Just starting to wonder about the consequences of getting what I wanted. Worried about what will happen when CRC staff stop writing PSRs and FDRs.
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And we will, trust me, because the only way to show what a complete train wreck this whole idea is, is to play it exactly how CG wants it. So no holding on to your 'special' cases, no helping out a colleague, no writing a PSR in the CRC for an NPS colleague to then sign off (as suggested in our area). Even tho' today you are deemed perfectly capable and qualified for task A, if task A falls in the other camp post June 1st then it becomes outside of your remit. Then we'll see how long this sorry tale continues before grinding to a complete halt (sorry for all the mixed metaphors).
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Can't do that. Been told by management in my trust that this can happen right up until share sale.
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We've been told that post June 1st the MoJ have said that CRC staff will no longer be Officers of the Court. If I am no longer an Officer of the Court, I can't write PSRs. Trouble is, everyone wants to have their cake and eat it, to try and keep things running. I shall be studying TOM v2 closely .........
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This is exactly what we need URGENT employment law advice on - whether there is a legal basis for declining tasks based on 'good will' once assigned. It will be painful, but if we cannot be forced, and we don't bend, this whole sorry mess will come crashing down.
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This is correct. CRC staff due to having all 'legal' functions removed from to facilitate TR they are no longer officers or servants of the court. That's why CRC staff cannot do any court reports, parole reports etc. and why breach papers need to be 'checked' by NPS court staff.
Further, as far as risk escalation is concerned, if a CRC officer put risk up too high they cannot at the same time submit MAPPA referral because MOJ have decided they are not allowed. Further, due to CRC officers having limited security clearance, if NPS knock back a risk escalation referral due to lack of information, CRC might not be able to obtain the additional information required because their security clearance will compromise info sharing with police and CRC staff will not be able to check delius and OASys to investigate links with other offenders who they don't supervise.
Plus there will be occasions when someone is increased to high risk but due to victim issues or source of information they are not informed to protect the victim or source, Obviously when they find themselves being moved from CRC to NPS they will put 2&2 together, which could actually increase risk to victims etc. This is a very dangerous situation. We are talking about the system actually creating the potential risk. That's madness.
Issues like this should give the uninitiated a flavour of the chaos that is unfolding on a daily basis and serves to highlight the degree of withdrawal of goodwill and the legal issues involved if any attempts are made to 'fudge' things as a way of pretending it's all working just fine.
There was dreadful report last night of an 84-year-old man, suffering from Alzheimers who died in Harmondsworth detention centre. He died of a heart attack. He spent the last five hours of his life in handcuffs. The contractor GEO and the Home Office are currently blaming each other. A doctor did all she could to get Alois out of detention, but no-one else it seems was bothered to do anything: http://www.channel4.com/news/harmondsworth-death-who-was-alios-dvorzac
ReplyDeleteI mention this in light of concerns within probation about the management of risk under TR. It is obvious there will be information flow problems and communication obstacles simply because of the way TR is structured. We know that in any tragedy involving agencies a key factor in what went went wrong is always poor and ineffective communication. We are used to the 'cumulative failures'. The nature of TR makes it oven ready for such failures.
But in addition to these risks, what the death above seems to highlight is the sheer callousness of the systems we are building. There seems to be walls of indifference that people work behind. You get the odd individual like the doctor, but her ethical concerns were falling on deaf and disinterested ears. There seems to be no common ethos between agencies; there is a silo mentality that is exacerbated by private companies being involved, the growing 'shadow state'. The result is inhumane treatment and this is becoming the new ethos. The bottom line is keeping costs down, keeping systems running and not brooking interference and expense by correcting poor decisions. People don't matter. And I think the same will come to pass in probation as attitudes harden and risks are brushed aside and ignored – in the emerging canteen cultures and moral vacuums that don't really care.
That's be GEO Group the prospective bidder for a number of CRCs then?
DeletePlus Legal Aid will be less available to challenge bad decision making.
DeleteBut bad decisions about immigrants and returned exiles are not a new issue.
I can recall some awful ones, that I know of going back to about 1965 - an Englishman who was a prolific paedophile, who had been imprisoned on every continent, was deported from South Africa.
He was homeless on arrival - received no police or probation attention - got accommodation in an east London seaman's mission - went up to the West End within about two weeks of arriving (having been away from UK for 5 or more years) and committed an horrendous offence - I think it was buggery - on a teenaged boy and got a Life Sentence - was quickly transferred to psychiatric hospital and was next considered for release in about 1993 when I was a prospective supervisor. He had his day parole rescinded when he was found to be (as a 70 year old) appearing to proposition a paper boy near the hospital and the last I knew was he was in a private hospital in the Midlands after the London one closed down.
I last heard of a case where similar happened locally in Essex two or three years ago - though it was a murder of a female partner by a man deported at end of a sentence from a European country - again no official oversight on arrival in UK.
I know it is very different from the Harmondsworth case but in UK we have been getting it wrong for years - involving privateers and the 're-badging' of the old 'Immigration' department has not helped.
Like the issue of "dangerous" and folk not diagnosed with specific mental illness - this is an issue not dealt with in a sophisticated way for several generations - I remember chairing a staff conference in Merseyside in 1970s about Butler Committee report of 1975 - we had the flawed IPPs but somehow our political sytsem lacks the sophistication needed to get a grasp of these issues in a constructive way.
It is unlikely to be helped by the introduction of competition as it will be commercially attractive to avoid contact with such types, in similar ways that politicians have failed to follow through on legislation, as no one wants to be held responsible for the inevitable failures and bad press reports. Best just keep heads down and hope - is I suspect the attitude of most Probation Trusts and formerly The Home Office and latterly MOJ - where staff seem to move on too quickly to develop really viable legislation and procedures.
In February last year an 84-year-old Canadian died in handcuffs after being detained at Harmondsworth detention centre in West London.
ReplyDeleteHis name was Alois Dvorzac.
The elderly man was restrained in cuffs for five hours before his death. He was suffering from Alzeimer's disease. The handcuffs were only removed after his heart had stopped as medics attempted resuscitation. It is one of several cases of "grossly excessive use of restraints" highlighted by Nick Hardwick, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, in which detainees were "needlessly handcuffed in an excessive and unacceptable manner".
But, what was Alois Dvorzac doing in the UK? Who was he? And why does nobody seem to know?
It turns out that this elderly man was on one final, desperate (and strangely compelling) global voyage to find a loved one.
He left Canada in January 2013. He had no family there, just a registered carer. As his health deteriorated and the fog of his condition started to close in, he decided to try to travel across the world to find someone he had lost, to re-connect.
According to the Canadian High Commission in London he was trying to find his estranged daughter in Slovenia. He made it as far as Gatwick airport. He was detained there because his paperwork was not in order and was eventually brought to Harmondsworth Detention Centre.
Although the surname is Slavic he had a Canadian passport, so the High Commission here was informed. Consular help was offered but he refused it, presumably too confused to understand what was going on.
"Detention seemed to have been used as an inappropriate default for a man who required social care," said the chief inspector's report.
"The 84-year-old Canadian man had been refused entry to the UK at Gatwick airport on 23 January, 2013. After a stay in hospital, he had been detained at the establishment, where on 30 January a doctor had declared him unfit for detention."
In early February the report said an attempt to remove Mr Dvorzac had been called off after a doctor had declared him unfit to fly, and he had been returned to Harmondsworth, which holds 600 detainees and is operated by a private company, GEO.
On 8 February he was taken to hospital and then made a return visit two days later. Soon afterwards, he died of heart failure.
"He had been in handcuffs for approximately five hours when he died, still wearing them," said the report.
His story will be used to illustrate the failure of a privately run detention centre but there is a much more basic, human tale here. A lonely, elderly man in the twilight of his life decides to reach out to someone he cares about. He embarks on a quest for companionship, closure, perhaps repair. A quest that ended up handcuffed and gasping for breath.
I'm trying to find people in Canada or Slovenia who knew Alois Dvorzac. If you think you can help, my email is paraic.o'brien@itn.co.uk
Hi all
ReplyDeleteI think those staff who are CRC staff should wake up, they will not be there in 12 months time, TUPE doesn't apply to you. The private sectors companies applying for CRC will be employing people on £20k a year with no experience. That why the CRC staff are being cut off from the NPS.
Whilst we cannot know with 100% certainty what is going to be happening, those of in the CRC are not naïve. We know we are the most vulnerable and for this reason I, along with many others I suspect, are working on a back up plan for when the train crash does happen. I think people in the CRCs are wide awake, I'm not so sure that can be said of the NPS contingent. As it has been pointed out many times on this blog, no one is safe and it is irrelevant what the pay and conditions are protected as in the NPS if they make redundancies as part of their cost cutting exercises in the coming years.
DeleteDon't think we need to wake up we are very aware of the situation.
DeleteMoJ
DeleteAlready committed to 14% cuts 2015-17
Think those in CRCs are well aware of this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is why my colleagues many of which have children, cried when they found out they were allocated to CRC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
DeleteIs there any need for such a comment as this?CRC staff are not oblivious about the current situation and I am getting tired of reading comments about how we're all going to be made redundant.
DeleteFunny how some staff in the NPS think they are somehow safe from all of this nonsense. The CRCS will have something to prove - targets to reach, contracts to maintain, PBR. The NPS, on the other hand, is DEFINITELY due for 20-30% cuts after 12 months. Redundancy is 'why the CRC staff are being cut off from the NPS'? Quite the opposite is more the case- redundancies are certainly more likely in the NPS, and the overall picture would suggest that the CRCs are seen as the future of Probation and the NPS is designed as a sop to current concerns about risk, and will otherwise be allowed to wither away over time
DeleteI think your both right the reality that we can all be sure off that whoever gets made redundant post the agreement date will be dismissed for next to nothing as the Enhanced rate will have expired. The real target is our pension and the terms we enjoy. The lunacy in this is NAPO argues it had to negotiate these outcomes yet fail to understand these are the best outcome the employers could have got. No real protection for any side !
Deleteconcerns of a worried member
ReplyDeleteAs a committed but frustrated NAPO member I am finding it hard to persuade my colleagues to go on strike again. The situation has not been helped by the news from our Branch Chair Pat Waterman that deductions from the last strike will come out of the pay I am due to receive next week. Add to that the news that when I transfer to the NPS I might not get paid until the end of the month and I am starting to wonder if I can afford to go on strike.
The situation also hasn't been helped by messages from our national chair telling us we can afford it and instructing us not to do any sessional reports in April. And now I hear a rumour that Tom Rendon recently applied for a job as an ACO in the CRC. I thought he was a main grade probation officer. Why is he applying for accelerated promotion when he ought to be doing the job we elected him to do?
Is that rumour really true, no sure that a PO would be able to leap frog over SPO grade to become an ACO. Think that's a made up rumour if you ask me.
DeleteWell have noticed that if u want to go up into management or further up the management scale CRC seems to be the place to be. However, just have to cross fingers that job does not get cut when winning bidders take over.
Sadly I've been told it's true - however the absolutely key issue at the moment is a second legal opinion on Judicial Review and I'm also told Tom Rendon is extremely favourable.
DeleteWhat's true Tom..London deducting for last strike in the next pay cheque or Tom applying for ACE post????
DeleteTom Rendon - Director of the MoJ's Probation Institute and now CRC ACO in waiting - and there I was wondering why NAPO isn't taking any meaningful action to oppose TR...
DeleteLatest strike news
Deletehttp://probation-institute.org/category/news/
Was Tom's application genuine or a publicity stint/ attempt to gather information about MoJ processes. If yes, good call. If not, conflict of intetest, surely!?
DeleteI cannot learn anything useful from that link - maybe I am looking in wrong place -
DeleteRequest to Anon at 20.20 - please post relevant text.
Thanks.
20:20 was that the right link? Couldn't see any ref to strike!
DeleteI want to know, as I am sure do others, whether Tom Rendon has applied for any job in the CRC. If he has, as opposed to being allocated, then I want know how he can ask members to continue to support industrial action!
DeleteReply to Anon 19 March 2014 21:25 I have no idea but presumably if he is to continue in a Napo job funded by 100% Facility time, he is going to have to be employed in a CRC or NPS - though I would not have thought that should mean applying for anything, as he should be TUPEED like all the rest of you current probation workers
DeleteWow !!! but lets not hang anyone here what are the facts its not fair to state such things if they are rumour. NAPO is PO orientated and does not look beyond that so its no surprise we have a PO as Chair experience irrelevant so perhaps he would make ACO no problem that's just another level to tell people what to and arrange things that are no good for anybody isn't it ?
DeleteI have just heard in my trust that there will be an expectation come June 1st that CRC staff will be helping out to write PSR's etc.
ReplyDeleteYou can imagine how well this has went down in an officer where over half the PO's have been allocated CRC AND will most likely have to move office!!
Can NAPO please, as a matter of urgency, clarify our stance on this matter. If the MoJ are made painfully aware of the situation, it might make them more inclined to review matters. All reviews (and cock-ups) will likely make bidders more cautious!!
NAPO have already commented on this. You have to do what manager directs you to do and this will include PSRs. NPS staff will also be doing work of CRC due to this cockup
DeleteReally? The CRC handbook states that no CRC PO should have any PSR's to complete from June, aside from 'residual' ones allocated in May. As that is from MOJ, I don't see how they can be asked to continue writing PSR's.
DeleteThis cannot be right. As someone has previously posted, come June we are no longer 'Officers of the Court' and do not have the legality (or indeed the will) to write reports.
DeleteI'm bitterly disappointed in NAPO if this is true as something as simple as directing CRC staff not to write reports would have exposed this shambles at an early stage!!
Another open goal missed!!
NAPO bosses don't care. They are more interested in The Probation Institute, and lying and pretending that the Institute's own statement that it is designed to facilitate TR is somehow MoJ 'spin'. NAPO are th eones 'spinning' the Institute...
DeleteLook here, dear reader, and press for judicial review -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2007/21/contents
Anyone heard or able to clarify reports that the June split may be now put off until September-this was a fast circulating in the South today?
ReplyDeleteMr Grayling was answering questions on this subject yesterday, I caught it on BBC Parliament. He said, the staff split is now complete and they are on course for the 1st June 2014 TR date. What really threw me was the answer to a questions posed by the opposition, what will happen when, as we have seen with other contracts, the winning bidder fails or pulls out? Excellent question, I thought. Mr Grayling large as life with that painted on smirk, said, the NPS would take over until another successful bidder was found. What, and how on earth will that work? I fell another FOI request coming on. Maybe this time, I will get an answer. The first about role of PO - the MOJ did not know; the second, how many qualified staff hav left their job between 31.3.2013 - 31.1.2014 - they told me they do not hold this information....next FOI request - surely they have a plan for such an eventuality, I'll ask. If not, and I suspect they don't, this is even more evidence of Mr Graylings 'make it up as he goes along attitude' to our service and our clients.
ReplyDeleteWith regards to PSRS, CRC Handbook version 2 (I haven't read version 3 yet!) reads:
ReplyDelete'Section 4 of the Act reserves the function of giving assistance to the court to determine the appropriate sentence to pass or making any other decision in respect of an offender, to public bodies. During the period when the CRCs are wholly owned by the Secretary of State they will count as public bodies for the purposes of section 4 – however, there are no plans for them to provide these services during this period. On share sale to the successful bidders they will cease to be public bodies for the purposes of section 4 and therefore be prohibited from providing advice to court'.
Simples.
"There are no plans for them to provide their services" - however managers can change these plans and say there is a operational need for services to NPS.
DeleteOne thing I will say is NPS managers need to get things sorted
quick smart in sorting out how NPS staff will get reports done on their own, as come share sale they are not going to be able to use CRC staff anymore.
Having done a quick calculation on my office, taking into account NPS PO's, caseloads/risk an an average of PSR's oer month and it is possible for PO's to do 2 PSR's per week.
DeleteAs long as it is a 7 day week!
It can be done in 5 days but this means a 10 hour day.
Something needs sorting out now before the first nervous breakdown/heart attack occurs.
A colleague's death has already occurred in my Team from a probable heart attack. TR added immeasurably to the other stresses of life. We are devastated and unable to grieve and support each other properly because we are overwhelmed by the speed of this train crash. I knew that TR would lead to deaths. I didn't expect them to be our own.
Delete'Giving assistance'.
ReplyDeleteAs open to interpretation as it is to manipulation.
they need to sort court staffing out - why so many FDRs are sent out to LDUs is beyond me. I regularly have 2 on the go - they are fairly run of the mill fare and had they been written in court could have meant the offender could have been sentenced 'on the day' which is the whole purpose of why they're called 'fast' and linked to 'speedy justice'.
ReplyDeleteso - do we have to write reports up until the CRC is sold? What about ISPs and oasys, I heard there were going to be assignment officers in courts to do these or is that on the back burner too?? Part of the benefits of the CRC was no more reports and no more OASYS so i'm peed off if that's now not the case.
Do you do your FDR's using OASys? We have a really weird anomoly where if an FDR is done at Court it can be handwritten and OASys completely bypassed. If the report comes out to the team, we have to do it through OASys and then unbelievably, an FDR takes longer to do than an SDR!
DeleteSentencing is an important event which requires time to reflect on the advice we may give to the court and for the defendant to reflect on the possibilities also . Stand down reports as were and Oral Reports as are were once anathema to NAPO. I fear we will continue to confuse speed with efficiency and speed with justice.
Delete'Section 4 of the Act reserves the function of giving assistance to the court to determine the appropriate sentence to pass or making any other decision in respect of an offender, to public bodies' .... i think its fairly obvious that NPS will struggle to complete volume of reports.take into account that RSR has not been embedded into oasys which leads to duplication of work. I envisage that in interim period this will mean that CRC staff will prepare reports which will then be signed off by NPS staff so what will go to Court will be . Im sure CRC staff will not want to be ghost writers amd used in this way.
ReplyDeleteWhat about Problem solving reports - I have 3 of these on 6 weekly reviews - some of them are oral updates but need to be typed on a template for court officers to hand in. as it's a report and assisting the court (albeit not for sentencing) CRC staff shouldn't be doing these anymore?
ReplyDeleteSadly everyone at our office is in self preservation mode. Managers who might be in or sympathetic to napo are following trust orders to the letter, directing staff to undertake tasks in crazy timescales - "we do understand and sympathise but we'll be looking at capability if you don't get cases up to scratch..." Plus senior managers are taking advantage of the disarray and confusion to ratchet up the pressure to complete preparation for transfer of cases - perhaps to pocket the alleged Grayling bonuses? There's a malevolent undercurrent when strike action is mentioned, with whispers and glances everywhere. There seem to be considerably more managers than ever before, yet not enough practitioners. Its just a friggin nightmare.
ReplyDeleteThe role of the Court based PO/PSO needs guidance from NAPO nationally but there is a deafening silence on the topic.It is the key Omnishambles role because allocation, risk assessment and the reports all flow through the role. In other words this is where success / failure of this crap rests. There is no interview space in courts because probation is the poor relation and allocated minimal space but the number of interviews will have to significantly increase. For custody cases each prisoner will need an interview in the Bridewell before heading out to prison but computers can not be used there so each doc needs completing in paper form then transferred to computer. Who does this duplicated work? Then there are the reports, post sentence interviews to provide supervision appointments. Oh, also don't forget provision of information to the courts at any moment they ask for it. All in all the numbers of tasks to be delivered under TR have grown but no thought to the HOW.
ReplyDeleteI will be asking for a job evaluation immediately the new process starts.When managers say "just do it" that means more money in my salary because if I have sole responsibility for the delivery of the tasks I expect to be paid for that responsibility.
These are the kind of issues that should be fed directly to National Officials at Napo HQ & Unison reps.Email addresses for Napo should be in front of Napo Directory
ReplyDelete