THE PROJECT TRAINED NEW TRAINERS FOR PENAL AND POST-PENAL CARE WORKERS

The EU funded project “Improving capacities of the prison administration in the area of alternative sanctions, post penal care and penal healthcare” organized during July and August 2020 a training for basic trainer skills training for workers in field of penal and post penal treatment.

The three-day training course was attended by 21 trainees divided in three groups:

    -      From the 22^nd – 31^st of July, six representatives of organizations working in the field of post-penal support throughout Serbia completed the training. The trainees will further prepare others who work with this type of organizations to work with the Administration for Execution of Penitentiary Sanctions

    -      From the 17^th – 21^st of August nine representatives of County Prisons, Penal Correctional Facilities and Special Prison Hospital completed the course. These representatives of Penal correctional facilities, in charge of working with convicts though programmes directed towards positive behavioral changes while in prison, will prepare their colleagues for implementation of a new release programmes and programmes for reducing damages of narcotics and spreading sexually transmitted and blood-borne diseases and tuberculosis;   

    -     The third group, from the 19^th – 24^th of August was dedicated to six trustees in charge of monitoring non-institutional sanctions who will train their colleagues for implementation of a new programme for treatment of convicts on house arrests with or without electronic monitoring.

The first day of the training was dedicated to theoretic knowledge in terms of the basic principles for creating a training curriculum and methodologies for implementing it, basic principles of adult learning and advice for successful communication. On the second day of the course the trainings had the opportunity to gain practical knowledge by working in groups to complete concrete tasks given to them. The focus on the third day was on the process of creating a training course, phases of implementation and evaluation as a useful mechanism for the training development. The project’s team of trainers developed a Manual designed to provide support to these new trainers. 

Given the situation with the COVID 19 epidemics, in order to implement this activity respecting health safety measures, the project team developed a methodology for online training, and the course for all three groups was carried out successfulTo deal with the confinement and restrictions caused by the coronavirus, the Project has had to discover new ways to deliver some of the activities. In particular, the requirement to train trainers in the delivery of specialised training programmes has been a particular challenge. However, using some of the more recent systems such as Google Meet has been very successful. In the last 2 months’ local expert on the project has been delivering train the trainer programmes to staff of the Prisons Administration and the NGO community.  Although the impact of the coronavirus has been devastating there have been new initiatives that have developed as a result”, said Chris Frost, Team Leader of the project.

Training for trainers, as a part of project activities, is designed to give a foundation for further implementation of activities aiming to train and prepare staff working in the area of penal and post-penal care in terms of new programmes of the Administration for Execution of Penal Sanctions.