Maghaberry Prison

Staff Training

The staff training team at Maghaberry consists of a training manager (principal officer), two senior officers and an administrative officer. The team is responsible for all aspects of staff training at Maghaberry and is clearly focussed on achieving the minimum of 5 days training per member of staff per year.

Maghaberry is an Investors in People organisation and as such its training philosophy revolves around four main areas: commitment, planning, action and evaluation. Training at the establishment begins with communicating the commitment message and demonstrating that commitment. How? By getting people out of the workplace and into training. The planning process begins by looking at the organisational needs - mandatory training - and then team and individual needs. The latter two are identified on Personal Development Plans (PDP) completed by each member of staff in conjunction with their line manager every year. Tha PDP is amended throughout the year to reflect changes in role or duties.

Each year a training needs analysis, incorporating staff PDPS, is conducted throughout the establishment and from this the overall training requirement is identified and prioritised. To facilitate the delivery of this training, a training week is timetabled into every officer's work pattern. In the training week staff undertake equal opportunities, control and restraint, hostage awareness, suicide awareness, report writing and fire safety training. As soon as staff complete the training week the evaluation begins and any improvements identified are incorporated into the programme. The staff training week applies to all officers and auxiliary officers.

For senior officers there is a weekly one day training session to address areas such as Code of Conduct and Discipline, interviewing staff and on the management of absenteeism. For principal officers and governors an afternoon is set aside each week to allow for training, briefings or brainstorming.