Home : Care & Rehabilitation : Work & Vocational Training
The Irish Prison Service places a strong emphasis on the provision of work and training activities for prisoners.
Training activities are chosen to give as much employment as possible for those in prison and to give opportunities to acquire skills which will help them secure employment on their release. There are a wide range of training workshops operating within the institutions, e.g., metalwork, printing, computers, braille, woodwork, construction, industrial contract cleaning, craft, horticulture, electronics, etc. In addition, the work and training function comprehends such essential services as catering and laundry services and the environmental waste management programme and the health and safety function also operate under the aegis of the work and training service. External accreditation of certified training is available for a number of courses run within the institutions.
The Work Training Service is comprised of an authorised complement of over 250 posts. There are over 90 workshops operating, actively catering for over 800 prisoners each day which represents approximately 30% of the daily sentenced prisoner population.
We are also planning for 21st century work training facilities in Thornton hall to provide vocational skills to upwards of 700 prisoners each day on that campus.
It is important that we train our prisoners, where possible, to certified levels of achievement to match the qualifications required in the community for jobs. While we do have a number of courses in place which are externally accredited (such as laundry skills by the Guild of Launderers and Cleaners, Chef courses by City and Guilds, etc.), we are aiming to significantly increase the number of such courses over the coming years. To this end we continue to work with FETAC to develop an appropriate quality assurance system to underpin the certification of a range of additional courses.
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