DCS Staff Benefit From Life Skills Training

Thirty-five Department of Correctional Services (DCS) employees have benefited from life skills training aimed at building the entity’s capacity to better interact with and intervene in the lives of juvenile offenders.

The four-day training-of-trainers virtual workshop, which took place last month, included staff at the Metcalfe Street and South Camp juvenile remand and correctional centres in Kingston, Hilltop Juvenile Correctional Centre in St. Ann, and Rio Cobre Juvenile Correctional Centre in St. Catherine.

The MultiCare Youth Foundation (MYF) conducted the sessions, which covered the globally renowned Passport-to-Success™ (PTS) life skills training system developed by the International Youth Foundation. The curriculum aims to prepare young people for the world of work.

Director of Juvenile Services at DCS, Claudeth Hamilton, told JIS News that the life skills training was conducted as part of a partnership with the ‘We Transform’ programme, a youth development and transformation initiative being implemented through the Ministry of National Security (MNS).

“The programme is geared towards reducing offending and reoffending among at-risk youth, and primarily targets youth within the care and supervision of the DCS, providing them, in addition to life skills training, mentorship and psychosocial intervention, amongst other things,” she noted.

She said the DCS is optimistic that equipping personnel in the PTS curriculum, “will help to promote positive change, primarily in the lives of our youth in custody, but also to strengthen the skill sets of our staff to act as agents of change”.

She said that the training-of-trainer model “creates a pool of life skills trainers and coaches within the correctional institutions “who will positively impact institutional sustainability and will, hopefully, contribute to the larger national objective of reducing crime and recidivism among the youth”.

Trainers and coaches will be evaluated in terms on their effectiveness, leading to certification.

MYF Executive Director, Alicia Glasgow Gentles, for her part, said that “PTS equips young people with a range of skills that help them acquire the education, professional skills, employment-readiness and confidence they need to succeed in life and the workplace”.

“It is expected to assist in the rehabilitation of the targeted youth in remand and help with their reintegration into Jamaican society,” she added.

She noted that life skills or “soft skills” training is one of the key activities under the National Core Partners Youth Crime and Violence Prevention Programme, being implemented through FHI 360 with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The Youth Crime and Violence Prevention Programme is a 26-month initiative involving collaboration among MYF, the Peace Management Initiative and the Violence Prevention Alliance.

It aims to provide a wide range of social interventions for the benefit of young men between the ages of 15 and 29 years who are assessed as being at medium and/or high risk of involvement in crime and violence.