‘Indifference,resistance,possibility: Probation staff perspectives on the introduction of Professional Registration’: A practitioner's response

Abstract

This article is a response to Millings, Burke, Annison and colleagues' article ‘Indifference, resistance, possibility: Probation staff perspectives on the introduction of Professional Registration’. Based on findings from the 3-year Rehabilitating Probation research project, Millings, Burke and colleagues focus specifically on staff responses to probation Professional Registration (PR) and draw attention to seeming ambivalence in relation to this. In response, this article seeks to consider why, at a point in time when probation identity feels particularly precarious given the structural changes imposed as part of One HMPPS, PR is not being received more positively as something which will bolster probation professional status. Reflecting on some of the key proponents of probation identity and culture and the impact of repeated structural change, these factors are considered utilising ‘the Tavistock approach’ of systems-psychodynamics, enabling reflection on the unconscious aspects of probation organisational membership with a view to making sense of and validating staff experiences and responses to PR.