so much more with them than him. We were alive to the reality that our clients had been failed by the system, had failed the system, and needed us - albeit agents of the system - to try and reconcile this.

Pearly Gates

Latest From Napo 228

Two mailouts to members today:-

JTU27-2021 12 November 2021

MEMBERS’ SOLIDARITY BRINGS EMPLOYER BACK TO PAY NEGOTIATIONS

Since the earlier publication of the indicative ballot results rejecting the Government Pay Freeze and derisory 2021-2022 Probation Pay Offer, strenuous efforts have been made to reopen talks on pay with the employer.

The delay has been caused by the need to await the outcomes from the Comprehensive Spending Review which were published last week. Since the round of Union conferences last month there has also been engagement with the new Probation Minister Kit Malthouse and the Director General Amy Rees. Here it has been made clear that our respective members demand their employer resume engagement on the pay claim and the prospects for a multi-year pay settlement.

Latest Position

The fact that talks are now underway again is because of the solidarity shown by members across the three unions in delivering a powerful message - that you have simply had enough of seeing no progress on pay at the same time as workloads being at unsustainable levels.

Three meetings have taken place this week and at Wednesday’s Probation Service Joint Negotiating Committee, the unions recorded a strong statement expressing our serious disappointment at the lack of delivery against a whole series of agreements; some of which extend as far back as the 2018 pay settlement. These include:

• The continuing delay to paying contractual incremental pay progression
• The failure to honour the agreement reached on the AP Residential Worker regrading and back pay.
• The lack of progress in concluding the talks on deleting Pay Band 1 and the assimilation arrangements.
• The promise of a Managerial Review which has yet to materialise.
• The Probation Service Pay Manual, which was agreed in 2018, and which is desperately needed to sort out the many pay problems members face
• The continuing difficulties that have been encountered in the Job Evaluation Scheme and the long delay in reviewing certain jobs several years after the E3 restructuring exercise

The nature of pay negotiations means that it is simply not possible to issue daily reports as to progress, but unions are on standby to call their respective Negotiating Committees together at the earliest opportunity.

Trade Dispute and Industrial Action still a real possibility

Despite the welcome resumption of dialogue on pay, these have been difficult discussions against the backdrop of the government’s pay freeze policy that is extremely hostile to the public service. We are therefore under no illusions about how challenging it will be to elicit an improved pay offer, if at all.

This means that all unions are continuing with their contingency planning for an industrial action campaign, but as our members would expect, we are at the same time doing all that we can to exhaust all opportunities to make progress.

More news on the pay negotiations will follow as soon as it becomes available.

Napo National Officers and Officials Updates

Following AGM and the formal change of officers for Napo we have reviewed the roles and responsibilities we hold. Find out who does what and how to contact them here

ViSOR update

Napo have been working on ViSOR related issues for some years now. Our main concerns are the workload implications of using an additional system for recording information and the consequences of using the Police Vetting required to access the system. At our AGM in October I reflected on the impact of the use of this level of Police Vetting on diversity in our workforce and noted that despite the fact that HMPPS now want to ensure they recruit staff with lived experience of the CJS, in Probation staff with that invaluable experience risk being sidelined and new recruits screened out at vetting stage.

Our relentless campaign on this is beginning to have an impact. At a meeting earlier this week we had our first breakthrough. Some significant changes are being made to the processes surrounding vetting and there is a real focus on avoiding inadvertent discrimination. There is undoubtedly more work to be done but in the six years since ViSOR use was announced as part of E3 we have secured significant concessions. The following is a summary of the progress made since 2015:

• Staff in employment who fail ViSOR vetting for a reason not connected to a disciplinary issue were given support to appeal and originally offered redeployment if it meant they could no longer carry out their role
• Work done at national level to ensure that issues of inconsistency and unusual outcomes were challenged
• Diversity monitoring is carried out on vetting failure rates to explore disproportionate impact on any groups with protected characteristics

It was clear however that the use of ViSOR wasn’t going to be abandoned so our campaign continued. The transfer of another 7,000 staff from CRCs was another opportunity to look again at ViSOR use and the vetting issues associated with it and just this week we attended a meeting to be told that our continuing solution-focussed approach to this has had a positive impact:

• There is now a national contract for vetting with a single Police Force to ensure consistency. This is part of the National Contractors Vetting Service (NCVI) and it allows for the use of a single form and a uniform approach to vetting.
• The NCVI arrangement also allows for work to be done with the vetting team to ensure they understand the purpose of vetting for Probation staff and that employment of those with lived experience of the CJS is encouraged
• There is now a better opportunity to appeal or challenge results and to take any learning from difficult experiences to apply to future vetting practices, the appeal deadlines have been extended to allow staff to seek support with this
• There are more staff working on vetting to avoid delays
• Applications are done wholly online and this avoids the privacy issues caused by forms being submitted on behalf of staff by administrators
• Now 9 out of 10 people whose vetting shows a hit on PNC or credit check go on to pass vetting

The Home Office want to build a replacement for the ViSOR system and HMPPS are partners in this project. They hope to remove the need for double entry of data by ensuring the system can share information to and from nDelius in a technological way

Crucially HMPPS have finally accepted our argument that staff who fail vetting for ViSOR will be able to remain in case management but hold only those cases which do not require ViSOR use. This is a significant shift to a simple and common sense approach that we have put forward since day one. It is far less stigmatising and career limiting than the previous approach of moving staff to work in programmes or courts and while it isn’t a commitment to ditch ViSOR (or to ditch Police Vetting for ViSOR use which are Napo’s preferred options) it is a step in the right direction.

We will be continuing to work with the HMPPS team on ViSOR related issues. We will be reviewing the form now used for the national vetting service and working together to find a way for those staff who might be concerned about their vetting to give fuller information at the time of application, to ensure that even fewer people fail and have to appeal. The failure rate is currently 1.9%, this may change going forward as the vetting is done at the recruitment stage but we will monitor this closely.

Job Evaluations (JE)

There are three sets of job evaluations outstanding at the moment, and all are running into difficulties caused by lack of resources in the JES team along with the failure to do preparation and follow up work with sufficient detail. We have now aired the deep concern we have with the JE process at the Probation JNC and it remains a high priority.

E3 Post Implementation JE reviews

There are a small number of reviews for jobs where the Unions either appealed the outcome or felt that items had not been fully explored during the original E3 JE process back in 2015-16. We have an agreement in place that these reviews would be done 6 months after the implementation of the job descriptions, for most roles this was between 2015 and 2017. In 2018 the Unions formally requested the reviews be undertaken and worked with the employer to agree a priority list for this (see below). Since then we have repeatedly been given timetables for the work which have not been met. We still await the start of this important work.

Priority order list for E3 Post Implementation Review Work

Group 1: Receptionist (separately dealt with as part of 202 pay deal), AP Residential Worker (done but now in dispute re application)
Group 2: VLO, Enforcement Officer, Business Manager
Group 3: AP Manager, SPO, MAPPA Co-ordinator

Unification and New Target Operating Model JE work

This is where the resource issues for JES really show, there have been a number of issues relating to the implementation of the JE scheme and you will recall that earlier in the process we announced the work was on pause while we conducted a review. This resulted in a number of recommendations aimed at ensuring that the best quality information went to the panel for scoring and that the process appropriately engages post-holders. Sadly, all of this work has not produced the required results and we had to step in once again to put a stop to panels for some roles where the paperwork was not up to the required standard. It is far more important to get the right outcome at the panel stage – especially at appeal – than to get the panel done quickly. This will cause misery and frustration for members who are still waiting for their JE results but we must avoid the situation being suffered by colleagues who were affected by E3, where the promised 6 month post-implementation reviews of their grading are up to six years late and their pay protection ran out some time ago. More steps have been put in place to ensure the process is strengthened and we continue to work with members and HMPPS on this.

Other JE work in progress

There are other pieces of JE work in progress, including new roles created in the Probation Service outside of the unification work. These are also being affected by the issues of resource in the JES team and while we expected that the best practice recommendations from the review we recently undertook are rolled out in all JE work, that turned out to not be the case. We now await an updated schedule as to where this work will fit into the wider JES programme. Yet again it has fallen to the unions to work across different departments in HMPPS to ensure best practice is shared and to try to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Have you got a horror story about Probation Estates?

It is a little late for Halloween but we have been hearing some horror stories about Probation Estates issues. We need your help.

OMiC and the transfer of Line Management of SPOs to the Prison Governor 

We have significant concerns about this move, which has not happened yet. We are currently consulting on the detail of the guidance that will be issued on it, in an attempt to ensure that member’s rights are protected as far as possible. Once we have the final version of the guidance we will be issuing further advice to members around this. We are working closely with Unison reps to highlight our shared concerns about the tensions between the different approaches of prisons and probation, the differing terms and conditions, different approaches to staff management and supervision, the importance of retaining probation culture and probation professional development and the real risks to both SPOs and POs working in prisons if formal HR processes are conducted by people outside of our employer.

AGM follow up Q&A session with Jim Barton

Thanks to the 80+ members who joined the Q&A session with Jim Barton that we held last Friday. It was really successful, with 28 questions asked in total in just one hour. In response to requests from members who attended, and from Jim himself, we will now be working on a programme of similar events across 2022 with HMPPS Senior Leaders joining Napo members “in conversation”. We will advertise these as soon as we have dates. Once we do please let your colleagues know – and encourage them to join Napo so that they can attend future events!

Best Wishes
Napo HQ

Walking a Tightrope

Judging by this report from Shelter, they had a good TR, but it's clear there's a price to pay when you get into bed with government:-

Transforming Rehabilitation: Impact and Lessons Learned

At Shelter, we have been working with the justice sector for over 15 years. Housing support to people transitioning out of the criminal justice sector is essential, both to their successful rehabilitation and to tackling the housing emergency. We provide a range of services, including help to find or maintain accommodation, as well as finance, benefits and debt support.

Over the course of the delivery of the Transforming Rehabilitation contracts from May 2015 to June 2021, we have made a real impact. We helped a total of 51,800 people in custody and in the community with their accommodation, finance, benefit and debt need. We achieved positive outcomes for 89% of the people we supported*. Furthermore, several HMIP/HMPPS inspections commended and recognised our services.

Here are some of the lessons learned:

Building strong relationships

Successful contract delivery relies as much on developing good contract management relationships and partnerships as it does on performance. As the contracts evolved, we benefited from a closer alignment of service delivery with Shelter’s housing expertise, more joined-up working with probation and prisons and more effective use of volunteers to support and add value to service delivery. As a result, we were able to focus more on the outcomes for individuals rather than meeting volume targets.

Influencing commissioners to help shape policy

Having a direct relationship with commissioners is essential to make Shelter’s voice and expertise heard. This is also to ensure we proactively influence policy and defend the rights of people in the Criminal Justice System. The evidence we submitted to the Justice Select Committee in 2018 helped lead to the introduction of Enhanced Through the Gate (ETTG), additional resources from the government, as well as a more joined-up approach to supporting people with their rehabilitation needs.

Effecting systemic change

We encouraged joint working and ensured that adequate systems are in place to support case management, manage our performance and provide data insight. This has been key in gathering evidence and data to help improve systems where needed.

Working with the Probation Service and local authorities, we helped shape local homelessness strategies, upskilling probation staff and partner agencies. We also supported KPMG with the development of the Regional Probation Directorates’ Reducing Re-Offending Plans.

Focus on those most in need

Most importantly, we need to focus our expertise and knowledge of accommodation issues on those who are most in need. Working with community rehabilitation companies (CRCs), we created pathways for individuals whose accommodation needs often needed to be coordinated with other services – e.g. substance misuse and mental health. We also helped to set up multi-agency resettlement boards across prisons, working closely with local Homelessness Prevention Teams.

Involving Peer Mentors and people who use our services

Whilst contract delivery varied between areas depending on the contractor’s delivery model, the contracts couldn’t have been delivered without the support of our Peer Mentors (people with lived experience helping others in a similar situation) in custody and volunteers in the community. Additionally, involving operational staff and people who use our services to co-design and improve services was key to developing impactful services.

Our experience of delivering the Transforming Rehabilitation contracts means we are in a strong position to deliver the new Dynamic Framework contracts commissioned by the Ministry of Justice. We look forward to continuing to share best practice and working collaboratively so that people in need to resettle in the community are able to find a safe home.

--oo00oo--

My takeaway from the full report is this revealing statement:-

Our impact was lessened to some degree through being a sub-contractor to primes, which meant contractually we had to be careful not to cause reputational damage. However, the scale of our delivery meant that our voice was still heard. A key lesson is the need to ensure that in the future we have a more direct relationship with the commissioner, that gagging clauses do not prevent us from speaking out or challenging the lack of accommodation support for offenders and that we become more proactive in influencing policy and practice by working more closely with Shelter’s Communications, Policy and Campaigns (CPC) teams.

Compared with Shelters mission statement:- 

We exist to defend the right to a safe home and fight the devastating impact the housing emergency has on people and society. 

We do this with campaigns, advice and support - and we never give up. We believe that home is everything.

Napo AGM 2021: Jim Barton

Members will have received details emailed to them of the Q & A on this coming Friday 5th November and for those who missed the AGM, here it is:-

Jim Barton addressed this year’s AGM in Newcastle on the reform programme, having stepped in for Jo Farrer at the last minute. Unfortunately due to time constraints we were not able to take all the questions members wanted to ask for him. However, Jim has kindly offered to run a Q & A session with all Napo members on 5th November 2021 between 2.30pm and 3.30pm. This will be an open Teams meeting rather than a live event to ensure that everyone has a chance to speak should they wish to. The session will be chaired by Napo’s National Chair Katie Lomas. Questions can be submitted via the chat or verbally if you raise your hand.

A Manufactured Crisis

Preamble

I've been a bit pre-occupied of late on domestic matters, but noticed that yesterday for no obvious reason the blog attracted 4,698 hits. I can only assume it was connected in some way to the budget, the ending of the public sector pay freeze and the possibility of more cash for the MoJ. Or maybe it was a probation officer turning up in Eastenders this week, or angst over not getting contractual increments? Meanwhile, this from labourlist confirms what we've known all along about courts:-      

Covid made a growing backlog of court cases worse – but austerity created it

In the 18 years I spent as a probation officer, things changed a lot. Like most people joining the profession in 2002, I was initially motivated by the idea of rehabilitation, but court work was an essential part of the job.

Each week, my colleagues and I would spend around two hours interviewing those recently convicted. This was for a document known as a pre-sentence report: a detailed analysis of their offence, background, circumstances, risk to the public and proposal of what sentence would be most appropriate. It provided genuine opportunity for rehabilitation of those convicted and justice for victims.

Also once a week, each of us would spend the day in the local magistrates’ court writing a quicker version of this report for people convicted of minor crimes and furnishing magistrates with information about the people appearing already on probation orders. We were part of a functioning criminal justice system.

This came to an end for me in 2011, when Woolwich Magistrates’ Court, a ten-minute walk from the Probation Office, closed and the building was sold. Gradually, we saw a decrease in cases being heard quickly. By 2017, Greenwich Magistrates and Woolwich County Court had also closed.

Greenwich wasn’t alone in losing its court. When I began working for the London Probation Area, one of many names I was to be employed by, there were 320 magistrates’ court in England and Wales. Today, there are 165.

The sale of these buildings generated at least £223m for the public purse, but of course we are now seeing the real costs. Defendants, witnesses, police, lawyers and justices now commonly travel more than 50 miles to access local justice. Cases are taking years to be heard.

In June 2021, there were more than 60,000 outstanding Crown Court cases, and more than 386,000 in the magistrates’ court. It’s not just the loss of buildings that caused the court crisis. A complete failure to appreciate those working in the criminal justice system has led to staff shortages.

In 2020, inspectors rated all of the probation divisions as requiring improvement on staffing, with none of the areas fully staffed. High rates of staff sickness averaged 11 days per person, 50% of which related to mental health difficulties, and there were 650 job vacancies nationwide.

Many of these vacancies are likely a result of the disastrous changes made to the service in 2014 by Chris Grayling, who split the service in two, with half run by private sector agencies. The ethos of the organisation was changed, and six out of ten probation officers had a workload over the 100% target. Earlier this year, the services were amalgamated – but it’s not easy to put a broken organisation back together.

It was not as if the problems were unpredictable: Grayling ignored significant warnings from within his department to push through his reforms in 2014. And since then, MPs on the public accounts committee have said the reforms were rushed through at breakneck speed, taking “unacceptable risks” with taxpayers’ money. The justice committee has described the overhaul as a “mess” and the cause of “serious issues”.

The government has had to bail out the private providers at an estimated cost of £467m. I am one of many experienced probation staff who left the profession in this era – no longer recognising the organisation as one that could change lives, but rather one that had lost its identity and purpose.

Other areas of the criminal justice system face similar crises. For example, the Criminal Bar Association has warned that clearing the backlog is being hindered by a shortage of barristers. Falling rates of pay, in large part due to cuts in legal aid over the past decade, have led to an exodus from the profession. In the four years to 2020, the pool of criminal barristers shrank by 11%, from 2,553 to 2,273. It has also become an ageing profession, with 45% of barristers who specialise in crime aged 45 or over.

Of course, it suited the government to blame this on the pandemic. But coronavirus exacerbated an already growing backlog of cases – the pandemic didn’t create it.

The new Justice Secretary Dominic Raab now wants people to be able to look up their local court online and check how quickly cases are dealt with. The new national register will give scores on the speed cases go through the system, and on the ‘quality’ of justice served, measured by the percentage of guilty pleas before cases come to court, as well as the number of cases rearranged because of problems with the prosecution.

The ratings will initially cover the whole of England and Wales, but it is understood the Justice Secretary is keen on introducing scorecards on a more regional level, so that in future members of the public would be able to look at the performance of local courts.

Now, in my experience, people don’t generally give too much thought to courts until, for whatever reason, they need to attend court themselves. What you are supposed to do with this information is a mystery. If, as a victim, you see your local court is a poor performer, you can hardly choose to take your case elsewhere.

This feels like an attempt to blame those working in the criminal justice system for the problems that were created by the Conservative Party and their Justice Secretaries playing games with the services until they could no longer function properly. A score card won’t change that.

Kelly Grehan

Borough councillor in Dartford and a county councillor in Kent, a member of the LGA Labour Women’s Taskforce and a member of the Fabian Women’s Network Committee.

Newcastle Napo AGM 2021 Addresses

I notice the AGM addresses by the General Secretary and Chair have been published on the Napo website and I've selected what I feel are the most relevant parts:-.  

Good morning Conference, I’m Ian Lawrence General Secretary. Proud and privileged to be here with you all in person and to welcome those joining us remotely.

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Lastly, what about the crises being faced by Napo members right now, and that includes the relentless workloads being faced by our members in Cafcass and Probation NI who have common purpose in terms of their pay lagging behind comparable professions and who also need urgent action to redress that imbalance. I will report further to members about the progress in negotiations at the earliest opportunity.

Meanwhile, today I need to address the Broken Promises on Probation Pay. You all heard the comments by new Minister Malthouse yesterday, and I could see that you were overwhelmingly underwhelmed. Sadly, it was full of promises but short on commitment; much about the 4 pillars required to help rebuild the Probation service and the money being made available for that, but no mention of the fifth pillar, namely paying staff a decent wage.

I listened carefully to the debate yesterday and I look forward to taking note of the questions that you could not put to the Minister yesterday. I can assure you that Katie Lomas and I will deliver these in person at our meeting with him in a couple of weeks. I can hardly wait!

Because its time for us to make that stand that speakers in the debates spoke of yesterday. To stand against low pay across all employers obviously, but to build on the confidence that has been generated by way of our recent indicative ballot to reject the pay freeze and to reject the Probation Pay offer that I will be telling Minister Malthouse is an abject disgrace And we will also ask the Minister why, if other departments can agree multi year pay deals such as the MoJ, HMRC and Crown Prosecution Service, why can’t probation?

And we will also ask why it is that the Treasury has such a downer on Probation Pay. There are many potential answers of course, but here is one in my opinion; and its that they don’t believe that Probation staff will stand up for themselves, they don’t think that you have the the stomach for that struggle if it should come to it. Well, for those in high places I have a big message, that for the first time in recent history all 3 probation unions have returned indicative ballot results of between 86% and 99%, all 3 unions pointing in the right direction for further direct action if push comes to shove. Because its pretty straightforward:

Probation workers have had it with low pay, Have had it being taken for granted And are not prepared to see workloads and attrition rates remain at unsustainable levels And who cannot stand to see promising young PQIPS fold after a week in the job, mentally scarred by their experience and cannot tolerate vacancy rates in probation delivery units reach an all time high, and we will ask the Minister - how can you let this happen and what are you going to do to redress years of hollow promises to address low pay in the profession?

But I have an obligation to point out that we have more work to do to prepare for this new frontier that’s ahead of us; more work in tightening up our contact details for members likely to be involved in a trade dispute if it comes, and more work with our sister unions to build on the indicative ballot results, but Napo’s turnout in the consultative process gives me every confidence that we can meet the challenges set by the pernicious Trade Union Act, for that result was the highest turnout in Napo’s recent history and you can be be proud of where we have got to.

I expect that we will talk more about pay before this AGM is done, but for now lets send a very clear message to this Government. Probation staff need a decent pay rise and they need it now; no ifs, no buts, not next year,….. but now! For If you fail to pay people who do so much to protect our communities and try to help people turn their lives around, they may decide to vote with their feet because they simply cannot take anymore. We want to avoid that, so - reach a deal with us, show us some good faith and stop taking your loyal, highly committed staff for granted.

This AGM has again demonstrates why this union has such a proud heritage, and again its given you the opportunity to showcase the value of the work done by our members, and why those members need to be afforded the respect and dignity that they deserve.

I will be led by your judgement and your decisions, and in return I pledge to offer every ounce of my energy to this new, urgent campaign on Probation Pay. It’s a struggle that has sadly become necessary but one that you and your leadership group will embrace and pursue to the best of our ability.

Thank you conference,

Ian Lawrence

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Good afternoon to you all, whether you are in glorious 3D here in Newcastle or joining virtually from the comfort of your home or the relative discomfort of your office. I am so pleased that we are, yet again, trying a new way of delivering our AGM to make it as accessible as possible. The decision to run a fully virtual event last year was brave and while it wasn’t a complete success it certainly taught us something about how our AGM could become more inclusive. As you know it has been our practice for some time to move the AGM venue each year to share the burden of lengthy and costly travel around. This does mean that some people only attend an AGM when it is close by and some don’t attend at all, those with school age children or adult care responsibilities can particularly struggle. One of the things that struck me most after last year’s event was that some members said they were attending because the event was virtual and therefore accessible in a way AGM had not been before but another member said they felt more confident to speak at AGM when it was virtual. This told me something about the barriers to AGM attendance not being solely about the distance and staying away from home.

This year the threat of COVID has not disappeared and there will be members who aren’t advised to travel or mix with others, especially as we go into the winter season when many experts predict other viruses will delight in the depletion of our immune response due to lockdowns. So we decided to try something new – a hybrid AGM that would be more accessible and inclusive, that would allow more and different members to attend. Luckily our chosen venue for 2021 is pretty big and that allowed us to remove the restrictions on in person attendance allowing as many people as wished to attend in person. There are bound to be some hiccups with the hybrid format but we are absolutely determined to do as we did last year and learn all of the lessons we can to make future hybrid AGMs ever better.

For me personally nothing can beat the feeling of solidarity, camaraderie and joy that an in person event brings but I am not naïve and I know that this experience and viewpoint is not universal, for some being face to face is far more challenging, or the price that they pay for those good feelings is too high. So we will continue to try to make our events hybrid, and therefore more inclusive. As ever please give as much feedback as possible to help us develop and improve, we really value it. You may notice that we have focussed this year more on participation than fanci-ness and that is deliberate and as a direct result of feedback from last year.

It falls to me to open our AGM and conference and in doing so reflect on the forgoing year. I genuinely feel that each year I say “what a year it has been” and this year will be no different. I stood here last year and spoke about the unification process and how tough it would be. How foolish I was, how naïve! I thought it would be tough but in fact it has been far worse. The confusion and frustration around assignment and alignment processes were awful for members who faced uncertainty in the transfer process. That was bad enough but the weeks after transfer have shown just how bad things were in CRCs and the NPS. The coming together has exposed the weaknesses across all employers. Workloads have sky-rocketed to ever more dangerous levels and staff struggling to adapt to a new employer and new ways of working are bombarded with tick-box spreadsheets and demands to complete mandatory online training. Confusion and chaos reign in Probation right now, with pay problems that elicit at least 17 different responses depending who you ask, continuing confusion about the consultations on major changes involved in moving to the Target Operating Model and workloads so high that newly qualified officers leave rather than suffer the way they’ve seen their colleagues suffer during training. The whole system is in disarray but I just wanted to highlight a few areas that we are working on at present.

SPO Workloads are out of control. They have been a concern since 2014 but in the last year they have reached crisis point. SPOs managing a team of people with excessive workloads find themselves at the mercy of a resourcing model which says they can manage 10 people. That would be challenge enough but consider the number of staff working part time, the calculations use FTE (full time equivalent) so if the team has several people working part time in it the number climbs but the staff require managing whether they work full or part time. Then PQUIP trainees only count for a fraction of a full timer even though they arguably need more support and closer management than more experienced staff. So an SPO can have 15 or 20 staff to manage, all needing supervision, all needing input on their work around risk, all struggling with excessive workloads and all needing support to navigate massive organisational change. On top of this SPOs are the first port of call for pay problems which, we have discovered, can be so intractable that it takes teams of people months to resolve them. Every time a new process is introduced, every time an audit or case review suggests the need for practice improvement, more work is heaped onto SPOs. Our SPO Forum relaunched this year and Vice Chair Carole Doherty has created a space for SPO members to come together to offer and seek support and to make sur their concerns are raised. Sonia Flynn attended the last meeting to hear first hand the views of members and Carole is now working with the team who are carrying out the management review that we secured commitment for in our 2018 pay deal. It takes time to effect change but we are proudly making sure that the voices of our members are heard when decisions are being made.

ViSOR use and the police vetting required for it continues to be a huge concern. We now know that vetting failure rates are low but the impact on those who fail this vetting is huge. Movement to a different area of work has an impact on morale and potentially your career but more insidious is the impact on diversity of our workforce. Police vetting for ViSOR use is now part of the recruitment process and anyone who fails will not be employed in Probation. To understand why this impacts on diversity we must consider the known reasons for failure. You will automatically fail if you have live County Court Judgements against you, this is a situation that many people who have experienced financial hardship will face. If you are a Black or Asian man you are more likely to be stopped by Police, more likely to be arrested, more likely to be charged and at Court more likely to receive a custodial sentence than if you are a white man. Police vetting looks at any convictions you have but also convictions of your closest contacts and any intelligence about criminal networks. It surely follows therefore that people in our society who are more likely to be convicted and who have families also more likely to be convicted will be less likely to be able to work in Probation. Next we consider another reason for failure of vetting – those who have been a victim of domestic abuse but remain connected to their abuser in some way, perhaps because they have a child or children together. This can be considered an ongoing link by Police and vetting would fail.

So, those who have experienced financial hardship and had no cushion to help them – poor and working class people are less likely to be able to work in probation, black and Asian men face far higher likelihood of failing police vetting and therefore ever more barriers to employment in probation, and victims who struggle to fully disconnect from their abuser, either because of the nature of the abuse or because of some other link between them are also less likely to work in probation.

At a time when HMPPS are proudly announcing the employment of 1,000 people with lived experience of the criminal justice system in the Probation P of HMPPS people with lived experience who already work in the system are being sidelined and recruiting new staff with such experience will be ever harder. Make no mistake, there are now, and have been for decades, people working in Probation at all levels with lived experience of the justice system, and probation practice is all the richer for their presence. Now however we face people with this invaluable experience being recruited only to special roles separate from ordinary probation practice.

Napo’s position is that people with lived experience of the justice system should be able to work in any and all roles in Probation. We know that careful consideration must be given and assessments will need to be made to enable this but external vetting by the Police for the sole purpose of using a computer system should not be a barrier to creating a diverse workforce. We have consistently taken a solution focussed approach to this, first suggesting that ViSOR is not the best way to share information given the complexities of processes – instead we suggested allowing other agencies restricted access to Delius instead. This was not pursued, then we suggested that those who fail vetting could be given a protected caseload that didn’t require ViSOR use – this was seen as not possible for NPS. When unification was on the table we tried again, a mixed caseload in the PS would surely allow for staff without ViSOR vetting to have a caseload that didn’t need ViSOR. Again our reasonable suggestions were politely ignored. We will continue to raise this and to carefully monitor the impact of vetting on staff who transferred from CRCs. We have raised the issue with Justin Russell, after the HMiP report on race in probation and are now working hard to raise the issue more widely.

Another ongoing and very tricky issue is OMiC, the movement of the supervision of clients during the custodial part of their sentence into the prison where a team of Probation and Prison staff work together to carry out all of the tasks formerly performed by an Offender Manager in the community and an Offender Supervisor in custody. We are told this is being done because “end to end offender management” didn’t work. But it wasn’t really given much chance, with community staff not being resourced to travel to prisons, bans on travel claims due to cuts and excessive workloads meaning custody cases were deprioritised. Despite the obvious solution being to fix these issues OMiC was apparently the answer. So now instead of the community practitioner being the consistent thread throughout the sentence, from custody into the community someone serving a custodial sentence will have a new offender manager every time they move prisons and only meet their community officer close to their release. OMiC moves the work formerly done in the community and adds it to the work formerly done in the prison. It therefore moves staff into prisons. There is at present no workload measurement tool for OMiC and so inevitably workloads are high, staffing too low and because the administrative support comes from the prison team it is taking a long time for them to adjust to tasks they have no experience of.

Most concerning is the plan to move prison based SPOs into the line management of the prison governor. This is due to happen soon. We are utterly opposed to this and have been since the start. Probation Service staff have different terms and conditions and different ways of working than prison staff, the experience of COVID showed us that these differences can cause tensions and we had to intervene in several regions where prison governors, even before line managing the SPOs were insisting that despite the PS policy being to work at home where possible they wanted all probation staff to be in the prison every day. SPO members working in prisons tell us they are looking to move roles to avoid the inevitable issues that will make their positions very tough indeed. We have yet to see the full guidance for the line management arrangements but we remain vigilant to the risks to our members.

Unification has meant that programmes work now all resides in the probation service. This is cause for celebration however there are many concerns about moves to alter programmes and delivery requirements and the potential for “dumbing down” skilled work. We await the promised consultation on the detailed plans for programmes, but we anticipate having to fight the move away from quality and towards economy as driver for the changes.

COVID has brought many challenges and it’s impact will resonate throughout the system for years. One of the challenges we face now is the backlogs of cases waiting to go through the Courts, we all know that the Court system was struggling anyway and closures of Courts, low staffing and lack of resources meant there were already delays but some now face a wait of years for their case to be heard, and members working in Courts face ever more pressure to produce their advice to the Court in the quickest way possible. Despite many reports reinforcing what we already knew – that a quality pre-sentence report cannot be produced quickly – the direction of travel is towards speedy justice, seemingly at any cost. Rather than reopening closed courts, or investing in the staff who make the system work, the focus now seems to be on extending Court sitting hours and pushing through cases, ignoring the warnings that speedy justice sometimes simply isn’t justice at all.

In Unpaid Work there are also backlogs due to the pandemic and Napo’s ‘safety first’ approach to recovery is being pushed past it’s limit by the fervour to ramp up delivery despite concerns about virus transmission. Alongside this we have the challenge of unification, with the chaos that has brought. Unpaid Work staff face uncertainty and the planned work with trade unions on the new operating model, which could have helped to deal with some of the backlog issues, have been forgotten about as senior leaders just try to deal with the immediate chaos facing them.

There are so many other problems in the system, too many to list – even though we have three days!

Does this all sound a little bleak? At a recent branch meeting we acknowledged it is all quite bleak and that much work is needed to get us to a point where practitioners feel that Probation is functioning again. The damage that has been done to the system is both broad and deep and will take many years to repair. Amidst this bleakness however there is a spark of hope. The hope is Napo, us, the members, the reps, the staff, working together not just to represent the interests of members in their employment rights but also to represent the profession, the idea and ideals of Probation.

Our reps, activists and members have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic to keep themselves, their colleagues, their clients and the communities they serve as safe as possible. The haste to “recover” has been resisted at all levels and while we struggle to hold the line on this we must always remember that safety comes first. Keeping us safe in our work is a legal duty on our employer and whether the risk be COVID or work related stress the same duty of care is owed to us. If you feel unsafe at work, due to COVID or due to work related stress, please contact your branch reps, follow the advice we’ve issued, escalate concerns to the Link Officer and Official for your branch and make sure we all work together to fight these significant threats to our safety.

In many ways it may seem that we have lost some of our power since TR, the Civil Service approach is not always conducive to problem solving and the solution focussed approach we took when we were in smaller probation trusts. But we do have power – in our union. We have collective power, far greater than the sum of it’s parts. I am looking forward to spending these three days discussing and debating how we use that power, and how we channel and focus our efforts to effect real change.

If the situation for Probation members in England and Wales sounds a little bleak, our colleagues in Cafcass and Probation Northern Ireland aren’t faring much better. The organisational change issues aren’t there in the same way but workloads and pay are. In Cafcass our reps have been working tirelessly to protect members from the threats of COVID and work related stress. Dialogue with the employer has been established but there is much work to do and I know that will be discussed more tomorrow. There is, just like in Probation, no easy or quick solution to the workload issues. The work is there, and is increasing as a result of the pandemic. The funding provided to meet the need was a one off – so won’t continue and hasn’t appreciably made a difference. Cafcass needs serious investment, long term funding to increase staffing and reduce workloads to manageable levels.

In Northern Ireland workloads continue to be an issue and we are working hard to try to put in place processes to address workloads and to ensure that staff have a route to address them.

With all of this going on it can be difficult to take notice of what is happening around us, and to make space for things that we, as a professional association, should be involved in. That’s why I want to pay tribute to Emma Cluley as she steps down as Managing Editor of the Probation Journal. Emma has made an incredible contribution to Napo in this role and will be greatly missed. I know the recent Editorial Board meeting was her last, and the report to this AGM will also be her last, please show your appreciation for her dedication and commitment to Napo and to Probation.

Yesterday I was pleased to chair the women in napo fringe meeting where we launched a research partnership with long term member Becky Shepherd. Becky is looking at vicarious trauma in women who work with women and we hope that her findings will help us to secure better support for staff working with women on probation and women victims. This is a really important topic and I am looking forward to working with Becky on it. Women members will be receiving an invitation to participate and we hope you will share it with women colleagues who work with women to increase the responses.

I’ve been reflecting lots in recent weeks on the issues that women face in their daily lives. The sentencing of a Police Officer for the murder of Sarah Everard has sent a shockwave through society but the misogyny that enabled that heinous crime has always existed and we have always known about it. Even after the media was filled with people saying what must be done about the problem of institutionalised misogyny in my home area of North Yorkshire our Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, in interview, made comments that were textbook – worthy examples of victim blaming. He is still in post, for now, although widely criticised. He has apologised but the problem is not that he said the comments in public, where we could hear them, the problem is that he held those beliefs. The problem is that women are being told to use tracking apps, to avoid walking alone at night, to modify their clothing, to change their behaviour to keep safe. No one is telling the perpetrators to modify their behaviour. No one is intervening to remove people from positions of power and influence when they say or do things that demonstrate misogyny. We must - all of us - make ourselves free to do this, to call out misogyny, to demand better from those in positions of power.

Tomorrow at our AGM we will launch our race action plan, and dedicate ourselves to being anti-racist. Not just to say we will avoid being racist, but that we must ever strive to be anti-racist, actively and using all of the power and influence we have. We must do this collectively and individually, in our work, in our union and in whatever we do when we are not working or coming together in Napo. We must become the champions of anti-racism in our workplaces and our communities. I will be proudly signing my pledge and I hope each of you will too.

Together in Napo we can do great things, and there are great things to do. I hope you will leave here, after 3 days of being inspired by other activists, and spread the word to workmates who aren’t members. That they can and should join Napo, and share in the joy, the antidote to despair that is our solidarity. As I enter my last year as Chair I will hold those feelings close and use them as fuel – to fight the good fight and share as much of the antidote to despair as I can with others.

As I now finish I would like to read the message of solidarity from Unison, who are holding their own conference this week:

UNISON sends this message of solidarity to our sisters and brothers in Napo with best wishes for a successful AGM. We look forward to working with you on the many challenges which lie ahead. Together we can prevail.

Katie Lomas