Amy’s Message 14th December 2021

COVID-19

COVID continues to dominate the news in relation to the new Omicron variant. Plan B of the UK Government strategy has been implemented in England and weekly reviews are being undertaken of guidance in Wales.

From a Probation perspective, we are monitoring and reviewing how we work on a daily basis through our Gold command structure and ensuring we follow the latest advice from the UK Health Security Agency and Public Health Wales.  Updates from Gold command will be shared with you via your Regional Probation Directors and Deputy Directors to ensure you are kept up to date and informed promptly of any changes to how you should be working.

Please continue to follow the latest guidance in terms of PPE and Safe Working practices in your place of work – you can find the latest version here.

Do speak to your line manager on what the guidance means for you and if you have any well-being concerns.

Regular testing and making sure we take up offers of the vaccination and booster vaccination continue to be incredibly important for us all and I cannot encourage you enough to do both.  You can find out the latest guidance in relation to accessing testing and vaccinations in England here and Wales here.

Prioritising Probation

Probation has always been a busy place to work but we know this year in particular has presented many challenges through COVID, work to deliver unification and difficulties in some teams recruiting and retaining staff. I know things are tough for some of you at the moment and I am committed to doing all I can to help.

Last week we launched Prioritising Probation, a new action-focussed initiative to identify and bring together what can be done over the next three months to ease some the pressure.

Kim Thornden-Edwards is leading this work and you can read all about it in Kim’s blog. You can help shape the next steps by filling in a very short form or emailing a dedicated mailbox with ideas about how we can reduce the burden on teams and allow you to focus on the most important thing of all: operational delivery. We really want to hear from you on what you think would make a difference.

Prisons White Paper and Drug Strategy

Last week, the government published the Prisons Strategy White Paper and the cross-Government Ten Year Drug Strategy.

They bring-together the work we have in progress through our various programmes but also present us with a significant opportunity to look again at how we work across prisons and probation and with other sectors such as healthcare.

MoJ Permanent Secretary Awards

I would like to draw your attention to The Ministry of Justice Permanent Secretary Awards. These are a great opportunity for you to nominate a colleague or team for an award by completing Permanent Secretary award nomination form. The awards run every month with nominations due by the 18^th, please agree with the nominees line manager before you submit and cc DirectorGeneralProbation@justice.gov.uk.

Finally, I know that the re-emergence of COVID and the new variant will be a worry for many people so now more than ever it is really important that we support each other. If you are finding things difficult please do speak to your line manager or a colleague.  You can also find information on sources of well being support on the intranet.