PSA Delegates and staff met with Corrective Services NSW (CNSW) on Friday 18 November 2022. Discussion centered around the proposal to have Assessment and Planning Officers (APO) report to the Senior Case Management Officer instead of to the Education Services Coordinator (ESC). The matters raised were:

• changes to ESC role
• increases to SCMO’s work load
• changes to the management of education programs.

CSNSW advised it was not able to answer any of the questions asked about the changes to ESC, SCMO and APO roles in any substantial way as they were “too specific” for this meeting. However, CSNSW did acknowledge it needed to better understand these roles and the work undertaken by Education and CMU members in correctional centers.

The PSA reiterated that the scant information provided to members was causing significant psychological distress – especially this close to Christmas holidays. In response CSNSW emphasised no-one would lose their job in this realignment and that the intention is to build on the good work already being done by members in Education and CMU. The PSA also stressed that members feel that these changes and the lack of information presented are a criticism of their efforts and hard work. CSNSW acknowledged it needs to get its messaging right and better communicate its longer-term intensions to members regarding this realignment. It also accepted that the change process so far had caused a great deal stress and anxiety to staff. CSNSW then stated the working groups were created to better understand the complexities of the work people do and it needed to learn more.

As part of the next phase of this process, CSNSW will meet with all Education and CMU staff to gain a better understanding of the different roles. CSNSW also advised it would do more to communicate with members and that everything didn’t need to be finalized within the next three weeks before the 19 December deadline. CSNSW acknowledged that as a whole, the change process is quite complex.

Accordingly, Jen Galouzis, Assistant Commissioner Strategy and Policy and Luke Grant, Deputy Commissioner Strategy & Governance are to meet with Education staff the week beginning 21 November 2022 to examine Education work roles in detail. PSA will meet with the CSNSW again to follow up after this meeting.

CSNSW will be meeting with PSA to discuss other members affected by this latest restructure:

• Psychologists on 25th November at 3:00pm
• SAPOs/SAPTLs & MOSPs on 2nd December at 11:30am
• Sentence Administrations & Classification on 9th December at 1:00pm
• S&I, OPM, Continuous Improvement and Head Office on 14th December ay 3:00pm.