Probation without boundaries? ‘Agile working’ in the Community Rehabilitation Company ‘transformed’ landscape

Introduction

I have worked in probation since training to be a Probation Officer in 2002, and so I have had lived experience of constant structural, organizational and remit changes (see Robinson, 2013). Dealing with all of this has fostered my investigative approach to critically analyse rhetoric – especially rhetoric of the corporate variety. ‘Agile working’ has been used increasingly in the management communications I have received in recent months to refer to ‘new ways of working’ and describe ‘hot desking’, ‘flexible working’, and plans for new Information Technology (IT) systems. However, before examining what these phrases may mean, we need to contextualize the landscape in which these terms are gradually becoming commonplace.

A landscape ‘transformed’ into Community Rehabilitation Companies

From 1 February 2016, probation practitioners within the 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRC) across England and Wales enter our second year of being owned and ‘transformed’ by profit-driven organizations (although corporate literature promotes mission-driven aims). This ‘privatization by stealth’ was an ‘opening up’ of the ‘market’ to ‘new rehabilitation providers’ who took full ownership of the seven-year contracts on 1 February 2015 (Kirton and Guillaume, 2015: 5). These CRCs manage low and medium risk offenders who are subject to court orders and post release licences, including the Offender Rehabilitation Act (ORA) post sentence supervision for anyone serving less than 12 months’ imprisonment. Despite government rhetoric about bringing together the best of the third and private sectors, over half of the 21 CRCs are owned by two large profit-oriented companies and only one CRC belongs to a corporation with no dominant multi-national business interest (Kirton and Guillaume, 2015). Voluntary, not-for-profit and third sector organizations are assigned as partners or subcontractors within the supply chain amongst the others.

The 2013 British Journal of Community Justice special double edition encapsulates the backlash from commentators in academia, research and practice against Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) and Paul Senior’s editorial concluded that the:

…changes are simply wrong-headed and do not appreciate the complex web of reciprocity that probation functions within…. Probation deals with complex, difficult and intangible problems in a quietly authoritative, caring and committed way. (Senior, 2013: 8)

The ‘new ways of working’

A perusal of four out of the eight CRC owners’ online presence throws up a few recurring corporate phrases, namely holding ‘values’ of respect and promoting individual change from offending, working in ‘partnership’ and focusing on ‘innovation’ (MTCnovo, 2016; Purple Futures, 2016; Sodexo, 2016; Working Links, 2016). Sodexo (2016) asserts that ‘everyone can change for the better’ and Purple Futures (2016) reassures us ‘We practise what we preach [sic]’ by employing over 2500 ex-offenders in its UK workforce. Between them, these four corporations (Sodexo, Purple Futures, Working Links and MTCnovo) own 16 out of the 21 CRCs across England and Wales. ¹ Each corporation highlights their business acumen and ability to meet public service demands whilst utilizing private sector know-how to ensure economic efficiency.

Working Links (2016) states they are:

Working with a diverse range of providers enabling [sic] us to bring the most innovative and effective interventions to support the people we work with and local communities.

MTCnovo staff are reassured that new ways of working will get the best out of their organization in order to achieve joint aims of rehabilitation. In London, this has included the move to MTCnovo’s cohort model and ‘agile working’. From 7 December 2015, probation practitioners were assigned to work with one of five groups of offenders: women; working age males; 18−25 year-old males; older males; or individuals with chronic mental illness, including learning disabilities (MTCnovo, 2016). The change to agile working is greatest amongst the minority groups cohorts, namely women, older males and mental illness, due to coverage of larger geographical areas. Individual officers are responsible for caseloads spanning previous local authority boundaries and most have been re-located to centralized team bases. The two larger cohorts (working aged and younger males) have not required as significant a movement due to their greater numbers and the decision to remain largely borough based.

Innovation and modernization across the organization carries the promise of upgraded IT systems, whereby each officer will be assigned wireless technology in the form of laptops and mobile telephones. This forms part of MTCnovo’s (2016) passionate ‘respect for the professionalism of the probation service’ and ‘the importance of learning – delivered in modern, innovative ways’.

What is ‘agile working’?

Key to probation’s professionalism is our propensity towards an investigative approach, whereby we are adept at balancing our unrelenting belief in people’s ability to change with a healthy dose of critical analysis. Therefore, scrutinizing corporate vocabulary is no exception to this tenet of good practice and the power differential of being subject to ownership should not suppress our desire for fairness and justice. The terminologies and phrases that abound include ‘new ways of working’ to encompass ‘innovation’, ‘transformation’ and ‘modernization’, and increasingly ‘agile working’ is interchanged with the call to become ‘flexible’ in our approaches. However, these terms have remained largely undefined, or carry divergent meanings depending on which particular lack of provision or dip in service delivery needs justifying.

Through my own investigations, I have learnt more about the theory behind ‘agile working’. The Agile Organisation (2012) asserts that:

Agile working is about bringing people, processes, connectivity and technology, time and place together to find the most appropriate and effective way of working to carry out a particular task. It is working within guidelines (of the task) but without boundaries (of how you achieve it). [emphasis added]

The people in its workforce are considered to simultaneously be a business’s ‘biggest liability’ and its ‘greatest asset’ (The Agile Organisation, 2011). Employers must therefore get workers to break with traditional ways of working to increase agility and accept a culture of change and innovation (The Agile Organisation, 2011). We see this tension operating in MTCnovo’s (2016) declared respect for probation values and professionalism alongside its quest to ‘revive’, modernize and develop ‘new’ learning. The agile working literature accepts that the concept itself is not new, but the way ‘smart’ technologies are utilized to achieve the outcomes is a ‘new way of working’ (The Agile Organisation, 2012). There are four boundaries to consider: (1) source – who carries out the work; (2) role – what do people do; (3) location – where do people work; and (4) time – when do people work (adapted from The Agile Organisation, 2012).

Probation without boundaries?

Examining who carries out probation work is vital, especially in light of threats to reduce CRC staff numbers which creates uncertainty about career development and working conditions for those left behind (Kirton and Guillaume, 2015). It is important to note that evaluations identify the ‘significance of the “who”‘ because a ‘“good” programme can go “bad” in the wrong hands’ and similarly a less than favourable intervention can become meaningful when skilfully delivered by a professional (Clarke, 2013: 112; Robinson, 2013). Therefore, a shortage of skilled staff would be a barrier to delivering the new and innovative services that the CRCs promise.

When CRC innovators seek to identify what role probation plays, they must not neglect multi-faceted, individually tailored and meaningful interventions. In reality, how will the need for creative and collaborative inter-agency working be affected by market driven contracts? Namely, what happens if a locally identified service is not part of the supply chain in service delivery? Robinson (2013: 97) warns of ‘showpiece projects’ that take all the investment (and publicity) to the detriment of routine practice, which then becomes people-processing that focus on cost savings.

What about the location for delivering probation work? We can no longer assume that work will be office-based. IT allows us to have electronic, virtual files (data security permitting) and there is a move to rationalized administrative functions within central hubs. In fact, there is an increasing absence of administrators in person as we are directed to electronic mailboxes to communicate requests related to case management processes. Savings of scale are a common driver for larger centrally located office hubs for staff of all grades. This means that offenders/service-users must also travel across wider geographical areas in order to meet the requirements of their statutory supervision (Phillips, 2014; Robinson, 2013).

My own experience has been a move from a spacious office on the outskirts of London into a more centrally located building, which is considered better served due to transport links. I am only able to provide travel reimbursement in the form of bus tickets to service users who must journey from different London boroughs. This therefore means that travelling by train is not an available option despite the fact that this is often the most expedient way to commute to the new location – especially for those travelling from the outskirts or at peak traffic times. Moreover, the new ‘better’ located building only has three open interview rooms (which convert into a single group room thanks to folding adjoining walls) and four ‘secure’ interview rooms. These limited rooms serve the co-located National Probation Service (NPS) as well as the full complement of CRC cohort teams. This compares less favourably with my previous location, which had been refurbished, following service user consultation, to incorporate more comfortable and diverse meeting spaces (with a selection of nicely furnished individual and group rooms as well as a ‘hub’ ² space). In the new office, I quickly discovered that queueing is commonplace at peak times (11am to 2pm) when three of the aforementioned rooms are converted into the group induction room. How could I explain to a service user as we sat together in the reception area queueing – fourth in line – to get into an interview room, that this was an innovative solution to improve her access to treatment, support and skills for her rehabilitation.

Surveys into the social work experience of agile working highlight that the focus on hot-desking and space saving have been to the detriment of positives that could be gained from working in a truly ‘agile’ way (McGregor, 2012; Turner, 2014). The absence of flexible working policies meant managers demanded that social workers come into the overcrowded office rather than home working (Turner, 2014). The lack of IT support left social workers without space and resources for the necessary recording, conducting assessments, report writing, and communications with other professionals (McGregor, 2012; Turner, 2014). This demonstrates that without digital empowerment, professionals are unable to conduct their work anytime and anywhere (The Agile Organisation, 2011, 2012). Moreover, the focus on hotdesking alone created low staff morale and poor work−life balance routines (Turner, 2014). It is argued that true agile working could benefit social work if the decision-making about day-to-day functioning were left in the hands of the ‘people in direct contact with service users’ (Turner, 2014). I wonder what any future study of agile working within probation practice might discover.

My ‘waiting in line’ experience led to the service user and I agreeing that our next supervision will take place in a nearby café. She has my mobile number to contact me directly if she is delayed and we agree that whenever we need to discuss anything sensitive, we will return to the probation office and ‘join the queue’ for an interview room. The peak time falls within the ideal hours when individuals with child-care responsibilities or those making the journey by bus from the outskirts can arrive for appointments. Therefore, I find myself increasingly seeking alternative locations to facilitate the supervisory relationship. I have forged links with community agencies across the different boroughs I now cover so that I can make use of their buildings. Hence, I set aside time to go to each drug agency, a homeless person’s drop in centre, a local authority ‘one stop shop’ and so on. It is now routine that I find myself in community agency buildings, because these locations enable me to liaise with other professionals and I can often see more than one service user in any particular visit. These are my attempts to seek out meeting times and spaces in the face of my lack of office facilities.

In examining the architecture of probation offices, Phillips (2014: 128) directs us to:

… think seriously about how best to provide a constructive environment in which practitioners can create productive, professional relationships with offenders which serve to aid rehabilitation and desistance.

Dr Jessica Yakeley (2009: 137) reminds us, albeit in the context of therapeutic work with violent offenders, that we must foster relationships of trust, marked by ‘consistent and boundaried, empathic and non-judgemental’ communications. When we provide a ‘containing’ space, we provide a stabilizing influence for longer term changes, but there has to be physical security (a suitable location) and relational security (a safe space to express emotions and to be understood) (Yakeley, 2009). I imagine none of these factors are measurable nor would they feature in payment by results, but this is exactly why these fundamental interpersonal interactions should not be the subject of market forces (McNeill, 2013; Senior, 2013).

Probation practitioners must embrace our advocacy role to help navigate the people with whom we work along their desistance journey. In developing relationships of trust and collaboration, we need to establish our professional legitimacy and credibility, because we occupy a unique position of being mediators between probationers, other social institutions and the communities into which they must reintegrate (McNeill, 2013; Robinson, 2013). Probation practitioners within the CRC find ourselves attempting to mediate yet another boundary. There remains a chasm between the market forces of ‘transformed rehabilitation’ provision (which risks objectifying probationers as income sources or burdens) and the humanizing values that motivate our ‘caring, committed’ approach to deal with ‘complex, difficult and intangible problems’ (McNeill, 2013; Mawby and Worrall, 2013; Robinson, 2013; Senior, 2013: 8).