Probation Officer

Sophie (Probation Officer): You have a really special opportunity to make a difference in people's lives and to support them in making some changes.

Voiceover: Meet Sophie and Jamie, probation officers for the Department of Corrections

Sophie: Our main goal is to reduce reoffending. Whether that be through working with your probation officer or the referrals that we do to other community agencies or our departmental programmes. That is our passion and that is our main goal at the end of the day.

Voiceover: By being focused on the reduction of reoffending the team makes sure communities remain safe and those are on Probation get the help they need. This also means they're not just spending their entire day behind a desk.

Sophie: We conduct interviews with people, write up reports, do all the risk assessments, things like that. We can go down to court as well, cause we are involved with pre-sentence reports so we write those as probation officers. We conduct home visits as well. We go to the other agencies and have whānau huis and things like that with them. We run tikanga programmes so once a month we'll end up going to a marae and being part of the induction process with our people.

There's a lot of iwi organisations which we have really close relationships with. We have youth specific agencies that we work with as well.

Voiceover: They work with all kinds of people: prison staff, psychologists, and community work supervisors; judges, lawyers, electronic monitoring staff, core community leaders and, of course, people on probation and their families.

Jamie: Each day is not like the day before because you get different people with different cases, different needs, different experiences, different histories, different backgrounds. You get to work with a team. You're always part of a wider family, so to speak. You're never solo thinking, never solo working. You're very much part of a team.

Sophie: Building relationships with the people in our care. Building that rapport, whakawhanaungatanga, that's really important.

Jamie: It's also being in an opportunity, being in a position, to be able to grow people, so they not only keep their community safe, but they themselves are safe.

Voiceover: Being resilient, strong communicators and analytical thinkers are all important in the probation team.

Sophie: I was a youth worker, so I worked for a non-government agency and working with youth. That is my passion, youth. I love working with youth.

Jamie: I have been involved in community development,both New Zealand and international. I've been conference-centre management, marketing, public relations, and fundraising. Hindsight is a marvellous thing, and it's great to know that all these things that I have learned over the past 30, 40 years are now coming to fruition and making a positive difference in people's lives now.

Voiceover: The job can be challenging at times, but the team works to keep each other safe, with systems in place to handle any potential risks.

Sophie: I think you really need to know yourself and know your boundaries. We don't have to do anything that we don't think is safe.

Jamie: We know that not every case is a success, not everyone can capture your idealism, your vision, your passion for where you want them to go.

Sophie: You know, we're dealing with people and we're dealing with real lives and we're also dealing with, like, legal situations so things can pop up randomly. And you have to be able to adapt.

Voiceover: Working together, they have clear goals in mind, keeping the community safe and making a difference.

Jamie: There are certain days and certain events that just leaves you on top of the world. When you know you've succeeded with someone, when you've seen a change in someone's life, their family or whoever have said, look, we've seen a change, a turnaround in his attitude or whatever the case may be. That's exciting.

Sophie: I had one person and we put him through drug rehab and so it had been the first time that he had been clean since he was a teenager, really young. And just working with him and listening to him speak about how it's the first time in his life that he ever felt proud of himself… That was really powerful, really, really powerful.

Voiceover: As a probation officer they really do make lives better and you could too.