What makes probation officers work the way they do?

1. University of Bucharest What makes probation officers work the way they do? Ioan Durnescu Budapest, September 2013

2. Probation service in Romania • Relatively new – set up in 2001 • Nearby each county court • Normally within the building of the county court • Working with both – juvenile (over 16) and adults. • Main responsibilities: • pre-sentence reports • offender supervision

3. Probation staff in Romania • Each service – 5-19 probation counselors • In 2012 – 292 staff • Staff structure: • 107 law graduates • 85 social workers • 51 psychology graduates • 14 sociology graduates • Others • Focus only on the main categories: law, social work and psychology. • Most of the time: induction training (1-2 weeks) + supervised practice (one year)

4. The research • Financed by CNCSIS (contract no. 29/02.08.2010) • Started in 2011 • Research questions: • What are the staff skills and characteristics used by probation staff during supervision ? • How were they developed? • What is the impact on the supervision outcomes of different staff skills and characteristics?

5. Today • What are the staff skills and characteristics ? • How were they developed ?

6. Research • 20 video recordings – from 20 PO: 10 social workers, 6 law graduates and 4 psychologists. • From 6 services located in different geographical areas. • Employed in 2001, 2004 and 2007 • Look at the first session – symbolically the first opportunity to build up relationship, clarify the roles, define authority etc. • Normally – evaluation session – takes about 40-90 min. • Each PO submitted 2 recordings – selected in the analysis the best one (but scores quite close)

7. Research I. What skills and characteristics – coding manual developed on the basis of Raynor and colleagues (2010, 2011), Bourgon and colleagues (2010, 2011), Trotter (2009), Dowden and Andrews (2004) etc. • Scoring – 1-5 where 1 - skill non existing and 5 – very good use of it. • 3 colleagues, consensus scoring • Skill sets: • Interview organization- space, noise, proximity, psychological atmosphere • Structuring skills – warm up, start/middle/finish, clear direction, summary and next meeting • Relationship skills – role clarification, use of authority, empathy, enthusiasm, closeness, summarization, paraphrasing, honesty, humor, self discloser, open questions. • Pro-social modeling – rewarding, confronting, respect. • Evaluation – explaining the procedure and scope, clear questions, clarifications, involving the client, hierarchizing the needs, identifying the strong points, identifying the community opportunities. • Motivational interviewing – support, avoid confrontations, reflecting, amplifying discrepancies and using the self motivating statements.

8. General mean scores per skill sets

9. Mean scores for structuring skills

10. Mean scores for evaluation skills

11. Mean scores for pro-social modeling

12. Mean scores for MI

13. Discussion • Quite similar skills with the ones identified in Jersey, Canada or Australia. • These are the skills but how are they developed? • Staff with five different educational background (different skills, different ideologies etc.)

14. Mean scores by educational background - Scores quite close to each other – a common way of working with offenders

15. Interviews with staff What made you work the way you work now?

16. Possible explanations The differences at the point of employment are evened-out by ‘professional socialization’: A social worker: ... I used to see the client as a man who needs a great deal of help. I pictured myself as a rescuer and used to ignore or overlook my role as a supervisor. If he didn’t come today and came the day after, there was no problem for me ... After a while I saw that this approach does not work. They started to abuse that and I have changed my approach now: if he does not come today and comes tomorrow he will need to give me good reasons (...) it is possible that my social work training makes me more tolerant but now this has changed ... (Probation counsellor Bucharest)

17. A law graduate: There are no differences between social workers, psychologists and us (lawyers) ...there was a time when this difference was obvious ... we, as lawyers, are more direct and maybe you look sometimes more superficial but the social worker analyses more, discusses more, looks into the beneficiary’s problems. This is what I have learnt from my social work colleagues by watching them. I watched them easily because of the rooms we have to share ... (Probation counsellor Bucharest).

18. Social learning in the probation service • Reciprocal observations – facilitated by the architecture • Testing new approaches and learning the from the results • Bureaucratic routines – exchanging clients • Training classes organized by the MoJ • Friday afternoon social evening • Intervision • ‘Kitchen talk’

19. ‘Kitchen talk’

20. Conclusion Developing probation skills is not a simple task – you take a course, you deliver it and expect changes Change has to take into account existing routines, communication lines between probation staff, office architecture, openness to learning within the organization, informal ways of receiving feedback from the peers etc.

21. Thanks !! idurnescu@gmail.com ioan.durnescu@sas.unibuc.ro