@ManicMonday007 I’ve been trying to think how best to answer in a way thats reassuring. It may be that you go to an absolutely fantastic office that’s staffed well with just the usual gripes, but I’ve covered five offices in the past three years in different regions and my experience has been quite consistent over the last 18 months or so. All have been amber or red sites within the prioritisation framework. I’d ask what stage they are at in the framework to be honest, it’ll give you a good idea as to the staffing and pressures you may be heading into.
Regardless, I think it’s important you know what you might be heading into. In my years as a probation officer the service is now pretty unrecognisable. Workloads are unsustainably high across admin and probation practitioner roles. And I do mean unsustainably high, with my own workload being at around 210% when I left, so that would be expected to be covered by two full-time people. As a result of high workload probation is stuck in a cycle staff of sick with stress being overwhelmed and leaving, a new individual being recruited another person leaving because of stress etc. essentially everyone is overwhelmed at all levels and its constant state of overwhelm creates a pretty unpleasant working environment which can be snappy, emotional and bitchy, with a real culture of ‘so and so isn’t working hard enough’. I’ve seen many colleagues crying at desks over the last few years with little support other than being told by senior management that they understand how hard we are working but you need to be more resilient. It’s become very much put up and shut up. A lot of probation has changed over the last few years, professional judgement being removed from probation practitioners almost completely with now we only use of approved toolkits rather than using your initiative, ridiculous targets, and it very much like a box ticking exercise at times. My understanding is it’s the same across administration roles. I left because I was frequently criticised for prioritising time with the people I was working with (funny considering it’s always been a people focused service).
As I said your experience may be completely different to my own, But I would encourage you to look at the probation matters blog to get a sense of the level of unrest within the service although I will admit it can be quite cynical at times. I’m more than happy to chat further if you want to PM me where you will be based.