New Look Probation

Q&A for National Probation Service staff 

1. What has been announced now and why? 

The government has set out its plans for the future of probation. This follows careful consideration of the results of the consultation ‘Strengthening Probation, Building Confidence’ held in summer 2018 which received over 450 written responses and captured the views of more than 1,000 delegates from over 39 events. 

The key proposals are: 

a) The National Probation Service will have responsibility for all offender management 

b) The private and voluntary sector will still play a vital role providing interventions 

c) Support for the probation profession - to improve professional development and raise the status of the profession. 

2. When are you implementing these changes? 

In England, we have put in place arrangements to allow us to extend CRC contracts to ensure we have the necessary time to get the transition to the new system right. We intend to use these arrangements to end contracts in Spring 2021. This will ensure a smooth transition, focussing on the seamless continuity of public protection and rehabilitation in the community. We intend to integrate offender management in Wales on a quicker timescale, by the end of 2019. We will now begin a period of further engagement with a broad range of stakeholders to refine the design of future services, and with staff to inform our planning for the transition to these timescales. We will seek to launch competitive procurement processes later this year for the delivery of interventions such as Unpaid Work, Accredited Programmes and rehabilitative interventions. We have set up a separate programme to take forward the delivery of the professional recognition proposals over the next couple of years 

3. This isn’t what you proposed in the consultation – why have you changed your mind? 

We have listened closely to feedback from the consultation, reflected on reports from HM Inspectorate of Probation and others, and tested the options with our partners and stakeholders to make sure we got this important decision right. We have also taken account of the continuing challenges faced by CRCs and the need for future arrangements to deliver a more stable operating environment. The proposals laid out in the consultation for Wales remain unchanged. On balance, we believe this new model for England – based on these arrangements we consulted on in Wales – offers the most sustainable approach for probation and is the best option to build on the positive changes made under Transforming Rehabilitation. 

4. Why are the government not continuing with the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) model? 

Transforming Rehabilitation brought about some important changes that will be strengthened under this revised model. TR opened up probation to a diverse range of providers and extended support and supervision to an additional 40,000 offenders leaving prison. But we accept that there have been challenges resulting from the complexities of contractualising offender management and splitting functions between the NPS and CRCs. That is why we are making changes to allow each sector to play to its strengths. 

5. Will you still outsource elements of probation? 

Yes. Private and not-for-profit organisations have demonstrated their strength in delivering interventions. We will retain and build on this success by sourcing key services, such as Unpaid Work, Accredited Programmes, and other resettlement and rehabilitative interventions from the private and voluntary sector markets. We intend to do this through competitions for suppliers for Unpaid Work and Accredited Programmes, and through creation of a dynamic framework for resettlement and rehabilitative interventions. 

6. Will the model be the same in England and Wales? 

The new model builds on existing proposals for Wales which we believe will create a structure that is better able to adapt to meet local needs. There is similarity in that all Offender Management will become the responsibility of the National Probation Services while certain interventions will be undertaken by other providers. There are however some distinctions between how services operate in England and Wales which reflect the requirements of both nations. These will continue under the new model. 

The existing structure of HMPPS Wales is different to that in England. In HMPPS in Wales, the structure combines prison and probation services under the same management line. Also in the existing model in Wales, the CRC is already co-terminus with the existing NPS Wales Division. 

The justice devolution settlement allows us to make distinct arrangements for probation that meet the needs of Wales. In Wales, the probation system is part of a wider system of governance which operate with a number of devolved responsibilities. For example, education and health and local authorities are governed by the Welsh government e.g. health in prisons. This mean there is a responsibility to discuss cross-cutting issues with the Welsh government. In addition, there are a number of legislative papers the agency must adhere to such as the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. 

7. How are you expanding the role of the voluntary sector? 

We want to see a clearer role for a wide range of voluntary sector providers in probation delivery, including local and specialist services. We will be developing a commercial framework to allow the National Probation Service to directly commission services on a scale that encourages the participation of smaller suppliers and is responsive to the needs of local areas. This will support the involvement of specialist voluntary and community organisations, such as those supporting offenders with complex needs, which are key to reducing reoffending and reintegrating offenders back into society. 

8. How much will all this cost? Will there be more funding for probation? 

We are determined to ensure probation has sufficient resource to deliver a good level of service and to support a reduction in reoffending and short prison sentences. This is subject the usual cross-Government approvals process and affordability considerations. 

Professional recognition 

9. What are your plans to better support probation officers? 

Probation is a vocational profession. Our changes will recognise the specialism and value of probation work, while supporting staff to develop the right skills and expertise. We will look to bring forward a statutory professional framework with ethical and training standards for different roles, to put probation on a par with teaching or social work. We are working with our Trade Union colleagues to introduce a new Competency Based Pay Progression Framework for NPS staff which takes into account the full range of attributes, skills and experience required to deliver a quality service. 

10. Why are we implementing a professional register for staff? 

As well as the structural and contractual elements, the plan outlines the desire to make improvements to the services offenders receive in a number of areas, and to better recognise the skills, experience, and professionalism of our dedicated workforce. Therefore, we want to create further opportunities for professional development. We also want to ensure we can safeguard the quality of probation work by ensuring all staff are suitably trained and supported. 

Impact on NPS and its staff 

11. What does this mean for the current structure for NPS? 

There will be structural change to create 11 probation areas across England and Wales. In England, each of the areas will be overseen by an NPS Regional Probation Director who will provide strategic leadership and be responsible for the overall delivery and commissioning of probation services. In Wales, the Executive Director for HMPPS in Wales already has responsibility for all probation services and prisons in Wales and this will remain unchanged. We will strengthen local partnerships. Our new regional structures will allow the probation service to work closer with other statutory bodies, including Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), to focus on joint aims and co-commissioning 

12. How will the extra work for NPS staff be managed? How will this impact on my workload? 

One of our priorities will be to look at how we can make workloads more manageable and to prevent overloading on any one part of the organisation. We now have more information to base future projections on, and plan to design future delivery arrangements to be more resilient to fluctuations in caseload volume. As offender management services transfer from CRCs to the NPS, staff assigned to delivering those services will also transfer. CRCs will be identifying their in-scope staff in due course. 

13. What are you doing to improve staff workloads and recruitment shortages? 

In the year to 31st December 2018, 707 probation services officers were appointed, some of whom will be training to become qualified probation officers. We know that the shift in demand for probation services has placed pressures on the NPS and staff have been carrying high caseloads. In response to this, the NPS has run several recruitment campaigns in the last 12 months and will continue to recruit Trainee Probation Officers Nationally in 2019/20. Staff are the probation system’s greatest asset, and we need to do all we can to make sure they are properly equipped to do their jobs and given the opportunities to enhance their professional skills and develop rewarding careers. 

14. How will you protect staff and services during the transition? 

These changes are about improving probation services, and ensuring there are sufficient staff to deliver a good quality service. The majority of staff who responded to the consultation were supportive of this delivery model. Maintaining business continuity during these changes is of paramount importance. We will continue to work closely with Trade Unions, CRCs and staff to support the transition to the future model and minimise disruption. 

15. Will staff be made redundant in the NPS? 

We do not envisage that this will be necessary but we need to do more work before we can be clear either way. We need to carefully review the current and future delivery models and consider where system and process change affects peoples’ roles with a view to minimise the impacts. If staff are displaced, we would seek to work with them and exhaust all redeployment options. Retaining skilled staff is a key priority for the department. 

16. Will the changes affect staff pay or terms and conditions in NPS? 

There are no plans to change any of these conditions and staff will be fully consulted throughout the process. 

17. What about my pension? 

For existing NPS staff, there will be no changes to your current pension arrangements. 

18. Will I need to reapply for my job? 

We appreciate the concerns staff will have about any future changes and one of our priorities will be to minimise the impact of this. It is too early to say what changes are required to deliver the outcomes of the consultation and new delivery model and we won’t undertake any restructure until we have a clear understanding of what the future delivery arrangements will be. We will keep staff informed as our plans develop, and we will consult them at the right time on any changes that may affect them. 

19. Will I move workplace? 

All HMPPS staff are contracted to work from locations that are suited to their work however we do not expect there to be any immediate requirements for staff to change workplace although future delivery arrangements could require some adjustments. We will aim to minimise these impacts as far as possible and will continue to consult with staff throughout the process. 

20. Will there be opportunities for voluntary early departure? 

There are no current plans to run a centralised voluntary exit scheme at this time. 

21. Will there be any changes in process to the way I work now? 

The aim of this programme is to continue to improve delivery of probation services so we will be looking for ideas on how to improve or change processes but we do not expect there to be immediate changes to the way staff currently work. 

Keeping you informed 

22. How will probation staff be kept informed throughout the process? 

Senior Leaders will continue to update staff as we progress and all communication channels will be used to ensure staff are involved and have opportunities to share feedback and ask questions. There will be separate consultation in regard to the transfer of staff – this will happen first in Wales. All available information will be published on the Probation Changes pages on the intranet. We will continue to provide information to CRC staff. Staff can get in touch with questions via email at strengthening.probation@justice.gov.uk 

23. How can I get involved? 

A series of workshops will be run across England and Wales to share further details regarding future design, change and transition processes. Staff can also get in touch with the programme directly via the email strengthening.probation@justice.gov.uk. Consultation will also continue to take place through Trade Unions. Further staff engagement events will be advertised.

Taking Stock

It's certainly been a remarkable few days for the probation world, but I doubt history will record the TR saga as having been 'bold and ambitious' as David Gauke tried to tell us on Thursday as he spouted the official MoJ line. Chris Grayling was nowhere to be seen of course, but his place in history is assured now that every single one of his key decisions whilst serving as the first ever non lawyer Lord Chancellor have been reversed. I'm told by a well-informed insider that every one of his ministerial proposals now has to be run past Downing Street before implementation, just like a naughty schoolboy that can't be trusted.

I need to say a big thank you to the many readers and contributors who were kind enough to remark on the work of the blog as the news broke. This is very much appreciated and the sheer numbers confirm that, although despised and derided in certain quarters, there is still a role for an independent discussion and information platform that facilitates anonymity and informed debate. Just for the record, there were 4500 hits on Wednesday; 6000 on Thursday and 3300 yesterday, thus confirming that especially in times of crisis, this remains a significant 'go-to' place for information and hence a role in helping to shape the narrative.  

It does feel like a victory, but I think we all know much misery is to come as the reunification takes effect and most of probation disappears behind the secretive closed doors of HMPPS with its love of bureaucracy and command and control culture. The fight must continue to break free from this outfit and regain our independence. In the meantime there are many questions that spring to mind, not least what will happen to the volunteers that the CRC's recruited, many of whom are former or current clients? NPS have never seen a role for such people of course as the concept doesn't fit their mindset. What's the position going to be with ViSOR vetting too?

--oo00oo--

It's not a reversal though is it? Spare a thought for the teams in programmes, UPW, drug and alcohol treatment, housing, finance benefit and debt support, partner link workers etc. Who all signed up to work for a probation service and will now be farmed off cheaply to the charity sector, and will be hugely anxious this morning about their jobs.

*****
This is absolutely not a reversal - this is the centralised bureaucracy swallowing up more staff, and moving probation further away from its local roots.

*****
It's the people in interventions these days who do more of the traditional probation work, the programmes facilitators, UPW supervisors etc spend more time building relationships and working with service users than officers are enabled to under all the recording requirements.

*****
Whilst unions and reformers and politicians celebrate, claim victory and make the headlines, some who's strived tirelessly might not even get a mention. You might just have to buy your own pint to celebrate Jim, but there's no doubt at all you deserve it! But.. Someone needs to keep a close eye on what the privateers do between now and the end date because their only mission now will be to strip every penny out that they can before they go.

*****
Today's announcement is neither a broad-spectrum antibiotic nor a panacea of any kind, its merely an acknowledgement of the diagnosis.

*****
As the waters of privatisation receded, the destruction TR has caused will be laid bare in its totality. It will be a long and difficult fix structurally, IT nightmares, relocations and reassignments and upheaval everywhere. The damage caused to the workforce could be even more difficult to heal, the wounds as you say have indeed become infected. But today is a good day nevertheless. However long the journey back takes, it can begin knowing it's a step in the right direction.

*****
Too true. A victory but a hollow victory for the casualties along the way. And there will still be much turbulence ahead. Will all CRC staff be TUPE'd back to the NPS? I think not - the NPS won't require some staff and I'm sure the contracts offered could well be less favourable than those currently enjoyed by the long term staff. So concerns about job losses,futures will still be there.

*****
No I think the golden share is the key here the equalities of terms is a paramount position anyone going into the NPS will be on equitable terms has to be no two tier. Right to be concerned though that's what the fight coming is about.

*****
There is no TUPE arrangement as the Offender Management Act made us exempt. There is a staff transfer scheme. This will still protect pay and conditions but it does allow the NPS to cherry pick who they want from the CRC and discard the rest after they have reviewed ‘roles and responsibilities’. It’s far from over. I can’t feel jubilant when my colleagues jobs are at risk.

*****
Spare a thought for those in interventions, who are probably feeling undervalued and very anxious this morning.

*****
Here we go again. The tattered fag packet used to record Tory probation policy has been dusted off and put back to use. Another headlong rush to design and implement a new system which, will almost inevitably result in more fuck ups. Let's just remember what fuck ups actually mean. Lost careers, more harm caused to our communities; I could go on. It's beholden on us to try to mitigate these as much as we can and make the very best of what is coming to preserve best practice and achieve better outcomes. More working extra hours, more stress through uncertainty; I could go on again. So thanks Jim and all of us who've argued and fought to get to this stage. Good luck to all of us who'll have to get through it. We will because that's what we do but it shan't be easy. The battle is won today but the war to ensure that Probation returns to a sensible locally managed and integral part of the CJS continues. Stay committed my wonderful colleagues and stay safe.

*****
Two cheers for today’s news! As with everything else, the devil will be in the detail. Let us remember that the NPS is not a haven of tranquility. The silence from our ‘leaders’ over the last five years has been deafening and these are the people who will assume that they are taking control of the re- formulated service. A new broom is very much a necessity. We have another disaster looming with OMiC which once again delivers a two tier system between state and private prisons, seemingly with the support of the unions, and staff being ordered into prisons while the government is making noises about strengthening community sentences. Huge thanks to you Jim, the voice of sanity in the wilderness. A victory yes, and something to build upon, but by no means the end of the war. Anyway, let’s enjoy today, restore our energies and prepare for what is to come.

*****
Do we now worry about redundancies, pay parity, terms & conditions?

*****
In a nutshell, yes. This isn't a joyous occasion. 

*****
There will certainly be some need for the a transfer process in both directions but lets see if the privateers pull out they will never deliver decent CP or Programmes. NPS already do its own intervention work in SOTP and less reliant for DV in CRCs as they are crap. Lone tutors large groups and massive attrition why pay for that off the failed rate card? New contracts will be a waste of money and they may want to reconsider re badging interventions as probation plus and attach it back to public services proper sharing the same infrastructure and sentence compliance will reduce risks and better the confidence of the whole organisation. No more pandering to failing private companies. I think many will want to see appropriate exit procedures agreements as was before with TR1 but these will need to be enforceable this time round lets hope the unions have learnt a lesson.

*****

Big thanks to Jim, and contributors to the blog, Napo, Unison, Dame Glenys, Frances Crook, Russell Webster & many many more. But...... Gauke said on TV this morning that "the widespread reform of Probation Services was necessary in 2014". No, David, it was not. Do NOT mistake today's news as any sort of victory. As many posts on here are suggesting, its merely a political strategy for something equally or more divisive & damaging. TR was not such a stealthy process - hindsight shows it was openly discussed but either missed or dismissed. Do not make the same mistake with Gauke's reforms.

*****
Lets hope there is a redundancy package for those of us that have now been shafted twice.

*****
I'm currently with the NPS and after 5 years felt like I needed a change in terms of the role, type of caseload etc. I decided to apply and have been offered a position with the CRC. With today's news I'm unsure where to progress with my career

*****
Please remove Probation from the Civil Service as I did not sign up to the code of conduct when I joined NPS. I have take the comments within the documents 'We want to turn Probation back into a profession on a par with teachers and Social Worker's.' Are they having a laugh? Same people that have shafted our pay, terms and conditions over the last 10 years. Afraid I might not be around long enough to find out. 

*****

I so hope voluntary redundancy is offered. I've had enough!

*****
If we haven't seen any "innovative" approaches to reoffending (as opposed to innovative ways of cutting staff without paying the going rate) in the last 4-5 years, isn't that a fairly good signal that there aren't really any left to discover?

*****
Imagine if this had happened in a large company, listed on the London Stock Market. A director forces through a major organisational change without a clear rationale, against all advice from experts and without testing it first. Brooking no opposition, he goes on to push the reforms through at an unrealistically fast pace, with the deliberate intention of making them harder to reverse later. The outcome for the company is exactly as predicted... the reforms don’t work, there are numerous and serious customer complaints, the company loses credibility, and a very large amount of money.

The director responsible would almost certainly lose his job. If this didn’t happen before the next shareholder AGM, it would happen very soon after. So why are the consequences not the same in government as in business?

For me, the big story is more than simply a botched privatisation. It’s about the personalities involved and the lack of checks and balances. Surely, as UK PLC’s director responsible for the criminal justice system, Grayling’s role should have been to ask probing questions, to test assumptions, to heed advice, to operate on facts and to insist on a cautious, reversible approach. He did none of this, and so in my opinion he is not fit to hold a senior position within the government. But it looks as though he will get away without even having to explain or apologise. This is plain wrong.

*****
Renationalisation is great, but just announcing it won't make it happen. There's a lot of things to change, and I'd suggest there's not a lot of time left until the current contracts expire to implement all that needs to be done. I'd like to see the MoJ being pushed to make a statement on how they plan to go about renationalisation, what's the process, and what impacts there's likely to be on things like OMIC.A botched privatisation followed by a botched renationalisation wouldn't be in anyone's interest. 

*****
Managing a medium sized homeless charity we would sooner p*** glass than work with the MOJ.

*****
It's been an expensive victory: the money wasted by Grayling, and the probation culture and infrastructure torn apart. If there is a positive, it's that outsourcing has its practical limits. Privatisation can make things worse. I know all this was known at the time and anyone with knowledge and experience of the criminal justice system told Grayling he was making a big mistake – but you can't reason with ideological fundamentalists who are 'irredeemably flawed'. I hope that in the future, when the probation culture is reimagined and reconstituted, it will have more backbone than it showed in the years leading up to TR, when it was in thrall to managerialism and all that jazz. Few come out of this mess with any credit, but I would say the probation inspectorate under Glenys Stacey told the truth to power and On Probation Blog kept the flame alive.

*****
Everything that has been going on with probation, all the unneeded stress that is unrelated to the core values of rehabilitation, and all the political crap that goes with it, is what has now lead to me resigning. No one higher up the food chain actually seems to care about the clients, I've stuck it out for long enough purely for the sake of the clients, but not, I've had enough and will be leaving my dream job behind me. I may come back, but I highly doubt it.

*****
Will staff be made redundant in CRCs? 'It is too early to confirm the impact on CRC staff.
The changes we have announced today are about strengthening probation services and supporting staff. Retaining the skills and knowledge of probation professionals within the system is a key priority for the department. However, we are aware of skills gap within the service which we will be addressing in the near future. We are in the process of gathering data on all those delivering services for or on behalf of CRCs to make sure we fully understand the roles and remits. This will inform our future planning.'

While everyone is celebrating just remember it could be tougher getting back into the new model then it was when we were all kicked out of it..... good luck to all, it's going to be a very stressful time. The Staff from the CRC's aren't all going to make it, at the end of the day both NPS and CRC staff have worked hard but CRC's are the underdogs in all of this so don't open that champagne bottle yet, not until you have that contract in your hands if that is where your future lies.

*****
My view is that HR, Admin and IT are in the trouble zone. Frontline staff are likely ok but any specialist roles you may have been promoted to are likely worth zero. The SMT will, as always, make sure they are well looked after. SPOs may find it difficult to correlate a suitable transfer. I'm happy to be corrected if anyone has other views though.

*****
I'm not sure even all CRC offender management staff in positions in the CRC are a done deal. NPS already has too many PSOs and not enough work for them, continues to recruit trainee POs and there is no hold on current SPO recruitment in the NPS either. It will all come down to the figures of what is needed. I suspect only a % of those CRC staff are likely to move into NPS, probably not all.    

More Reaction to MoJ U-turn

This from the Institute for Government:-

Probation outsourcing is a case study in failure

The Ministry of Justice has announced that it will bring the management of all offenders back in-house, a landmark decision which reverses reforms initiated six years ago by Chris Grayling. The then Justice Secretary, ignoring warnings that his reforms wouldn’t work, outsourced the management of all medium- and low-risk offenders in England and Wales to private companies.

The failure of those reforms have led to poorer services for offenders, adding to pressures on prisons and increasing risks to the public. While it will bring its own challenges, re-nationalising services is the right decision, and this damaging episode shows why government must get crucial outsourcing decisions right.

Failures gave the Ministry of Justice little choice

The Chief Inspector of Probation concluded that the outsourcing of probation was ‘irredeemably flawed’ – out of the 21 companies delivering probation services, she has found 80% to be inadequate in at least one key area, and many in several. The National Audit Office said the MoJ’s rushed approach had ‘set itself up to fail’, and there was ‘little evidence’ of promised innovations. The Public Accounts Committee found 19 companies have failed to meet targets for reducing the frequency of re-offending per offender, leading to an increase of 22% between 2011 and 2017. Between January 2015 to September 2018, the number of offenders recalled to prison for breaching their licence conditions increased by 47%.

At the heart of these problems, as the inspector said, is that ‘probation is a complex social service and it has proved well-nigh impossible to reduce probation services to a set of contractual requirements’. Working Links, which ran probation services in the South West, collapsed in February after the inspector found its leaders had focussed on avoiding financial penalties from missing contractual targets rather than improving the performance of services.

Bringing services back in-house is the right decision, but it won’t be an instant fix

David Gauke, the Justice Secretary, has said the Government will bring the management of probation services back in-house in 2021, while retaining a role for the private and voluntary sector in delivering ‘innovative’ services. As he admitted, the department has proved unable to design a contract that delivers good quality services. And the National Probation Service (NPS) has consistently been performing much better at managing high-risk offenders.

But while he is right to take responsibility by bringing services in-house, the change in approach won’t bring an instant fix. The NPS will face many of the same pressures that providers have faced, including the effects of problems in prisons such as worsening rehabilitation. And the transition creates its own difficulties which the department will need to navigate. It will involve a major reorganisation, with the responsibilities of 21 companies being converted into 11 regions which don’t naturally fit with the boundaries of other services including health, policing and local authorities. Hundreds of thousands of cases will need to be transferred. And the department will need to secure extra funding, given current levels of spending were based on many of the companies being loss-making.

Government should use probation as a case study in how not to contract out services

A flawed decision, a rushed procurement, the failure to find a model that worked, several suppliers collapsing, and ultimately, poor quality services affecting tens of thousands of offenders, their families and the public – the story of probation over the last six years is a case study of why government needs to improve the way it makes key outsourcing decisions.

Despite clear warnings from the Institute for Government, other industry experts and many suppliers, the department outsourced services with inexperienced suppliers and no evidence that they could make the contract work. As Meg Hillier, the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, recently said, ‘the Cabinet Office, HM Treasury and the Major Projects Review Group share responsibility for these failures [for] providing insufficient challenge’.

Yet while probation is an extreme case, as new IfG research published later this summer will show, it is far from the only example of government using outsourcing poorly in areas or ways that don’t deliver benefits and bring negative outcomes. While its impact is yet to be seen, the Cabinet Office’s Outsourcing Playbook – a guidance document for officials – published in February, is an important effort to address this. It is notable that the probation reforms would fail most of the Playbook’s tests.

The decision to renationalise probation is a landmark case of government recognising that outsourcing hasn’t worked. The Ministry of Justice has said that it will ‘build on the successful elements of the current system’. Government would do better to seriously learn from all those unsuccessful elements which made that system fail on so many levels.

Tom Sasse

--oo00oo--

The voluntary sector clearly see a chance to get a bigger slice of the action:- 

Probation reform; it is time for the voluntary sector to work together

Earlier this morning the Justice Secretary, David Gauke, announced new plans to reform the probation service as we know it. Reforms will be made for the National Probation Service to become stronger in light of the challenges faced by the previous privatisation of low and medium risk case management.

Leading on this monumental change, Gauke is looking for “a smarter justice system that reduces repeat crime by providing robust community alternatives to ineffective short prison sentences - supporting offenders to turn away from crime for good.”

The key elements of the Probation Reform will see:

1. The National Probation Service regaining overall responsibility of all Offender Management offering one consistent service
2. Up to £280 million invested in voluntary and private sector organisations to deliver innovative rehabilitation services - £20 million per year to invest in particularly innovative approaches
3. A holistic approach to services to cut reoffending and reduce crime. This will involve bringing a whole range of providers together to address a range of issues that contribute to reoffending
4. Investment in a digital and data strategy that will better utilise technology to inform the professional judgment of probation officers
5. Probation officers subject to a statutory regulatory framework that will hold them accountable to similar professional standards faced by doctors and lawyers

Three launch events discussing the reforms in more depth held the week commencing 27th May in London, Cardiff and Manchester; this will be open to stakeholders.

What does this mean for the voluntary sector?

As a member of the voluntary sector, this is always the first question I ask when a new government initiative is launched. This Probation Reform, however, clearly spells out what this could do for community led organisations.

There is a clear desire from the MoJ to see the voluntary sector better utilised to deliver ‘holistic’ services to service users. I am hoping this will see closer collaboration amongst a range of providers including: health, housing, substance misuse, employment support, therapy, community reengagement and services that build on people’s soft skills and resilience.

The £280 million investment in the voluntary and private sector, along with making it easier for them to provide services by reducing bureaucracy, is a significant step in the right direction. I hope to see more 'grassroot' services that intuitively know the confines of the Isle of Wight or the intricacies of central Birmingham delivering relevant, appropriate and locally supported services. I believe this will see greater engagement from service users and ultimately a reduction in reoffending.

Whilst the £280 million will predominantly contribute to the day-to-day running of voluntary and private sector services in the probation service, I believe the real opportunity comes with the £20 million that has been set aside for particularly innovative and new approaches to reducing reoffending.

It is time for the voluntary sector to work together

Under current funding models, it is more common than not that voluntary sector organisations, who largely do impactful work, are competing for scraps of funding where true collaboration is not financially viable.

What if there was a model that could be adopted that enables seed/mobilisation funds to be distributed to as many eligible providers as possible, see the uniformity of success/impact measurement, and ensure the MoJ would only pay the full sum upon truly successful contract completion?

We believe there is a way

Offploy has been researching the idea of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) for some time now and, inspired by the Peterborough SIB, we are convinced this could be one of the main answers to creating a thriving, collaborating voluntary sector that offers choice to both service user and commissioner.

We think it would be a great idea to see SIBs that package a whole range of support services that meet the needs of a variety of service users. The model is such that it will have provision to deliver both the core services for the many and also the ‘call off’ services that may only be required for a handful of service users. This would offer a service appropriate to every service user ensuring it is accessible to all and will offer the greatest impact to individuals and to society.

This approach could see the MoJ form an agreed social impact methodology for measuring the reduction/frequency of reoffending and the impact these SIBs would have on society.

It could see start-up capital go towards the mobilisation of multiple providers of one or many SIBs who have secured private investment. This will enable the provider to bridge the payment gap between mobilisation and delivery and only the MoJ would only pay out to those who deliver on the agreed outcomes.

The key bit: The risk sits with the lenders as opposed to the traditional payment by results model where the risk sits with the delivery organisations.

This comes at an ideal time when social lenders are more open and eager than ever to lend to social projects that can offer a return on investment on top of a positive social impact.

Under this model, we would see:

• better funded voluntary sector providers;
• longer-term contracts potentially spanning four to seven years;
• significantly lower risk to the commissioner;
• most importantly, appropriate, local services often built in collaboration with the very service users they support.

We’re eager to share this idea because we believe it could be one of the main models adopted to truly grow the support offered by the voluntary sector to people with criminal convictions.

We are keen to collaborate and we are also keen to see this happen in many locations. Whilst we will focus on as many providers as possible coming together under this model in the Yorkshire and Humber region, we would be keen to hear the thoughts of organisations or individuals with an interest or previous experience in Social Impact Bonds from all over the country and how this could be mobilised.

Further reading on Social Impact Bonds

GO Lab

GOV.UK

Big Society Capital

About Offploy Community Interest Company

Offploy is on a mission to reduce reoffending and make society safer by placing people with criminal convictions into meaningful, mentored and sustainable employment.

Our peer-led service sees people with criminal convictions peer mentored through a nine step journey, which addresses an individual's employability and pastoral needs; this will support our candidates into sustainable employment.

Reaction to MoJ U-turn

On a significant day that saw TR consigned to history and a major government u-turn, a typically coruscating piece from Ian Dunt on the politics.co.uk website:-

Probation privatisation debacle: Crazed obsession with the market fails again

It was a ruinous idea from the moment it was born, in Chris Grayling's head, back in 2013. And it remained one until the moment it died, last night, in the pages of the newspapers.

The privatisation of probation simply made no sense. No-one supported it. No-one wanted it. But the then-justice secretary went ahead and did it anyway. Now, after hundreds of millions of wasted taxpayer money and God-knows-how-many needlessly broken lives and additional victims of crime, it is being brought back into the public sector.

It is hard to fully describe the wastefulness of this debacle. Probation is the system that monitors offenders when they leave jail and tries to ensure that they do not reoffend. It is the harsh and unloved wing of public services. It isn't exciting, like the armed forces. It doesn't win public sympathy, like schools or hospitals. Most people don't even really know what it is. But when it goes wrong, we all suffer, because we all become less safe. There is a direct causal line between someone stealing your phone on the street and this service.

Grayling shattered the system then tried to rebuild it according to the profit motive. He split low, medium and high risk cases and put the former two in the private sector, with the latter retained in the public sector. Then 21 seperate companies were given the contracts.

But there was a problem. Probation does not correspond to the profit motive. Even if Grayling was less biblically foolish, this system could not work. The concept of privatising probation was wrong, as well as the mechanism used to do so.

Over a third of offenders have mental health problems, although some estimates put it as high as 90%. Suicide and self-harm rates are extremely high. Fifty per cent are functionally illiterate, meaning they have a reading age of 11 or lower. Many are completely illiterate. They are disproportionately likely to have experienced unemployment, drug use and trauma.

It's hard to turn that kind of situation around - to get offenders into work, to help them maintain relationships. And there is, in truth, no profit to be made in it. It costs lots of money and most of the time it doesn't work. Repeat offenders are hard to change.

There should be one question above all when people talk of privatising a service: What is the contract? On what precise basis does the company get paid? Where this is unclear, or if payment seems unlikely, then privatisation is the product of ideological zeal and not reason.

The end result is clear. The National Audit Office found that probation companies had much lower business volumes than the Ministry of Justice had modelled, underinvested in their clients and didn't meet performance targets. They failed to work with charities, or develop appropriate supply chains, or provide innovative changes to the service, or meet contractual commitments, or help offenders with accomodation, employment, finance, mental health or drug problems. In repeated checks, they were found to be inadequate, particularly in the area of public protection. After the reform, there was a 22% overall increase in the number of proven re-offences per re-offender.

The commercial approach was shown to be "inappropriate" for probation services. The fear of failure meant that risks were not encouraged, as they might be in a normal company. Contracts were "lightly specified", which meant the government could not hold providers to account. And payment-by-results proved impossible, because data on reoffending only comes out two years later and it is impossible to say if it is the result of the probation agency or some other variable, like welfare provision, or drug services, or something completely outside of government control.

But instead of asking about contracts, or exactly why we think the profit motive would function in an individual case, we just split into these incredibly tedious ideological tribes. On one side, the free market fundamentalists, like some crazed tribe of mouth-frothing Bacchic Hayekians, who think profit acts as some sort of magic wand fixing everything. And on the other the Corbyn disciples, whose only answer to any problem is to nationalise it, in as crude a way as possible, more to make themselves feel like they're getting revenge for 40 years of policy defeat than because they really believe it might help anyone.

It's all so boring and inadequate. We need rational case-by-case assessments of public benefit. What we get instead are massed ranks of zealots.

It's easy to turn this into a Grayling story. He is demonstrably inadequate and should have no role in any sane British government. The duration and extent of his political success is a vivid test of how badly our political system is malfunctioning.

But this is a much bigger story than just him. It's about how simple-minded our debate on privatisation and nationalisation is and what the consequences of that are for all of us. If you can only think in terms of 'good' and 'bad', with no nuance or judgement in between, don't be surprised when you get terrible results.

Ian Dunt is editor of Politics.co.uk 

--oo00oo--

This from Frances Crook of the Howard League:-

Reunifying probation is a bold and sensible step

I warmly welcome the plan to reunify probation into a national public service and the aim of promoting confidence in community sentences to replace prison terms of under a year that are known to be counter-productive. I commend the justice secretary for taking this bold and sensible step and I hope he will go on to embed the reform by introducing legislation to abolish short prison sentences.

I am also pleased that there appears to be a division between prisons and probation and I hope that the director in charge of probation will be a national strategic voice. It is important to know who is in charge.

There are plans for legislation to introduce a professional framework for probation. I hope this comes with a beefed-up probation institute that should provide ethical oversight, promote research and best practice. The College of Policing offers a model for this.

This endorsement comes with a some caveats, provided in a positive and constructive sense, as we all want this reform to work well.

I hope that the director in charge of probation will be a national strategic voice

Giving unpaid work to the private sector will not work. It never has. Private companies do not have the local links with small voluntary groups, charity shops, faith groups who are the very people to provide the unpaid work opportunities. When unpaid work in London was outsourced to Serco it was a disaster – and a risible one at that. When an opportunity to do some community payback was found, for example cleaning up a small graveyard, twenty or thirty men were sent along from all over London and most were sent away again, to spend the rest of the day going round and round on the Circle Line in order to complete their specified time.

This leads to another structural problem. The plan is to divide probation into eleven areas, which means they will be regional and not local. Most of the people serving community sentences are tied to local communities, as are most of the people coming out of prison. We are all bedded and tied to small local areas. Having a regional office trying to manage staff, community ties, several local government areas and health services, simply will not work.

I’m not a fan of the commissioning model. It is structurally stultifying and inhibits good practice and experimentation. Whoever is commissioned, whether it be the voluntary sector or the private companies, they work to the contract and not much else. I hope to see grants being given to voluntary organisations instead of commissioning as that model works best.

Overall this announcement was framed firmly in the exhortation to stop using prison sentences of under a year, which is exactly what the Howard League has been demanding.

Frances Crook

--oo00oo--

Guardian letters today:-

Probation service will take years to recover from Chris Grayling’s privatisation fiasco

For probation to provide the range and quality of services it once did will be a major undertaking, writes Mike Worthington; Grayling was told in no uncertain terms by Napo that his reforms were destined to fail, says Pat Waterman

The government’s decision to restore the probation service to the public sector is good news (Probation will be renationalised after disastrous Grayling reforms, 16 May). However, it is only the first step. For probation to provide the range and quality of services it once did in the justice sector will be a major rebuilding undertaking. Who will deliver the complex and skilled supervision of offenders that justice secretary David Gauke talks of? It is my understanding that the size of the probation service staff has been halved since privatisation. Significant numbers of qualified and experienced probation officers have been lost. And the qualifying training which was in place in the heyday of the service was abandoned some time ago.

To recruit, train and retain the numbers of staff needed by the service will take years to achieve. And if this succeeds, where will they be housed? In my area, like most, we developed a network of district offices and units to accommodate staff and deliver services locally. In Northumbria, we had 41 offices and units. Since 2014, 35 have been closed and are now either sold or rented, or up for sale or rent. To achieve the kind of probation service Mr Gauke intends will require major planning and resources. It will demand sustained political will. I hope that his intentions do become reality.

Mike Worthington
Former chief probation officer, Northumbria

I was the chair of the London branch of the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo) from 2012 to 2016. As Chris Grayling’s reforms destroyed the probation service, I watched as careers were destroyed and the health of some of my members was ruined. I watched as my members did everything they could to bring the government to its senses. But I also watched as some senior managers pocketed large payoffs, at public expense, having done and said little to contradict their political masters. Grayling was told in no uncertain terms by Napo that his reforms were destined to fail. But he did not listen and his arrogance has cost this country a fortune. So although I welcome the news that probation is to be renationalised, it is with a heavy heart.

Pat Waterman
London

As Predicted!

Thank goodness TR is officially dead! It was predicted of course. This from only a week ago:- 

Ducks Form Row

It certainly took some time, but the inevitability of a humiliating admission that TR was an unmitigated disaster of gigantic proportions and that TR2 hasn't a hope in hell of being sold to anyone as a bright new future, has at last dawned on the MoJ and its political masters. Of course it won't be spun like that because taxpayers pay for a huge team of enthusiastic young spin doctors who as we speak are developing the positive narrative that will accompany news of probation reunification.

Of course this has been on the cards for some time with the MoJ spin department having fallen silent some time ago. But we've been reading the runes; the ducks are forming up in rows and the celestial bodies are coming into alignment. The stage is set; it just needs to be packaged as an exciting, bright new future and the politicians have to save face, obviously. There has to be a role for the private sector because Tories believe in privatisation, even though it doesn't work. There has to be a role for the third sector because that gives the impression that the Tories aren't the nasty party and believe in the value of 'charity'. Of course there is the small matter of them having been royally shafted by TR, but that letter the other day ordering a 'bung' makes clear the political dimension to all this:-

"I intend to put in place a more stable and resilient probation system, which works effectively to protect the public and tackle reoffending. In that context, there is clearly value in maintaining a diverse and varied market of providers able to address the complex needs of individuals in the probation system. Organisations such as these will be key in the future market for probation services; if our failure to stand behind them results in their departure from the market, this could make it difficult for our reformed service to properly do its job from inception."

In order to save face it looks clear that the private sector will probably be rewarded with hugely-expanded tagging contracts, together with programmes and UPW along the Welsh model. The MoJ will champion the fact that they listened to the evidence from the 'sham' consultation; they heeded the stern words from Bob Neill and took on board the damning reports from the PAC and NAO. Just about everyone can claim success for this outcome; the unions, academics; campaigning groups; this blog even, but it's only a first step. It won't be like it was before and we simply must shake free of HMPPS command and control. But that's for another day folks.

--oo00oo--

This from the Guardian:-

Probation will be renationalised after disastrous Grayling reforms

The supervision of all offenders in the community is to be undertaken by the state in a major renationalisation of the probation sector, just five years after Chris Grayling introduced a widely derided programme of privatisation while justice secretary.

Under his disastrous shake-up in 2014, the probation sector was separated into a public sector organisation managing high-risk criminals and 21 private companies responsible for the supervision of 150,000 low- to medium-risk offenders. Following years of damning criticism from MPs, inspectorates and former probation officers, the justice secretary, David Gauke, has decided to bring all offender management under the National Probation Service (NPS) by spring 2021.

He said the private sector would still play a part in the provision of services, with £280m worth of contracts for rehabilitation services such as the provision of unpaid work and accredited programmes. But the core function of the service – supervising and managing about 250,000 offenders in the community – will once again be publicly provided.

Gauke said: 

“Delivering a stronger probation system, which commands the confidence of the courts and better protects the public, is a pillar of our reforms to focus on rehabilitation and cut reoffending. I want a smarter justice system that reduces repeat crime by providing robust community alternatives to ineffective short prison sentences – supporting offenders to turn away from crime for good. The model we are announcing today will harness the skills of private and voluntary providers and draw on the expertise of the NPS to boost rehabilitation, improve standards and ultimately increase public safety.”

Gauke announced last summer the contracts of eight private firms which run the 21 “community rehabilitation companies” (CRCs) in England and Wales would be terminated in 2020, two years early. This followed a £500m-plus bailout by the Ministry of Justice. But it had been the government’s intention to offer fresh contracts to private providers, under proposals put out to consultation last year. The new model will introduce 11 new probation regions in England and Wales run by the NPS. Each will have an “innovation partner”, either a private firm, charity or NGO, which will provide some rehabilitation services.

As justice secretary, Grayling ignored significant warnings from within his department to push through his so-called transforming rehabilitation reforms in 2014. In February, MPs on the public accounts committee said the changes were rushed through at breakneck speed, taking “unacceptable risks” with taxpayers’ money. The justice committee described the overhaul a “mess” and warned it might never work.

Last October the Guardian revealed the number of offenders in England and Wales charged with serious offences, including murder, manslaughter and rape, while they were being monitored in the community increased by more than a fifth in 12 months. There were 627 serious further offence (SFO) reviews conducted in 2017-18, a freedom of information request response disclosed, a 21% rise on the 517 in the previous 12-month period. SFO reviews are triggered when an offender under statutory probation supervision is charged with murder, manslaughter, rape or other serious violent or sexual offences.

Dame Glenys Stacey, the chief inspector of probation, who revealed theGrayling shake-up had led to tens of thousands of offenders – up to 40% of the total – being supervised by tphone calls every six weeks instead of face-to-face meetings, said the changes were “irredeemably flawed”.

Commenting on Gauke’s announcement, Stacey said: 

“I am delighted at the secretary of state’s decision. Probation is a complex social service, and it has proved well-nigh impossible to reduce it to a set of contractual requirements. Today’s announcement puts the focus firmly on improving the quality of probation services. More than a quarter of a million people are under probation supervision each year, and high-quality probation services can make such a difference to them and to wider society as well. Hard-pressed probation professionals now face yet more change, but I anticipate they will be in good heart. It is a chance to restore their professionalism, enabling them to make the biggest possible difference to the lives of some of the most troubled and troublesome people in society, and that is what gets probation staff up in the morning, above all.”

Richard Burgon, the shadow justice secretary, said: 

“After putting public safety at risk and squandering hundreds of millions of pounds on trying to shore up failing private probation companies, the Tories have been forced to face reality and accept their probation model is irredeemably broken. The Tories didn’t want to make this U-turn and had been desperately trying to re-tender probation contracts to the private sector. It is right those plans have been dropped and that offender management is to be brought back in-house.”

He added: “We will press the government to ensure that probation is fully returned to being the award-winning public service it was before this disastrous Tory privatisation.”

A PO's View of the Future

It's very encouraging to see Napo publishing the following practitioner thought piece. Whilst arguing for reunification, it serves to confirm there are very serious misgivings within the profession, voiced regularly on this blog, regarding the forced marriage with HM Prison Service and the complete inappropriateness of 'Civil Service' status:-

A Practitioner Vision for the Future of Probation

The Probation service is a mess. The reforms brought in under the guise of Transforming Rehabilitation have taken a formerly award winning service and destroyed it. So much has been reported about the failings in the system and we wanted to offer a practitioner’s vision for a repaired and rebuilt probation service.

Reunification is key

Any split in the Probation Service will be equally if not more of a disaster than the one we are currently suffering. Separating a service into different providers creates gaps and blocks to communications and additional work is required to bridge these. Creating an additional workload that simply is not necessary and does little to support frontline work.

Probation professionals can either be specialists in one area of work or work across different disciplines and the ability to be flexible across a career can retain skills and experience of people which might otherwise be lost to the service. Those working in the probation system have a strong commitment to team working and sharing experience and knowledge and losing this due to an artificial split harms everyone. So any future service design must be based around a unified probation service. This unification should apply to the core services of giving reports and advice to Courts, managing cases, all risk assessments including MAPPA and other multi agency arrangements, delivery of core interventions and unpaid work.

Splitting off the delivery of unpaid work on the basis that it is not a core service is problematic. In London this was attempted prior to TR and it failed, demonstrating that management of the delivery of unpaid work must be integrated into the delivery of the sentence. This doesn’t prevent engagement of specialist providers for some work placements as will be detailed later. The delivery of some interventions includes associated work such as victim liaison (partner support worker), multi agency work including MARAC and liaison with children’s services and other agencies. Splitting this from the case management work will create problems in communications, information sharing and duplication of work. Delivery of interventions such as accredited programmes should be integrated with the delivery of the sentence and again this does not prevent the involvement of specialist providers.

It may come as some surprise to those who believed the hype around Transforming Rehabilitation that many of the former Probation Trusts had extensive and innovative contracting arrangements with local specialist providers. These ranged from specific Unpaid Work placements to provision of specialist interventions to partnership arrangements for supporting those with specific needs. Former Probation Trusts also had partnership arrangements with other statutory and voluntary agencies to focus on local priorities and needs.

Examples from one former Trust were specialist Unpaid work placements for those who couldn’t work in a group, a specialist allotment project for those with mental health issues, progressive unpaid work placements that allowed clients to gain vocational qualifications and develop skills to support them into work. Another former Trust, in partnership with a women’s centre, provided funding for specialist workers who offered interventions and support to women. The probation staff working with women were based in the women’s centre to support the “one stop shop” approach. Other agencies and organisations also provided specialist services at the women’s centre and some were part-funded through a contract with the Probation Trust. Another former Trust had multiple contracts to provide specialist services around housing, substance use, mental health, skills and employment. One former Trust even set up a partnership with the local prison to offer “through the gate” support to those serving less than 12 months who weren’t offered probation support at the time.

Some might ask why these partnerships and contracting arrangements can’t work now and the answer to that is complex but the vision for the future must allow for these type of arrangements with specialist local providers. The National Probation Service currently in operation is centralised and bureaucratic and leaves little room for the type of innovative and localised arrangements we need to return to. A national contract for support services or interventions won’t fit the differences between densely populated urban areas and sparsely populated rural areas. What is needed in Camden isn’t necessarily the same as what is needed in Carlisle. Ideas around devolution and localism seem to be everywhere at the moment but not in the probation world. Currently the National Probation Service is not allowed to contract services directly but must go through the local CRC. CRCs struggling to make the contracts financially viable have little spare capacity to develop the type of small and specialist contracting arrangements that really work.

What can or should we do?

The first step is to reunify the whole of the Probation service into one organisation that is in public control. The next step after reunifying Probation is to re-localise it. It is perfectly possible for the service to remain as a publicly controlled organisation but with local accountability. In the past this was delivered via a board or trust model and allowed the Board, the Chief Officer and Operational Leads to develop specific partnership and contracting arrangements and respond to local needs and priorities.

This would free practitioners to develop innovative responses to local needs and to work with those local leaders who are formulating a positive response to a local or national issue. It would allow those working in areas where knife crime is rife to work with local projects on prevention as well as desistance. It would also allow those working in areas where a significant event happens to work with community groups, sentencers and all local agencies to respond. This has happened in the past when, following riots or large scale terror related operations partnership working helped to ensure that desistance and a positive future were the focus rather than retribution and demonising perpetrators, perpetuating the cycle of exclusion.

The structure of the new Probation Service could be a Board or Trust but it should in any case be publicly owned and funded outside of the Civil Service. The fact that the National Probation Service (NPS) sits within the civil service has been problematic from the start. From the inability of the shared service model for HR and payroll to cope with terms and conditions that vary from the standard to the remoteness of decision makers and the requirement for uniformity in delivering services regardless of local need it has stifled the ability of practitioners to deliver. The Probation Service could be a non-departmental public body, similar to Cafcass. A board or trust structure would allow for local stakeholders to be represented in the management of the service and for the decision makers to be more accessible to the frontline workers and vice versa. This structure also allows for a change in the delivery of support functions such as HR, payroll, finance and IT which should always be viewed as supporting the frontline workers I the delivery of the service and not hindering them.

As a Probation practitioner my vision is a Probation world where I can work with clients in the way that best suits their needs, not the way that best ticks the boxes of a bureaucracy with little knowledge or understanding of the community I serve. At a time when all of the research indicates that a positive working relationship with a worker who believes in them is vital for someone to desist my vision is to be given sufficient time and space to develop that relationship, regardless of arbitrary targets. When I start working with someone who finds it hard to engage, it must be made possible for me to spend the first few sessions building the relationship instead of filling in forms to meet impossible deadlines.

My vision is for a service which is built around a national model for best practice but rooted in the local community and responsive to local need. My vision is a service free from the burden of the profit motive and endless bureaucracy. My vision is for a service in which I can develop my skills, think critically about the work I am doing, work in ways that research suggests will be effective and be free to challenge the status quo. My vision is for a service where the frontline workers are positively supported by a management structure which is designed to get the best from them not punish them, where functions like HR, payroll, finance and IT work to support the endeavours of front line staff and not the other way round. My vision is for a service where instructions and directives give a framework for best practice, not a prescriptive narrow set of rules to follow which result in additional paperwork, form filling or bureaucracy.

As a trainee Probation Officer, many years ago, I learned to put my client at the centre of the work that I did, and to ensure that I worked in an inclusive and collaborative way. My vision is for a service which uses this as a model for their work with me as a frontline practitioner, to put the client at the centre of their work and to strive for inclusivity and collaboration in all that they do. My vision is for a return to the focus on quality and excellence and to be seen as a professional in the work that I do, to be allowed to make decisions about my work and the way that I carry it out. My vision is for a future where I make a difference to the lives of clients and those in the community I serve not despite the system I work in but because of it.

Plan A, B or C?

Without a doubt 'probation' finds itself at a crossroads once more and on the verge of yet another major upheaval. Speculation abounds and anxiety levels are raised, but all those who have probation in their blood and care deeply for its future know the current omnishambles simply can't continue and the government must act to repair the damage brought about by its split in half. The question is, how?

In the absence of other forums, Facebook is rapidly becoming a platform for considered and insightful debate by practitioners and some feel it deserves to be brought to a wider audience. In this vein David Raho, one of Napo's Vice Chairs, has agreed to my sharing contributions he made back on 4th May and which I believe help explain the current situation:-   

In his comment on the Public Accounts Committees report Bob Neill says:

"The Ministry needs to sort this mess by setting out a new, clear strategy for the future of probation services, which is rigorously tested and not rushed through, when it announces plans for the next generation of Community Rehabilitation Companies due soon."

This is an unprecedented message showing a high degree of agreement and similar observation across government committees, the National Audit Office and inspectorate. Surely Gauke cannot simply carry on regardless against the deluge of criticism and calls for a rethink of proposed plans. So, do Bobs comments indicate that MoJ Plan A is still in play or is he hedging his bets or alternatively is he being deliberately ambiguous as he knows the responsible minister has gone and this now risks delays?

May appears to be having difficulty finding someone to take on the job (anyone would think she was distracted by something) and the longer this key post remains unfilled by someone who appears competent the more chaotic and desperate her government will seem on every front. Will the appointment of a new minister scupper any hope of reconsideration of Plan A (TR2) or work on Plan B (Trust+) and as for Plan C (full return to public sector)?

Surely the MoJ would not be keeping the Justice Committee Chair in the dark regarding the future shape of probation or maybe nobody really knows?

David Raho

Chair's comments

Commenting on the Public Accounts Committee report, Transforming rehabilitation: progress review, Chair of the Justice Committee, Bob Neill MP, said:

“This damning report from the Public Accounts Committee backs up the findings of our own inquiry that it is doubtful the Government’s disastrous reforms can ever deliver an effective or viable probation service. As well as laying bare the eyewatering cost of terminating contracts which should never have been entered into in the first place, the report also highlights the failure to improve support or reduce reoffending. This has a real human impact: more victims of crime and more wasted lives as offenders ricochet in and out of custody.

We are also seriously concerned about the decline in judge and magistrate confidence in community sentences - even though these sentences generally lead to better outcomes.
We said back in June last year that the Government should review into the long-term future and sustainability of delivering probation services, including how TR might compare to an alternative system. They didn’t start such a review and ten months later we are still waiting for a full response to our report.

The Ministry needs to sort this mess by setting out a new, clear strategy for the future of probation services, which is rigorously tested and not rushed through, when it announces plans for the next generation of Community Rehabilitation Companies due soon. We sincerely hope that the change in responsible Minister will not delay things any further.”

--oo00oo--

LET'S GET THE PROBATION REFORM PARTY STARTED

The heightened media interest in probation recently is no coincidence. Many of those who have an interest in probation and keep an eye on developments can read the tea leaves and know that there has definitely been something brewing deep within the bowels of the MoJ. But be warned that trying to visualise what is fermenting in that dark place will ultimately suck out your soul. One has only to observe the ragged groups of glassy-eyed MoJ employees clustered around the doors of Petty France desperately chain smoking and drinking multiple cups of coffee before dashing back into the teleportation tubes to the 9th floor. It's grim but that's what happens when you are asked to keep working on Plan A and then asked to come up with a workable Plan B and even the previously unthinkable Plan C. The atmosphere is like the NASA control room when Apollo 13 was in trouble (Where is Tom Hanks when you need him? Can we achieve a reunified functioning probation service relatively free of government interference?)

Increased recent media coverage of probation is also no doubt catalysed by the public interest piqued by the continuing saga of Graylings failures and the mystery of his continued employment as a minister. Grayling is the journalist's gift that keeps on giving. What fresh failure will occur? What will be the scale of the disaster? Is there anything he hasn't ruined destroyed or is in the process of cocking up big time? If I was an editor with one story short I'd send the new appointee out with the brief 'Find Grayling, find out what he is doing, write about how it is bound to fail, draft a follow-up saying how it was a dead cert for failure and how we saw it coming given the long list of previous disasters'. What we do know is that if May goes Grayling will probably go too but that is what should happen in ‘normal’ times. Times are far from normal.......

Then there are all the recent reports confirming what we already know to be the case about the TR omnishambles. But thanks to the inspectorate, NAO, Howard League, CCJS, PAC, Justice Select Committee etc, however, what we now have is evidence from a variety of reliable sources. Evidence confirms that a divided part-privatised probation service doesn’t work well and was and is a very bad idea indeed and needs sorting out properly rather than just continuing with a failed model albeit expanded with the same players. Stop. Pause. Think again!!! A colleague who was once seconded to NOMS recently described to me how the MoJ continues to make the same mistakes over and over. 'They start out looking at a regular teapot. Somehow decided that a chocolate teapot would save money and that they have somehow decided is the best solution. They then ask the private sector to make more tea using fewer tea leaves expecting them to use a smaller flashy looking streamlined teapot and then wonder why they land up with a sticky mess and everyone is blaming each other'.

What some of us have long been engaging in is an attack on the false narrative that Grayling generated that the probation service had failed to supervise and address reoffending in the case of those serving prison sentences of 12 months and less and was somehow a failing service. The fact was that probation services were not failing before Grayling and his cronies started TR and were aware of those they had not been authorised and/or directed to supervise and were perfectly willing to this work so as long as the government were prepared to fund the increase in resources required – as you would expect. 

Regarding the supervision of those serving prison sentences under 12 months. After putting the legislation on the statute books New Labour looked at the figures and decided that they were not going to implement Custody Plus as they rightly estimated that though desireable the cost/benefit analysis didn’t add up. Better to put the money into other services. The Select Committee on Justice 5th report (published 2008) made clear governments failures -not probations - to tackle short sentences. It makes interesting reading. It is obvious that Grayling and those who supported him chose to completely ignore this report. It is also obvious that he lied when he placed the blame for failing to work with those concerned on Probation Trusts.

During TR, when lack of supervision of those serving under 12 months was repeatedly used as an overwhelming justification for privatisation, Probation Trusts offered to do the work in-house despite their reducing budgets. Grayling rejected this option. Quite how this would have been achieved, given the cost, was not explained in detail however compared with what happened (the through the gates debacle) it would probably have been preferable to have bitten that particular bullet if it had meant remaining as devolved and locally connected Probation Trusts. 

However, as we know to our cost we were not dealing with rational persons back then but instead with those who saw fit to ignore experts, practitioners, their own risk registers and evidence relevant to the way probation had worked for over 100 years as slightly removed from central government with strong local links. Grayling had looked around the MoJ for soft targets to privatise and found probation – lawyers were a tougher target. 

Grayling and others like him, let us remember he started his political life as a Liberal, no doubt he saw probation not as successful collection of joined-up Trust organisations with a reasonable amount of confidence from the public and sentencers contributing with others to a criminal justice system that was ultimately reducing crime, albeit slowly and steadily, but rather as a failure in addressing reoffending quickly due to public sector sluggishness and inefficiency. He saw public sector probation plodding along doggedly resisting some of the sweeping changes that had beset many other professions and those delivering public services and needed a shake-up. He had advisors and Tory think tanks all bending his ear saying that the probation service could be made more efficient if only pressure was brought to bear upon them to perform better or they used more innovation etc. The solution he chose was to privatise as much as he thought possible by creating an artificial market and using PBR. 'Let market forces bear down upon them and the private sector knock them into shape.' It all sounded so good to his Tory friends around the dinner table (no experts welcome) who roundly supported him and praised him for his audacity not appreciating that he was, in reality, a serial loser of stupendous proportions.

The idea of private providers all doing their own thing with freedom to develop their own solutions was, of course, deliberate as what was meant to happen was for certain players to act as disruptors to the status quo and win the competition by finding the magic bullet that had so long eluded the probation profession who were portrayed as failures and incompetents. The new providers were to act as new brooms with fresh ideas and perform as well if not better than the public sector had done for reduced cost a win-win. We know the result. We also know how he contrived to tie the NPS so tightly in bureaucratic knots that they would start to believe the delusion that they were indeed some kind of elite civil service organisation - ripe to be privatised down the line. 

So pause for thought now. All the reports and all those experts who know a thing or two and are not in the pay of the Tory party are more or less in agreement regarding what should ideally happen to probation. The question is now whether the government has the courage to grasp the nettle and do what is required rather than pander to pressure from their pals.

1) A reduction in private sector involvement in delivering core probation services with a view to private probation service providers moving to commissioned services under the public probation banner (much like electronic monitoring services are in more enlightened jurisdictions).

2) A reunited service that is not simply an expanded NPS (the NPS is a very dysfunctional model) but rather a return to public sector status with a little distance from central government. This might mean a return to Trust status and for those in the NPS to give up their pseudo civil servant status (probation officers should never be civil servants).

3) A more locally accountable probation service. Although PCCs and Mayors have been mentioned as becoming de facto probation bosses this does not have to be the case. Probation was previously 80% Home Office and 20% local authority run which in most cases worked very well. Let us not forget that there has been a movement away from the probation service being as locally accountable as it used to be without it becoming too parochial.

4) Bigger probation areas with powers to commission local services that are as far as practicable co-terminus with police areas. I have previously used the term Trust+ when talking about what probation might look like. 

If the government do find the courage then I’d like to see a new national probation service as being potentially bigger, better, faster, stronger and more connected and coordinated than the previous Trusts working with our service users as we should. It is what the public expects and deserves. Despite everything, some (not a lot but some) innovation has been achieved by private probation providers and millions and millions of taxpayers money spent during the TR debacle. This should not be wasted. The MoJ needs to buy all the good stuff up and then roll the best of it out as already tested in the new Trust+ system and get everyone back working in the same way together in an even more effective way than previously. It's an opportunity and a challenge that we might actually relish for a change. It is possible and can be done but not necessarily by the lot currently in the driving seat. This would be the chance to rebuild our profession the way we know it will work best and work in ways we know from experience work and are in the public interest and will benefit all our communities.

Trust+ would see all staff on the pay system developed for the NPS, using easier to use IT systems such as MTCs OMNIA and smartphone apps better hardware. We could all be classified as local government officers (payroll and other HR and support services provided by the local government). I have always regarded myself as an LGO and we tend to fit that definition better than a civil servant which is essentially a government lackey (look up and compare the definitions and choose how you would prefer to be labelled). The key characteristic of a true civil servant is that they can transfer between government departments retaining terms and conditions of employment. Anyone know anybody who has managed to do this? Most people in the NPS would have trouble transferring between LDUs.

If I had the time I could probably work out most of the operational detail and funding for the MoJ (who would spend a million on finding the best way to make a cup of tea and still forget the milk!) and it would probably not mean large amounts of additional expenditure. Why on earth wouldn't you want to do this now whilst some of the expertise is still around that can make it happen? A large number of potentially motivated probation staff are currently dormant, like sleeping giants, awaiting activation. It's up to you MoJ. Your move.

David Raho

(published with author's permission)

In response to a question:- 

‘Bigger, better, faster..’ Sorry, I agree with pretty much all of what you say but please, this language...it makes my heart sink. We work with humans. And we are humans too. It’s complex. It takes time. And small can be beautiful.

David Raho explains:-

I meant to contrast what we have become with what we could be if given the resources. It’s a reference to 70s Sci-fi TV show The Six Million Dollar Man whose opening credits featured the main character in a major experimental aircraft crash as a voiceover went on to say ‘We can rebuild you. We have the technology....’ make you better than before etc which I think should be our aim to progress but retain probation's identity. As opposed to the present services that are too lean to function, poorly performing and so resource starved in parts that it is now too slow to respond to meet service user needs. I’m old school social work probation trained and very human orientated but it doesn’t matter how you are as a practitioner you can’t realistically provide a quality service when you only have half a team, constant change, and huge caseloads. There are a lot of people who will flock back to probation if it is reunited and properly back on track. We need to reject a lot of the current nonsense and return to basics.