Offender Management Bill

I support this amendment to which I have added my name, but I will speak especially to Amendment No. 68 on the training of probation officers, which is an essential dimension of their professional standing, authority and status. It means that they are able to draw on a body of evidence-based knowledge, to which the noble Lord, Lord Judd, referred, from which their training is derived and is essential to the expertise and the delivery of probation services. I know from my own experience of doing post-graduate training as a social worker that the training I had in college and in the field was absolutely essential to being able to do my job properly. However, nothing in the Bill refers to professional training or qualification, which should be the starting point for anyone working in the field if they purport to be delivering probation services, whether it is supervision or any other probation task, to a proper, professional level. Instead, this silence implies that anyone could supervise offenders. Indeed, Clause 3(2) states: "““The Secretary of State may make contractual or other arrangements with any other person for the making of the probation provision””." Unfortunately, this reflects the fact that there has been a gradual erosion of probation training over the years. In the interests of saving money on the expense of a full training, the Government have been developing a second-tier workforce of probation service officers, PSOs, who do not have the benefit of full training. It is arguable that this has been to the detriment of effectiveness and quality of service delivery, which is hardly surprising. Currently, it is a requirement in law that a fully-fledged probation officer has a Certificate of Qualification in Social Work—a CQSW—or a diploma in probation studies which is done over a two-year period using a mixture of distance learning, tutorials in college and supervision as part of a probation team. During that period staff have a protected caseload while doing their studies. By contrast, PSOs have no formal training and, with very little financial support for such training as they have from the centre, they are trained on the job. Ultimately, they do the same sort of work, with the same sort of responsibilities, as fully-trained probation officers. Although I understand that there are plans to develop a better, modular training programme, it is still significantly less focused and thorough as the CQSW. There is a feeling in the service—rightly or wrongly, but the feeling exists—that the Home Office, probably born of these developments, does not really feel that qualifications are all that important and that anyone can really do the job, just as Clause 3 implies, provided they are reasonably intelligent. If nothing else, it is an indication of the feeling of not being valued within the service which should be tackled by government as those attitudes are extremely counterproductive and, like a self-fulfilling prophesy, can lead to a lower standard of service delivery by those who feel inadequate or undervalued. In fact, the demands of the job and the standards required to do it are very high. MAPPA, for example, requires qualifications and experience to supervise and manage some of the most dangerous people in our society. But in London and most metropolitan boroughs, those offenders in risk categories 3 and 4 exceed the number of trained probation officers to supervise them, such is the size of their caseloads. I need hardly say that this is not a satisfactory situation. In the interests of public safety, as well as rehabilitation of the offender, it is absolutely vital that professional training is regulated and that the Secretary of State has a duty to determine that regulation which must be long enough and rigorous enough to give the staff effective skills for the job. The standing and authority of the profession of probation officers is predicated on this.