Yesterday (10 February 2021), HMPPS published the most important documents ahead of the re-unification of the probation service in June this year. It made live the final Target Operating Model and published a new set of National Standards (these still in draft form) designed explicitly to support transition to the unified model. When I was training to be a probation officer in the 1980s, the trinity of probation tasks was (and had been for many years) “Advise, Assist & Befriend”. That model is long gone but it has taken until now for a new trinity to be established. The core role of the modern probation service is to; “Assess, Protect & Change”. 

The Target Operating Model (TOM in the jargon) promises an additional £155m per year in the unified probation service split into three main parts:

1. Sentence management: an estimated increase of £55 million in annual spend will support recruitment of additional Probation Practitioners, improvements in the assessment of risks and needs to protect the public and more consistent supervision to help reduce reoffending.
2. Interventions: an estimated additional £24 million in annual funding will enable an increase in the number and quality of Unpaid Work placements, Accredited Programmes and Structured Interventions with the aim of driving up completion rates and delivering better outcomes.
3. Rehabilitative services: an estimated additional £66 million in annual funding will allow probation to commission a greater range of resettlement and rehabilitative services regionally from specialist organisations.

There are also commitments to spend an extra:

• £20m on learning and development
• £8m on court teams
• £5m on resettlement (including short sentence functions in each probation region to provide a better service to those serving short sentences).
• £3m on victims

Most of the core components of the new model are already well known:

• 12 (11 English and one Welsh) probation regions
• End-to-end sentence management (divided into three broad areas of advice to court, Sentence Management and
  resettlement).
• A commitment to improve Unpaid Work and Accredited Programmes by establishing a new Interventions Team in every region
• A modernisation programme both for the probation estate and the much derided probation case management and data systems.

Changes to interventions will include more promotion of Unpaid Work as an alternative to custody, improving the range of placements and improving the availability of education and training within Unpaid Work. The new model also looks to address the criticisms of the current Rehabilitation Activity Requirements (RARs) by introducing Structured
Interventions as a consistent delivery model for lower risk individuals with needs around Attitudes, Thinking and Behaviour; Domestic Abuse and Emotional Management.