Recollections on the tenth anniversary of the Probation Institute

Anne Burrell - one of our hugely valued Trustees has written a short piece reflecting on ten years of the Probation Institute.

I first became involved in the work of the PI soon after Transforming Rehabilitation began to be implemented. At the time, there was huge uncertainty – and anxiety – about the future of probation work, and of the Service itself. The Probation Institute, established to seek to safeguard, and to formalise, the professional status of probation practice was seen by many in probation as a tiny beacon of light in what were very dark and worrying times for practitioners.

At that time, I was elected as a staff representative to the Institute – one of two reps. I vividly remember my first meeting at the PI premises in Vauxhall, when the PI had its own offices in a shared building with other Criminal Justice organisations at Langley Lane. When I realised that other attendees were, by and large, former senior and very senior managers in Probation, with some similarly highly regarded academics, I initially felt highly out of my depth, wondering what on earth I would have to contribute. The then Chair, the late Paul Senior, swiftly put me at my ease, as we talked about football (Barnsley FC for Paul, Aston Villa for me); and cricket – about which Paul talked, and I listened…

This warmth was accompanied by a genuine interest on the part of all the members of the Board regarding what probation practice was actually like during TR. In this regard, I was in a unique position to comment, as I held a split job role, as an SPO in a CRC, and as a Practice Development Assessor with the NPS. In fact, the enthusiasm regarding discussions about probation practice during the last decade of organisational change has been consistent. But I would say that it is me who has benefited most from the relationship with the PI, learning from others, and from the range of activities and events it has been my privilege to be involved with. This has included being part of the Training Committee, and a member of the Research Committee. I recall at my first meeting of the latter, when I confessed to knowing little about research, Jane Dominey advised me that the Committee ‘couldn’t just be a group of academics sitting around talking about probation.’ 

Paul Senior sadly passed away in 2019; one of his final pieces of writing before his death was published in the Probation Quarterly, now the in house journal of the Probation Institute, and in which he asserted with some force that ‘probation is a profession, never let that go.’  This has been the longstanding commitment of the PI – for probation to be formally registered as a profession, and to be recognised as such. It has been my privilege to be a very small part of the work of the PI over the last decade, and it will be intriguing to see the steps taken to formal professional status over the months and years to come.

Senior P: (2018). Probation is a profession, never let that go. Probation Quarterly issue 8, pp 6 – 8.  

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash