SFJ Awards · RQF Level 5
SFJ Awards Level 5 Diploma In Probation Practice
You don’t just earn this. You learn to use it, one-to-one, on your own real work.
- LevelRQF Level 5
- Total credits46
- Guided learning302 hours
- Units in this qualification16
Awarded by SFJ Awards · on the Ofqual register
Start here
See how this course maps onto your role
Ten quick questions, one per Future Fluency, asked against this qualification rather than a generic one.
About 5 minutes · No card · Nothing to commit to
What you’ll learn
What each unit actually teaches you to do
These are the units SFJ Awards registers against this qualification. It is a catalogue, not a syllabus. Which of them you take depends on the combination the qualification requires, and that is set by the awarding body rather than by us. Every unit here is regulated, and every one you earn is yours to keep.
Assess and act upon immediate risk of danger to substance usersReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the factors involved in dealing with substance misuse
- Assess the risks involved in incidences of substance misuse
- Provide an intervention to manage the immediate risk of danger to the individual
- Provide support to individuals after the immediate risk of danger from substance misuse has passed
Assess individuals’ offending behaviour to develop sentence proposalsReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the principles that underpin the assessment of high risk associated with offending behaviour
- Identify risk factors and protective factors that contribute to an individual’s offending behaviour based on assessment of information gathered
- Understand legal and organisational requirements relating to proposals for sentencing or release
- Develop proposals for sentencing or release plans
- Prepare reports to inform sentencing or release decisions
Communicate effectively with peopleReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand how to communicate with people
- Understand how to maintain the security of information in communications with people
- Communicate with people
Contribute to the improvement of team workingReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the principles that underpin effective team working
- Plan team working
- Contribute to the improvement of team working
Develop effective working relationships with staff from other agenciesReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand relevant legal and organisational requirements
- Understand the principles of joint working between different agencies
- Maintain effective working relationships with staff in other agencies
Develop own knowledge, skills and competenceReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the principles that underpin maintaining and developing own knowledge, skills and competence
- Maintain and develop own knowledge, skills and competence
Develop risk management plans that address high risk of serious harm posed by individualsReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the principles of developing risk management plans
- Assess the risk of harm posed by individuals
- Review with the individual the areas of risk and associated factors to be addressed
- Develop risk management plans that address identified risk factors for individuals
Enable individuals to understand and address their difficultiesReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the needs of individuals experiencing difficulties
- Provide opportunities that enable individuals to understand their difficulties and identify options for change
- Support individuals to take positive action to address their difficulties
Manage abusive and aggressive behaviourReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand how to manage abusive and aggressive behaviour
- Understand the forms, causes and effects of abusive and aggressive behaviour
- Deal with incidents of abusive and aggressive behaviour
- Review incidents of abusive and aggressive behaviour
Manage integrated interventions and support to address the offending behaviour of individualsReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the principles that underpin management of integrated interventions and support
- Communicate with individuals about the interventions and support they need
- Plan integrated interventions and support to meet individual’s needs
- Monitor and review the effectiveness of integrated interventions and support
Obtain information relating to individuals’ offending behaviourReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the principles that underpin obtaining information relating to individuals’ offending behaviour
- Plan the obtaining of information about the behaviour of individuals who present a high risk of serious harm to the public
- Gather information from individuals about their offending behaviour and circumstances
- Gather information from third parties about the offending behaviour and circumstances of individuals
- Record and communicate information relating to the offending behaviour and circumstances of individuals
Promote and reinforce pro-social behaviour during relationships with individualsReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the principles and techniques of pro-social modelling
- Promote and facilitate behavioural change
- Review the effectiveness of behaviour change with individuals
Promote equality and value diversityReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the key features of a culture which promotes equality and values diversity
- Understand the importance of the promotion of equality and valuing of diversity for effective work in the sector
- Demonstrate behaviour appropriate to the promotion of equality and valuing of diversity
- Support others in the promotion of equality and valuing of diversity
- Review own contribution to promoting equality and valuing diversity
Represent the organisation at formal hearingsReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the principles and procedures underpinning representing the organisation at formal hearings
- Exchange information at formal hearings
- Present reports at formal hearings
Respond to indications of substance misuseReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand relevant legislation and organisational requirements in relation to substance misuse
- Understand strategies for working with specialists to support individuals engaging in substance misuse
- Determine the need for specialist support for individuals engaging in substance misuse
- Plan and monitor the referral of individuals with indications of substance misuse to specialists
Supervise sentences in the communityReal unit · SFJ Awards
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the principles that underpin the supervision of sentences in the community
- Plan the supervision of individuals serving sentences in the community
- Supervise individuals serving sentences in the community
- Enable individuals to sustain their behaviour change
- Enforce court orders and statutory licences
- Monitor and review the progress of individuals serving sentences in the community
The honest bit
You’ve started things before
Most courses were built for a room full of people who aren’t you. A cohort moves on whether or not your week allowed it, and by the third week the thing you’re behind on becomes the reason you stop opening it.
There’s no cohort here, and no timetable to fall behind. Before anything starts, Zavmo asks when you’re sharpest and how long you can realistically sit down for, then builds the sessions around those answers. A bad fortnight changes your pace. It doesn’t put you behind.
And you only pay once you start learning. Searching and planning are free, and you can cancel any time — so the cost of finding out is an afternoon, not a year.
Your passport
Every credit is a stamp you keep
Level 5 credits are regulated. They don’t vanish when a subscription ends or a website closes. They travel to any employer, and Zavmo keeps the map of what you’ve earned and what’s next.
Each stamp is a real unit registered against this qualification.
Who’d teach you this
The Evidence Evaluator
Assessor
Helps you show what you can actually do, gathering the evidence that proves it as you learn.
Meet all twelve tutorsWhere this connects
Where these credits take you
A qualification is never a dead end here. See the jobs its credits open, the national occupational standards its units map to, and the future skills they quietly build.
- Assess and act upon immediate risk of danger to individuals who have used alcohol and other substances
- Assess and formulate an individual’s needs for forensic mental health treatment and care
- Assess, diagnose and formulate an individual’s mental health disorder
- Assist individuals at formal hearings
- Contribute to the supervision and enforcement of low to medium risk offenders serving sentences in the community
- Deliver Evidence-Based Intervention Programmes
- Develop and Manage Multi-Agency Partnerships
- Develop and review an integrated care programme for an individual in forensic mental health care
Skills it covers
What the job actually needs. These are the standards the units are built against, in the words employers and awarding bodies already use for the work itself.
How you’ll actually learn this
One-to-one, on your own real work
A qualification is usually something done to you: sit the class, sit the exam, hope it sticks. Here it’s the opposite. You learn it one-to-one with a companion, on your own real work, and you keep going until you can use it, not just recall it.
Applied to your own work
- Remember
- Understand
- Apply
- Analyse
- Evaluate
- Create
Built for SFJ Awards Level 5 Diploma In Probation Practice
16 units in this credential, in the order it lists them, awarded by SFJ Awards.
- Assess and act upon immediate risk of danger to substance users
- Assess individuals’ offending behaviour to develop sentence proposals
- Communicate effectively with people
- Contribute to the improvement of team working
- Develop effective working relationships with staff from other agencies
- Develop own knowledge, skills and competence
and 10 more in the full unit list below.
One to one, not one to many
No two people run this the same way
A course is written once and handed to everyone. This is assembled around you, and keeps changing as it learns you. Five things it reads, and what each one changes.
- Your actual work Every unit is taught against a live piece of your own work, not a worked example from a textbook.
- What you already know The first conversation finds your starting point, so you skip what you can already do and spend the time on what you cannot.
- The conditions you learn under Not a learning-styles quiz. The evidence does not support those. The dimensions the research does back, read once and used to shape the plan.
- How far you got last time It picks up mid-thought. The tutor knows what you said, what you struggled with, and what it asked you to try.
- Which tutor suits the moment Twelve of them, each for a different kind of thinking. The one who walks you through a first idea is not the one who stress-tests it.
See how you learn, free. Eight questions, no sign-up. A directional taster; the diagnostic inside Zavmo goes deeper and keeps adapting.
Why it sticks
Most courses stop at remembering
There’s a well-known ladder of how deeply you learn something, called Bloom’s Taxonomy. Most courses get you up the first two rungs: you remember some facts, you pass a test, you forget it. Real skill lives at the top. Judging, deciding, creating. And this isn’t a generic ladder: every rung has a named Zavmo tutor who walks you up it.
- 6CreateThe Creative Catalyst
- 5EvaluateThe Evidence Evaluator
- 4AnalyseThe Analyst
- 3ApplyThe Coach
- 2UnderstandThe Connector
- 1RememberThe Builder
Where most courses leave you Where Zavmo takes you
The value
Why the companion is worth £70 a month
You’re not paying for the units. They’re regulated, and the same wherever you earn them. You’re paying for the one thing that decides whether you actually get there: a companion that makes them stick, on your real work.
That is one-to-one on this qualification, every day, on the work you already do, for £70 a month. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it. Billed monthly, cancel any time and billing stops.
Earned on your own work, taught to the top.
Everything you just read, learned one-to-one on the job you already do. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it.
Build my plan, freeNo card. See how this qualification maps onto your role and meet the tutors who’d teach it, free. The learning begins when you subscribe. It’s £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.