'Doing A Good Job Under Duress'
| DOI | 10.1177/026455059604300404 |
| Date | 01 December 1996 |
| Published date | 01 December 1996 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
200
’Doing
A
Good
Job
Under
Duress’
Invited
to
undertake
a
survey
of
client
opinion
in
one
Probation
Area,
Bill
Beaumont
and
Tara
Mistry,
Lecturers
in
Social
Work
at
the
University
of
Bristol,
discovered
an
encouragingly
high
degree
of
consumer
appreciation
and
conclude
that
inattention
to
client
satisfaction
is
likely
to
undermine
practice
effectiveness.
ur
title
is
how
one
client
summed
~-~
up
his
recent
contact
with
the
Probation
Service.
With
probation
officers
under
severe
pressure
to
adopt
more
punitive
approaches,
it
is
good
to
be
able
to
report
that
the
established
strengths
of
a
social
work
orientation
are
still
appreciated
by
the
service’s
clients.
This
article
reports
the
findings
of
a
client
opinion
research
study
conducted
for
Gloucestershire
Probation
Service
and
reflects
briefly
on
the
significance
of
such
studies
for
the
’What
Works’
debate.
To
inform
its
planning
process,
the
Service
wanted
to
consider
clients’
views
as
well
as
those of
sentencers
and
central
government
(who
were
seen
as
’customers’).
Hence
this
commissioned
study,
which
involved
semi-structured
interviews
in
1994/5
with
38
clients
on
court
orders
or
licences.
The
study’s
headline
findings
are
reassuring
for
the
Service:
o
95%
of
clients
interviewed
were
happy
with
the
way
they
were
treated;
0
95%
found
their
probation
officer
either
extremely
or
fairly
helpful;
0
79°~
had
found
their
contact
extremely
or
fairly
useful;
.
$1 %
said
they
had
no
complaint
about
their
probation
officer;
*
83%
said
they
could
not
think
of
any
help
they
wanted
but
did
not
get.
Such
positive
findings
were
not
unexpected,
given
the
results
of
similar
studies
elsewhere,
but
may
be
refreshing
for
readers
now
used
to
a
diet
of
bad
tidings
about
probation
work.
Researchers
have,
of
course,
warned
of
dangers
in
placing
too
much
emphasis
on
simple
’satisfaction’
ratings
Cheetham
and
others’
have
advised:
’At
the
very
least,
generalities
must
be
disaggregated,
and
the
context from
which
individuals
are
evaluating
their
experience
must
be
explored’.
In
a
brief
article
we
can
only
highlight
some
main
points
from
our
findings
and
refer
interested
readers
to
the
research
report2.
o
’~ _
.
Reports and Supervision
Almost
all
clients
interviewed
were
positive
about
their
experiences
of
having
a
court
report
prepared,
seeing
the
process
as
fair
and
helpful.
This
finding
contrasts
with
a
series
of
research
findings3,
mostly
based
on
researcher
perceptions,
highly
critical
of
reports
and
it
would
be
useful
to
have
further
studies
in
this
under-
researched
area.
In
our
study
it
seemed
that
PSR
contact
usually
laid
a
solid
base
of
subsequent
supervision.
On
average,
clients
identified
twice
as
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