A Probation Officer's Brief Reflections on Twenty Years of Rehabilitative Transformation
| Author | Mike Guilfoyle |
| Pages | 191-194 |
191
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A PROBATION OFFICER'S BRIEF REFLECTIONS ON
TWENTY YEARS OF REHABILITATIVE
TRANSFORMATION
Mike Guilfoyle, former Probation Officer and Associate Member of Napo
In the autumn of 1990 I vividly recall my introductory visit to the probation office in No rth
London that was to become the crucible in which my twenty year career as a probation
officer was launched. The modern office block that housed the probation team was
adjacent to an even newer Magistrates’ Court, 'the palace of justice', opined the avuncular
Assistant Chief Probation Officer, during my orientation week. I was slowly but
methodically inducted into what appeared at the time an almost quasi-masonic
occupational rite of passage, the richly grounded foundations of probation practice, the
working credos of individual practitioners and Jarvis shaped procedural requirements,
unfolded by my probation colleagues. My allocated generi c supervision team compr ised a
disparate but highly skilled and vastly experienced team of practit ioners whose congruent
value base offered a nuanced balancing of the thorny tension evinced by the thread of
supervisory care and control neatly mesh ed with my emerging probation identity. Having
undertaken a post-graduate Certificate of Qualification in Social Work and immers ed
myself in the lore of social work practice, in mental hea lth and child protection field
placements, I had secured to my unexpected delight a placement in a field team in South
London which specialised in pre-sentence reports - then known as social enquiry reports.
However I still felt professionally ill-equipped to handle the multiple casework challenges
that were associated with a community that, in most resp ects, had all the textbook
characteristics of Inner London's social deprivation and indicative levels of crime and
disorder.
British Journal of Community Justice
©2013 Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield
ISSN 1475-0279
Vol. 11(2-3): 191-194
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