We have committed to fund a portion of this work ourselves, to be carried out by WestEd's Justice and Prevention Research Center. We're seeking additional assistance to round out the workload study, and would be interested in discussing a collaboration between NTTAC, WestEd and Sonoma County Probation to strengthen the project, make it most useful for organizing and prioritizing our work, and hopefully be of use to others struggling with the similar challenges.
Sonoma County Probation envisions a workload study for Adult and Juvenile Probation. This will inform caseload configuration and staffing allocations, and hopefully can contribute to the research on what it takes to do effective, evidence-based supervision.
Recent legislation in California shortens probation terms and is already beginning to reduce numbers of probationers in Adult – we have seen a reduction of 300-400 cases. Another new California law eliminates supervision fees in Adult (we eliminated fees in Juvenile a couple years ago, a bit ahead of legislation that required it). While the law is good policy that prevents further impoverishing those already at a disadvantage, it also means a reduction in revenue that could impact staffing. And we continue to struggle with the age-old complaint that adding things like assessments, case plans, EPICS and Motivational Interviewing on top of everything else makes an unmanageable workload. So we’re very interested in learning what it takes to do the work that effective supervision requires, and how to configure caseloads and staff them in a way that supports the proper level of supervision, case coordination and rehabilitative services.
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