Probation Service Officer

Descriptions & requirements

Helping to keep the public safe. Giving people the chance to turn their lives around. Building a rewarding professional career. There are many reasons to join the Probation Service. What will yours be?
We’re looking for empathetic, patient, and organised people to join us in this varied role, which offers the chance to make a difference, gain new skills and build a rewarding career within the Probation Service.
If you are successful in the recruitment process to join the Probation Service, your starting salary will be £28,064, Pro-Rata for Part-Time roles.

Probation services officers can help make a real difference to peoples’ lives. It’s not always easy to help someone turn their life around, but it can be immensely rewarding. We’re looking for empathetic, patient and resilient people to join us as probation services officers. As well as making a difference to others, the role offers plenty of on-the-job training and a real chance to build a career in the Probation Service.

As a PSO, you’ll have a similar job to a fully qualified probation officer. The main difference is you’ll work with medium and lower risk people of probation. That’s not to say it’ll be easy. There’s no doubt this is a challenging role. Day-to-day, you’ll manage a caseload of offenders before and after sentence. We’ll look to you to assess and manage risks, provide information to courts and work closely with agencies throughout the justice system.

You’ll also do everything you can to support offenders. This could involve everything from providing practical advice about housing and employment to simply listening and empathising.

You don’t need a degree for this role. We’re much more interested in your personal qualities. Ideally with experience of working with people who have social or personal difficulties, you’ll be empathetic, patient and resilient. Good writing skills are also essential. You must be able to produce clear and accurate reports to tight deadlines.

Where applicants provide multiple location preferences, reserve lists will be managed in accordance with location preference/s, as indicated in your application. We will appoint in merit list order for each location outlined in the vacancy and hold a separate locational reserve list for each of these locations. After appointments have been made using this locational appointment process, any remaining candidates who met the benchmark for the role will remain on a locational reserve list in accordance with their preferences for 12 months.

Please only indicate preferences where you are prepared to work. If you are subsequently offered a role from the reserve list for a location preference indicated in your application and decline it, you will be removed from the reserve list for the vacancy, across all locational preferences. All offers of employment will be made strictly in merit order, based on your performance throughout the recruitment process.

Candidates at the top of the merit list will be offered vacancies as they arise in their chosen locations.

The addresses listed in the job advertisement are not an exhaustive list of potential base locations, they give an indication of some of the potential locations you could be based at.

We will therefore endeavour to offer you a vacancy within a 60-minute commute of your home location.

New entrants to the Civil Service will be expected to join at the entry point salary for the advertised band.

Existing Civil Servants will have their salary calculated in accordance with the Departments pay on transfer / pay on promotion rules.

Due to the length of this recruitment campaign, we will endeavour to inform you of your outcome following the interview. Successful…