- Conference
- 2024 Police, Probation and CAFCASS Conference
- Date
- 17 June 2024
- Decision
- Carried
Conference, it is widely accepted that Probation work is challenging but the current situation of excessive workloads, not enough staff and increasingly inexperienced workforce, means that our work is harder than ever. Although there is some understanding of the impact on staff, feedback from members has shown that the current processes are not adequate to ensure staff are continually supported through the psychological, emotional and physical effects of the impact of our work and of the context in which we are working currently.
The challenging behaviour of some of our People on Probation can become normalised and at the same time staff are expected to be increasingly resilient.
We believe that the organisation should be required to be much more responsive to the psychological needs of staff. Staff working in Accredited Programmes already have mandatory Reflective Practice sessions and we believe that all operational staff staff should have the benefit of this.
We therefore call on the SGE to work with the employer to enable them to acknowledge the long term impact on staff of the work that we do by:
Ensuring that all staff have regular access to Reflective Practice sessions on a regular basis
To enable staff to have access to immediate psychological support when identified as necessary by the individual practitioner or their manager