In a new report, Resilience, wellbeing and sustainability in women-led probation service delivery: Exploring the ‘Women’s Lead’ role, the experiences of female probation staff responsible for the supervision of women at KSS CRC were explored. Using a mix of interviews with 12 staff, and survey data with 13 staff, the research produced several major findings shining important light on this markedly under-researched area.
The uniqueness of supervising women
Working with women on probation saw a number of gender-specific challenges. One of which concerned the general incompatibility of trauma-informed practice with offence-focused practice. Women, and specifically traumatised women, were said to require a more empathetic and discursive approach when it came to probation work. This often sat at odds with the more structured and task orientated nature of offence-focused work – of note, work more typical in the supervision of men.
“I think there’s a lot of emphasis now on doing structured work and evidence, and I find that really frustrating because when a woman comes in I actually find that a conversation is better… with the women’s level of complexity, structured work only [scratches] at the top layer”
Pertinent too was the time taken for working with women. Women were said to be more reliant on staff, have more involvement with other services and agencies, and generally took longer to arrive at change because of everything else they were (mentally and emotionally) carrying with them. Moreover, women were also more likely to be primary care-givers, meaning difficulties for supervising staff when it came to dealing with missed appointments due to childcare reasons. Though staff endeavoured to work in flexible ways to accommodate this, it often engendered a level of internal dissonance when it came to enforcement.
“When you’ve got the woman that’s on the Order, there isn’t anyone else to look after the kids, and enforcement’s going to be detrimental… so it’s that added stress there. What happens to the children?”
