probation officer

im looking at the national careers service and i think that being a probation officer is worth it. if you are one you know someone who is one, what are your/their experiences?

Hi there,
The experiences of others can help to shape your understanding of some of the realities of being a Probation Officer, but you should ask yourself, what motivates or inspires you to follow this specific path. When you say it is "worth it", what exactly do you mean?
Working as a Probation Officer can be a very demanding and mostly thankless role. You are required to motivate challenging and often resistant individuals to engage in offence focused work, balancing this against identifying and responding to both their needs and risks. You are required to have a good understanding of the theory of desistance, which is embedded in the role, as you need to consider the social and environmental context of individuals lives, as well as explore their strengths, to assist them in ceasing offending behaviour. You have competing deadlines; formulating risk assessments, housing and other referrals, progress reports, multi-agency liaison, organising and delivering interventions... and working with human behaviour in unpredictable, so sometimes, you will often have to abandon what you had intended to achieve, in order to deal with something more pressing you had not anticipated. This is where having an array of skills is extremely beneficial.
Being a Probation Officer can be an incredibly rewarding role and you can support people to make substantive changes to their lives, although, this might not be true for everyone that you were to work with. At times, you have to focus on smaller, more manageable goals with individuals, and reflect on something which you helped them to do differently compared to previous sentences under Probation. You have to be someone that is resilient, as you are dealing with individuals who can present in crisis, who lack stability, who have vulnerability to mental health conditions, substance misuse issues or experiences of trauma, all of which might manifest in how they approach and manage in sessions. It is perhaps not acknowledged enough, but there is significant emotional labour that comes from absorbing that.
My advice would be to get some volunteering experience working with individuals in the CJS. Look at charities that provide peer support or accommodation, and most substance misuse agencies recruit volunteers. I think that this would give you not only a good foundation for any application for Probation, but also insight into the practicalities of what elements of the role would be.
Hope this helps somewhat, but happy to try and answer any specific questions you might have.

i think its worth it because of the pay and the role itself. can you get promoted up from a probation services officer to a probation officer or do you have to apply for a separate role?

Not quite... as the role of a Probation Officer requires a specialist qualification.
As a Probation Service Officer, you can apply to qualify as a Probation Officer and at present, there are two avenues; an internal progression route, or via the PQiP training programme.

ok. whats the internal progression route?

It still involves you having to obtain the professional qualification, but I believe that it was primarily introduced to support existing Probation Service Officers that did not hold a Level 5 qualification, which PQiP required. PQiP entry requirements have recently changed and you no longer require a degree to apply.

yeah i know, you can hold a level 3 qualification and still apply but youd need to spend more time on the PQiP. how do i become a senior probation officer?

By first becoming a Probation Officer and then applying for internal and external vacancies for a Senior Probation Officer position... once you have acquired enough experience.