Prioritising Probation

Hello everyone

Here is a quick update on a couple of things from the Prioritising Probation project.

Prioritisation Framework

A new version of the Prioritisation Framework is now available on Equip here: Prioritising Framework for Sentence Management Phase 3 Version 8.

Colleagues from the Prioritising Probation team recently hosted two all staff events to talk through the Prioritisation Framework. Thanks to everyone who came along and apologies for the slight technical difficulties.

If you were unable to attend, but would like to find out more, a recording of July’s session is available on Equip and can be viewed here: Prioritisation Framework Meeting Recording along with the Q&As from the events: Prioritising Framework Frequently Asked Questions.

Undergraduate recruitment campaign

I’m pleased to report that 451 applicants passed the initial sift and a number of regions have now proceeded to interviews. I’ll update you on progress with this again in September.

Next steps

Work continues to shape what the Prioritising Probation team will be working on over the coming months. We are in the process of concluding the work already in train, designing our next set of activities and refreshing our project plan. As always, we want to hear your suggestions so do get in touch via PrioritisingProbation@justice.gov.uk.  I’ll keep you posted on developments.

Best wishes

Kim

Hello everyone

Here is the latest from the Prioritising Probation project team.

Undergraduate recruitment campaign

I am delighted to tell you that we had a brilliant response to our nationwide recruitment campaign, using paid-for marketing to target undergraduates to apply for over 300 part time admin roles. The campaign closed this week and we received over 900 applications. The idea to recruit undergrads to admin roles originally came through as a staff suggestion, which we picked up and made happen.

This great result is thanks to a significant amount of external recruitment marketing, in addition to local profiling of the vacancies by regions, and all of you who have signposted family and friends to these opportunities. I anticipate that the success of this targeted marketing approach will influence future recruitment activity with further campaigns aimed at attracting different groups.

The shortlisting process will now begin and big thanks to all the HQ volunteers who have offered to help regional colleagues with sifting and interviews. I will let you know in a future update how many of the applications result in hires.

Prioritisation Framework

On Thursday 14 July at 2pm – 2:45pm, we will be hosting a second online event to talk Probation colleagues through the latest version of the Prioritisation Framework. Come along to find out how the Framework helps regions respond flexibly to current pressures and to ask questions about what this means for you.

To join this event, click here

A recording will be made available for those who can’t make it.

Process improvements

I have been attending the Probation Officer engagement sessions and hearing about some of the issues and frustrations you encounter daily. Many of these are due to the various clunky and cumbersome processes that exist. Please rest assured that we are doing all that we can make this better.

Continuous Improvement colleagues are now working closely with the EQuiP team to refine and streamline many processes (including the recall process) and to strip out inefficiencies. As part of digital reforms, work has been carried out to understand some of the challenges with OASys. This will inform the design and development of a new digital solution to better support operational colleagues in assessing the risk needs and strengths of people on probation.

Next steps

Prioritising Probation was originally meant to be a three month initiative to identify and bring together things that could easily be done to help to ease the pressures on the front line. We now realise this has the potential to be more than a short quick win project as there is so much more we can do.

We are currently designing the next phase of the project and seeking feedback to shape our work over the next 12-18 months.  Please keep talking to us and keep your suggestions coming in via our dedicated mailbox PrioritisingProbation@justice.gov.uk and watch this space for further updates over the coming weeks.

Best wishes

Kim

Hello everyone

I’m really pleased to tell you what the Prioritising Probation team have been doing over the past few weeks to support the frontline.

Prioritisation Framework

Version 3 of the Prioritisation Framework is now available on EQuiP. The Framework continues to be an evolving tool and this latest version has been simplified in response to your feedback that previous editions were overly complex.  The Prioritising Probation project team will be offering teach-in sessions in June for anyone who wants to find out more, so look out for invites to those when they come through. A stand-alone teaching tool will also be made available.

Undergraduate recruitment campaign

I am delighted to say that we have just launched a nationwide recruitment campaign for 300 part-time admin roles. The campaign is primarily targeted at undergraduates but is open to anyone. We are advertising this campaign widely through a specialist recruitment marketing company who will deliver regional specific campaigns, including paid for advertising in social media.

As well as filling current vacancies and helping to ease resourcing pressures, these new recruits will develop valuable experience should they then decide on a future career in the Probation Service.

Please visit this friends and family page and spread the word to anyone you know looking for part-time work.

Joining up recruitment

We have started a piece of work to identify other ways to develop our recruitment pipeline. We are talking to colleagues from across the MoJ and HMPPS who are working on a wide range of different recruitment related activity. We want to work with them to create a set of national approaches and products for regions to use as part of their local recruitment efforts, such as careers fairs and talks.

We are also looking at enhancing our engagement with educational institutes, other government departments like the DWP and public sector organisations such as the Police and Fire Brigade to raise our profile and encourage people to apply for probation jobs.

As always, feel free to contact us via our dedicated mailbox PrioritisingProbation@justice.gov.uk with any questions for suggestions you may have.

Best wishes

Kim

Hello everyone

The project team continue to find practical ways to prioritise the frontline and help you focus on your work with people on probation to protect the public.

Prioritisation Framework

The Prioritisation Framework has been revised and greatly simplified to make it easier to read and understand. The new version was made available to Regional Probation Directors on Friday 8 April and is now on EQuiP. If you are not already aware what status your PDU is in on the framework your local manager or Head of Operations will be able to let you know. In late April/early May (dates TBA), learning events will be offered to help people better understand the framework.

Requests from HQ to regions

The Prioritising Probation team have initiated a piece of work to gain a better understanding of the range of commissions and information requests going out to regions. To do this we are taking a snapshot of activity over a  2-week period and have asked regions to forward ALL requests they receive from HQ between Monday 4 April to Monday 18 April. This will help us identify how we could adjust current systems and processes to be directed to a central gateway to enable more efficient and effective ways to respond to requests.

Simplifying processes

Over the past few weeks I have met with a number of frontline probation staff to get more insights into what else we could be looking at. Much of the feedback has been around some of the unnecessarily elaborate admin processes that exist. Many issues (such as double data entry) will be resolved once new digital systems are in place, but we should do what we can now to be more efficient. Here is a summary of some changes that are in train or have already gone live:

Feedback loops

There are a number of ways you can make suggestions on how things could be improved, including:

• via our dedicated mailbox: PrioritisingProbation@justice.gov.uk
• through the  Great and Good Ideas Scheme.
• by asking questions in EQuiP which will go directly to the process owner

Please keep revisiting this page for more updates on what we’re doing to Prioritise Probation over the coming weeks.

Best wishes
Kim

Hello everyone

The Prioritising Probation project team continue to identify ways that contribute to protecting the frontline, which is one of the Senior Leadership Team’s top priorities in response to the People Survey.

Since my last update, significant progress has been made on ways to speed up recruitment, which I am pleased to share with you today.

Our big win is that we are now able to make conditional offers. This shaves time off the recruitment processes as people can start work before vetting is complete. Over 400 candidates have now been offered roles subject to passing the final stage of vetting post-employment.

Each region has also identified key candidates who are currently ‘stuck’ in the recruitment system, so we can unblock them.

Other things that will speed up recruitment include:

• MoJ Resourcing will soon be providing bespoke support through a dedicated Single Point of Contact (SPOC) for London and seven other regions with the greatest recruitment need. This service may then be rolled out across all regions.
• Our agency staff provider has agreed that if they can’t fill a post immediately, they will go to other agencies to source candidates. Previously there was a two-week delay.
• The Recruitment Task Force has begun a process mapping exercise across the recruitment system to identify and improve delays and blockages.

I will report back on the impact of these initiatives in further updates.

Your suggestions and ideas

I want to let you know what we’re doing with your ideas and suggestions to help ease the pressures on the frontline.

We have worked with colleagues across functions to carefully review all the suggestions made. I want to be honest with you and say that some cannot be taken forward due to Civil Service rules, but I’m pleased to update you on how the following suggestions are being progressed:

What you said and what we are doing

The Prioritising Probation project team and I are grateful everyone who has taken the time to share their ideas. We are continuing to explore if and how we can take forward more of your suggestions.

Feel free to contact us with your thoughts at any time via our dedicated mailbox PrioritisingProbation@justice.gov.uk

Best wishes

Kim

Hello everyone

The Prioritising Probation project continues to build momentum with its aim of taking pressure off the frontline. This update highlights two initiatives that are now live and two others that are progressing

Initiatives now live

We have launched phase one of the Prioritisation Framework. This new tool went live on 31 January and has been created in response to your feedback requesting clarity on what we absolutely must do versus the things that we could, in the right circumstances, stop doing or do differently.

At its heart is the list of mandatory activities that are the cornerstone of sentence management and are directly referenced in legislation or policy guidance and must be protected. Under the Framework RPDs have the discretion to determine the trigger points for swiftly activating different parts of the Framework in order to stop and/or reduce other activities to alleviate pressure points.

You told us that OASys is a significant pressure point, so within the Prioritisation Framework we have included guidance on supporting changes to the OASys review system if certain criteria are met.

Now that we have launched phase one of the Framework, we will work quickly to review and refine it further and ensure its development is informed by a data and evidence driven approach.

Vetting

As I updated last time, we had hoped to move to a system where candidates could take up post with certain safeguards in place prior to vetting being completed. Regrettably we haven’t been able to do this at the moment for various reasons.

However, the good news is that we have secured support from the vetting and security team to root out cases that are currently stuck in the vetting system and unblock them. The team will focus on administrative and PSO roles as we know these are the main pressure points for you.

This work will make a difference right now and help us get new recruits into the business as fast as possible.

Initiatives coming up

Our two emerging initiatives to expand our capacity and get roles filled are progressing well.

We are advancing our proposals to actively target undergraduates to work for us in part time roles such as admin, accredited programme support, health and safety cover etc.

One region is already on board to pilot a scheme to develop the talent within our people on probation pool and support them to take up posts in UPW, administrative and other roles.

I’ll keep you updated on both initiatives as they develop.

Your suggestions

All the things we are doing have come from your suggestions. We are still exploring options around the other great ideas that you have put forward, so watch this space for an update on this.

I hope you are assured of our commitment to help you prioritise probation, we have lots in train and there is more to come.  Please keep visiting this page for the latest updates and feel free to contact us at  PrioritingProbation@justice.gov.uk.

Best wishes

Kim

Hello everyone

There has been a lot of activity going on behind the scenes, and I’m pleased to share with you the latest developments for each of the Prioritising Probation workstreams.

Speeding up recruitment and increasing the number of staff

I was hoping to be able to tell you that we are now able to make conditional job offers prior to vetting being complete.  I have got to be honest that despite our best efforts, due to the risks involved this is not going to be possible at the volumes we wanted.  Whilst this is a disappointment for us, we are determined to understand whether there are other elements of the recruitment process that we can improve so that we can hold on to our original aim of speeding things up to get people in post as fast as possible. We have therefore commissioned a fast review of the processes so that we can focus in on changing those that are taking too long. We will report on this when it is finished. While we wait for this, we are taking forward two specific actions:

• We are training more people to become Vetting Contact Points. This will mean speedier vetting.
• Regional Implementation Leads (RILs) working within the Reform programme are supporting regions with the upcoming unpaid work recruitment and interviews.

We are working with the MoJ Resourcing team on targeted recruitment of undergraduates for specific roles. We’ll be talking to RPDs to find out which roles they think would be a good fit and how many vacancies they have. We are also doing some scoping work with our Prison colleagues on a new ‘Year in Business’ initiative to place undergraduates in prisons or probation for a year.

Work continues on looking at how we can employ people with lived experience with the right package of support, including L&D. We’re talking to HR colleagues about developing a proposal on how we could best support this group with their job applications for our roles, specifically in the last 3 months of their order.

Giving your region more flexibility to pause or stop non-essential activity

We are very close to finalising phase one roll out our new Prioritisation Framework which sets out what activities should be undertaken against different capacity percentages. We have made significant changes to the original draft following feedback from RPDs and Trade Unions and will be able to go live as soon as we exit out of EDMs.

Simplifying or stopping some processes

There has been a lot of activity to get ideas from across the regions on reducing demand or increasing capacity. A short list of these ideas was shared with senior leadership colleagues and we are now doing further consultation with RPDs on priority areas for the Prioritising Probation project team to focus on. Thanks to everyone who contributed either through our short survey, event break out groups or regional workshops.

Lessening the amount of changes or spreading them out more during 2022

We have created a Change Load Tracking Tool to help us to visualise all planned and upcoming change activity and to indicate the impact of this, based on the level of effort required by staff to implement the change and the volume of staff affected by it. This tool informs a regular review of our delivery plans, to identify where potential changes are too burdensome on operational delivery and make the necessary changes.  A revised change map will go out to regions early next month.

Reducing or better managing requests from HQ to regions

We are working on a strategy for managing loans and secondments. Our aim is to have clearer, fairer process in place to make the system work better for everyone.  We want to ensure that we don’t make resourcing pressures worse by taking people away from the front line unnecessarily. We are also exploring alternative ways to get the expertise needed for HQ functions from frontline practitioners. We are planning to launch our first draft of this at the Senior Leaders event on the 17 February as we know we need to move this quickly.

We are continuing to work at pace to influence the shape of future delivery, increase capacity and drive progress.

Please keep visiting this page for the latest updates and feel free to contact us at  PrioritingProbation@justice.gov.uk.

Best wishes

Kim

Hello everyone

The Prioritising Probation project has been motoring along and I’m pleased to be able to update you on what we have been doing and what’s happening next.

Speeding up recruitment and increasing the number of staff

The process to extend agency staff has been reviewed and significantly streamlined. The new, leaner process will save time for regional staff as HR Business Partners are now taking responsibility to submit regional business cases for approval. Full details are on EQuiP, which has been updated with the new process.

We are very close to securing the ability to give conditional job offers to successful job applicants, enabling you to onboard new starters before vetting has concluded.  We’ve submitted an application to the Civil Service Commission to seek permission to proceed, so watch this space for a further update as soon as we hear back.

We are looking into how we can target advertising of part time admin roles to university undergraduates and elsewhere work is underway to set up a scheme to employ people with lived experience who have the potential to take on productive roles within UPW or administration. Please visit the Going Forward into Employment page to find out more about this.

Giving your region more flexibility to pause or stop non-essential activity

We have been consulting with RPDs and Trade Unions on a new Prioritisation Framework which sets out what activities should be undertaken against different capacity percentages to help regions prioritise work. This was due to be launched in early January, but is currently paused due to our return to Exceptional Delivery Models as a result of the Omicron variant. However, we will continue to maintain momentum on this piece of work and spend the rest of this month refining the guidance in light of RPD and TU feedback with the aim of going live as soon as EDMs are terminated.

In addition, the new OASys guidance has been launched and incorporated into the EDM documentation, this can be utilised when capacity issues make it hard to do full reviews.

Simplifying or stopping some processes

We are in the process of consulting colleagues across the regions on this. We have asked Equip process owners for feedback on what could be changed and have been running regional workshops on what we might stop or do differently as well as taking a second look at the ideas that have come through the Great & Good scheme. We are currently analysing all of the input we’ve received to come up with a definitive list to talk to RPDs about.

Lessening the amount of changes or spreading them out more during 2022

We have now put in place a process to oversee the level of change on the Regions from programmes and other initiatives. We will review our delivery plans and their impact to identify any pinch points where potential changes are too burdensome on operational delivery and make the necessary changes. We will share a revised change map with you so you can see what to expect and when.

Reducing or better managing requests from HQ to regions

We will design a better system to control and prioritise HQ secondment opportunities to minimise the impact of secondments on the front line. We are also looking at the number of information requests to the regions to see if responses could be provided in a more efficient way and reviewing the volume of communications coming from the centre with an aim to reduce this.

Questions and Feedback

I am confident that we will start seeing some tangible results over the coming weeks, so do keep returning to this page for the latest updates. If you have any questions or feedback, please contact us via our dedicated mailbox  PrioritingProbation@justice.gov.uk.

Best wishes

Kim

Hello everyone

Since the launch of the Prioritising Probation initiative last week, we have moved quickly and I’m really pleased to tell you that we are very close to finalising the first changes to help with workloads. We are talking to RPDs about the sequencing of these changes and I will update you on progress early in January.

Your feedback

Many of you have taken a couple of minutes to give your thoughts using this very short form which will stay open until the end of this week. In addition, almost 300 colleagues attended last week’s senior leaders’ event and put forward a range of great suggestions.

All of your input shows that there is a collective motivation to do something about this.  We are closely looking at all of the ideas that have come through and assigning these to the relevant Prioritising Probation workstreams to action where possible.

Don’t forget, you can also contact us with your views via our dedicated mailbox: PrioritisingProbation@justice.gov.uk.

Small changes, quick wins

I want to thank everyone for getting behind this so enthusiastically. By putting together all of our ideas, however small they are, together they will have a big impact and help you prioritise your valuable probation work.

Wishing you all a safe and peaceful festive period.

Kim

I’m Kim, Deputy Director for the Probation Workforce Programme, and I joined the Probation Service from Interserve in June as part of unification.  With over 25 years operational experience delivering probation services across the country, I know how tough things are out there at the moment. We have heard the messages you have been giving us, and are committed to doing something about it.

Taking action now

We know many of the issues around workload are caused by staff shortages, complex processes, the constant demands of change, alongside the backdrop of Covid. Whilst we must protect our core business,  we need to prioritise the essential activities, and stop or pause others.

So today [9th December 2021] I’m really pleased to tell you about Prioritising Probation, a new action-focussed initiative to identify and bring together what can be done over the next three months to ease the pressures on the front line and enable you to focus on the important work you do with people on probation to protect the public.

Prioritising Probation is our response to what you have told us. We will review how we are currently working and identify if there are practical and quick ways to:

• Speed up recruitment and increase the number of staff
• Give your region more flexibility to pause or stop non-essential activity
• Simplify or stop some processes
• Lessen the amount of changes or spread them out more during 2022
• Reduce or better manage requests from HQ to regions

Get involved

We are still working on the detail, but we want to be brave and bold. I’ll be talking to senior leaders about these ideas on Monday and in addition I am keen to hear from you. So, please tell us what you feel is most important using this short form, so that we can ensure that we focus on the right things.  You can also share your views using the dedicated mailbox: PrioritisingProbation@justice.gov.uk