A changing service

I had an unsettling reminder of one of the organisational contortions that have beset the Probation Service in recent years, as part of the pervasive impact of unrestrained neo-liberalism, when reading the timely and incisive collection of essays co-edited by former probation officer and criminologist, Philip Whitehead.

I had been re-allocated supervisory responsibility for Harry (not his real name) after his community order had been breached and the local court had re-sentenced him to a further term of statutory oversight. The index offences related to Criminal damage/ Threatening behaviour. The case papers suggested an unpromising outcome, particularly because at the outset of supervision Harry was NFA (No Fixed Abode), although he was in contact with a well-established housing provider and had confirmed links with outreach services in this part of London. Ensuring effective compliance and engagement without the stability of accommodation, when Harry was also dealing with a binge drinking problem and identified (but non-specific) mental health needs, gave me the sense that his order would soon lapse into further breach action.

I was measurably impressed when I received a call from the hostel, who were prepared to offer Harry a place, provided that his Probation Officer was able to attend a hastily arranged three way meeting (that also involved Harry's key worker). Harry had been in intermittent contact with his key worker but had managed to form a good relationship. On arrival I was heartened to witness the level of sustained commitment on offer at the hostel, and the resolute belief that Harry was, with the caveats around good behaviour and responsive engagement, prepared to reconsider his response to probation supervision.

The terms of the supervisory contract – which were openly discussed and negotiated with his key worker – included an active commitment on my part that I would regularly attend those three/four way meetings held at the Hostel (a mental health social worker also participated). But Harry would be required to report to the Probation Office at other times and we would review progress in accordance with the supervisory contract.

The initial uplift of shared decision making and active oversight was illustrated by his attendance at an on-site counselling service and follow up training sessions aimed to ready him for employability. I was impressed by Harry's eagerness to fulfil the terms of his reporting; he would often walk the not inconsiderable distance of over five miles from hostel to Probation Office, although some assistance was forthcoming from the office for travel.

There was a troubling sense that home visiting, almost encoded in probation practice as the core element of best practice, was being overtaken by an organisational diktat that such visits should be rationed! Time out of the office was being monitored, I was duly informed, by my more technocratic minded line manager. The lingering suspicion that any client led engagement might not fit with the dispiritingly oft-quoted, 'Is this offence-focussed work?' came to overshadow my engagement with Harry. 

As such I opted to curtail a forthcoming three way meeting arranged at the hostel and informed my hostel colleague, who noted with some disappointment that Harry might interpret this, given the efforts so far expended to ensure his engagement with supervision, as indicative of 'lack of concern'.  

I was perturbed that the message seemingly being conveyed here, albeit in response to the shrivelling parameters of the newly imported 'Offender Management' ethos, was that 'getting too close to clients’ (offenders) was an unwelcome throwback to a more social work type approach!

It came with little surprise, but with some disappointment, when I received a telephone call from the hostel to inform me that 'Harry had gone missing', and police had been alerted as he was deemed vulnerable. It was only some time later that I was notified that he had been 'sectioned under the Mental Health Act' and was being detained in a nearby psychiatric unit.

The order was, of course, for such an involuntary duration, unworkable, but no supervision was deemed necessary until confirmation of discharge and follow-up action was in progress. I fully recognised that his earlier resilience and well being had pivoted on the considered and sensitively tailored interventions, and joint collaboration, of the following partnership agencies: Hostel Keyworker, Social Worker, Counsellor, Employment and Training Advisor, Outreach Worker and Probation.

I felt deeply constrained in my developing relationship with Harry by the changes I perceived as affecting the Probation Service, that also reshaped and contorted my work as a Probation Officer in general. These were changes I saw in the loss of much institutionalised integrity, which combines with creeping marketisation, insidious performance management, business nomenclature and the spectre of privatisation, to surface in changes to the organisational dynamics of the Probation Service.

My final three way meeting with Harry at the hostel displayed how this shelling out of much of the good practice affected the professional working relationships of those under supervision.

He had recovered from his 'psychotic episode' and was refreshingly candid at the meeting. The keyworker encouraged him to speak about how he viewed the balance of his probation order, and so he opined, 'sensing my own professional disillusionment with the probation service. Mike, you took a risk coming to see me again'.  I unhesitatingly embraced that risk, as a probation officer who always aimed to work in a person centred way.

But with the historic milestone of the outsourcing of the bulk of a public funded probation service about to unfold, will the interests of profit, rather than people (like Harry) come first?