Offender Management Bill

These amendments do not necessarily work against what the two previous speakers have said. We have debated in the House how beneficial the role of community support officers can be, particularly in building community relations and providing a pool of people from which the main police service can draw. But as regards the progress of that development, concerns have been expressed that community support officers are not being given the support and mentoring they need when they are first put in place. The same can be said for assistant midwives. They have been very beneficial, but a recent report pointed out that in some areas they are not being given the support and training they need to do their jobs properly. They have been given too much responsibility without adequate supervision. Equally, classroom assistants benefit teachers in many ways, but a respected report on children with learning disabilities, which came out six months ago, stated that many classroom assistants have not been given the training they need yet are often appointed to work with children with disabilities. There is a danger of losing control of the fine nuances in what is in many ways an important and welcome new policy. These amendments would help to avoid that by ensuring that the right levels of qualification and training are in place. I turn now to my main concern. Utterly fundamental to the success of protecting the public is ensuring strong relationships, sustained over time, between probation officers and offenders, or between probation support officers and offenders. Many offenders experience for the first time a trusting relationship with someone who takes an interest in them but also sets clear limits on their behaviour. To do that, it is essential that front-line staff are empowered to reflect on what they are doing. That is how one sustains these difficult relationships. Let us remember that many offenders will have been in care themselves. Some 60 per cent of offenders were abused or neglected by their parents before being taken into care. Many will have had several foster placements while in care and probably attended several schools. They may well have had a chain of different social workers caring for them. That is but one group of offenders. Another group will have grown up with no father in the family. The Minister herself will be aware from speaking to prison officers how often they say, ““Well, we are the first fathers that these young men have had””. Many offenders will have suffered early developmental difficulties as well. They are complex, difficult people to work with and relating to them is challenging, but it is key to changing their behaviour and protecting the public. What regrettably appears to have happened in the Probation Service, as it certainly has in social work, is that the capacity to reflect on what one is doing has been reduced over time, with the best of intentions. I am sure that my noble friend Lady Howarth would agree that the situation has deteriorated over time. Supervision and staff work discussion groups allowing people to gather together, facilitated by an experienced professional, to talk about individual cases and think of the best approaches to working with them, are important tools which have been eroded in the face of interesting and in many ways welcome developments and modernisation. However, there is always a danger of losing the key elements of success. Again, it is fundamentally important to ensure that proper training is given at the beginning, and that as part of that training an ingrained habit of reflection on practice is established. We should think not only about initial training but about continuing professional development, which brings me on to the issue of turnover. It was troubling to hear from my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham that the one failure is that of staff sickness rates. One sees the problem in other areas. When staff involved in social work or in children’s homes are not properly supported, turnover is high. Among the many regrettable impacts is that the relationships which are so fundamental to success in these areas are undermined. I look forward to the Minister’s response and I shall be interested to hear any reassurances she can give.