 Okay, I'm here and we're here with a collaborative project, WIT, Waterford Institute of Technology and the Irish Prison Service. Our project is entitled Every Contact Counts, The Higher Certificate in Custodial Care, Building Teaching and Learning Capacity. So just to go through some of the aims of our project. The aim of our project is to build teaching capacity and create a sustainable community of practice for the teaching and learning on our prison officer education program, The Higher Certificate in Custodial Care or the HCCC for short. It's a new bespoke program that breaks new terrain and it involves an interdisciplinary teaching team involving third level educators and lecturers and also Irish Prison Service tutors who are experienced prison officers who have gone on to teach prison officers. What we'd like to do is to build a team cohesion and build confidence in our teaching team. At the moment there is a lot of informal sharing of learning and because we have quite varied experiences and backgrounds between WIT and the Irish Prison Service, we'd like to formalize this process and this project will allow us to do so. We'd also positive like to impact on the learner experience through building the capacity of our teaching team. And finally we'd like to empower our learners, which is our students, to engage in lifelong learning and personal development throughout their career and working lives. I'm going to pass you over to Colin to discuss the role of the prison officer. Thank you, Julie. I suppose first and foremost to speak about the role of a prison officer, we don't have to speak in the convention centre anyway. First of all, it's a very complex role, very unfounded role and a lot of people don't know about my role. What I would do with a general day-to-day basis, because the community we deal with is the people that are known as the people that are behind the wall and we deal with them and we deal with them through safe and secure environments within the walls of a prison. And as well as that, part of my role is to care and rehabilitate that person. So to come back into the community there, to decide in itself, is a better place as well. Me personally, I haven't been in academic learning for about 19 years now. So, academically I wouldn't come into this job in the history of the sea. I wouldn't have done a whole lot of academic learning. So the varied role between each student within my class was very varied between third level and leaving cert. So the challenges I would personally have within the Lancaster of Care is that I'm from Clare, I have three children, I work in Dublin, I've overtime and I have college work. So time management and etc. I travel, it's quite complex as well as my daily job. So there are many challenges that I face as well. But going forward, the history of the sea does enable me to better my role within the prison environment. And I'll hand you over to Cahler. So just to explain a little bit about the page triple C or the Higher Certificate in Custodial Care. It's a two-year programme, it's a new bespoke programme delivered jointly between Waterford IT and the Irish Prison Service since 2017. There are currently 244 students on the programme and we anticipate registering 200 students a year for the next six years in line with the significant recruitment drive within the Irish Prison Service at the moment. It's very much a work-based programme with a lot of work-based learning. It's delivered through a blended learning format. We're quite an interdisciplinary team. There's over 30 staff involved in delivering the programme at the moment. From the WIT perspective, that's lecturers from varied backgrounds from social care, criminal justice, law, healthcare, sociology, psychology and management. And as well as that, there are Irish Prison Service tutors who are themselves professional prison officers and they are seconded into delivering the programme for a period of time as well. It's underpinned by philosophy of reflective practice and one of the key aims of the programme is to instill a practice of systemic evaluation within the prison officers. It's a two-year programme over four semesters. The first semester is a residential-based programme between the Irish Prison Service College in Port Leish and Weedfield Training College. While semesters two, three and four are delivered exclusively by WIT staff in a Dublin-based venue for the rest of the programme. In terms of what we want to deliver from every contact counts, our main aim is to provide professional development opportunities for the staff delivering on the programme. That way we want to build team cohesion and capacity in delivering on the programme and by evaluating their needs and delivering opportunities tailored to their needs. We also want to deliver accessible resources to both current staff and students and future staff and students. That really ties with the core aim of every contact count is that we want to create, sustainability is really a core aim of what we want to do. By the nature of the programme, our lecturers come in and out of the programme. There's a natural degree of turnover there while the Irish Prison Service tutors are candid into the programme for a period of time. We really want to try and make sure that all the teaching and learning expertise and experience that is brought into the programme stays within the programme. By providing accessible resources for staff and students we hope to do that. We also want to develop induction packages both for staff and students coming into the programme as well. We also want to deliver and develop a model of sustainability for the programme going forward. As well as that because it is a blended learning programme, we also want to develop a sustainable technology enhanced community of practice then as well and develop confidence and skills in our staff and students in engaging and delivering a blended learning programme. Finally, we also want to develop collaborative links between ourselves and Norway in prison officer education. The reason I mentioned Norway is because they are world leaders international best practice in prison service delivery and in prison officer education as well. We want to build upon links that are already there between ourselves and our Norwegian partners. I'll pass you on to Finula. Go about it. Initially the first phase of the project is to do a skills needs analysis. As Carl was saying, we have up to 30 staff delivering on it. The forum has identified four different types of learning. You have leading, mentoring, consolidating, learning, new learning. People are on different phases of that spectrum in terms of their blended, in terms of reflective practice whether they have engaged with that previously. What we want to look at is where people coming from to identify a skills needs analysis tool to use that, to implement that and find out what our lecturers feel that their needs are and our tutors. Then to include students with that, Collins, a class rep, we now have quite small groups coming through between 18 and 24 students and each one of those groups has a class rep. So we have 12 class reps currently and each of the groups coming through will have class reps. If that's, I suppose, they have self-selected as Colin and others don't like the word champion, but to associates that they would be representative then on the project. But I suppose being realistic in terms of the amount of people delivering what we would hope, and I have in phase two, the identifying of T and L associates, that if we got three or four students, if we got three or four members of Irish prison service staff and three or four members of WIT staff to sign up for a learning contract, that they would then create, be those persons, be those associates that we could start with sustainability. We're obviously at a kind of younger phase in our projects and the other ones I've listened to this morning, where they're following on. So really what we want to try and do is to begin this community of practice by identifying who those associates are. So for example, I deliver on a learning to learn module that I could create a portfolio of resources both online and in the classroom that I could give to somebody else who comes in to deliver that and they won't be at the same point I was when I came on the program. So the phase one, identifying the needs, phase two, planning and implementation, that idea of looking at international best practice, there isn't a consensus internationally on how we train prison service staff. So looking at how they're doing it elsewhere, looking at how, excuse me, how we can, I mean, we have a duty of care, you can hear from the numbers. There was a moratorium in the Irish prison service for 10 years, nobody was hired. So this is an opportunity now to create a cultural shift to move towards a philosophy of lifelong learning. Also towards digitization. The system, how did you describe to me yesterday, Colin, when I had been in Midlands prison and looking at clothes and every prisoner's clothes and how that's documented and stored. And it is like out of Hogwarts, there is a huge book. But there is a computer beside the book. And what were you telling me is the rationale for keeping the book beside the computer? Do you want to? Do you report generations, I would think? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And yesterday you were describing that if the book got up and walked out the door, or at least if the computer got up and walked out the door, the book couldn't follow it. So you know that kind of resistance that people described earlier exists, obviously, in every domain of life, and it certainly exists in the prison service. So that we have an opportunity now to switch to a digitization within the service by embedding that in the training in the HCCC. Looking certainly we would love to create links with Norway to share some teaching resources and practice. That would be brilliant if that happened down the line. Creating links there. And evaluation and planning. And I know we come to that part later in terms of asking students now what their experience is, asking them afterwards what is your experience now? I'm going to hand over to Julie just to talk a little bit about who that student is. Thank you. So we have two types of learners. We obviously have our tutors and our lecturers, but then we have our student learners. And just to give you an idea about who they are, they are not really traditional entrants into higher education. They generally the highest level of educational attainment by 75% almost 75% would be the leaving certificate. So they wouldn't be people who maybe naturally would go into higher education. So this program allows them to engage in higher education. And obviously we want to encourage them in terms of lifelong learning. The average age is 32. So a lot of them have been out of education for quite some time. And as you can see, it's nine out of 10 would be males. And this is 2017 figures or that we are starting to see an increase in the females into the service. It's important to note in terms of digital competence, which is a big topic and we've mentioned that a moment ago. We have 51% have described themselves as only basic users. 43 is independent and six only as proficient. So this program will allow us to enhance their digital competence as well. And also in terms of because they're a non-traditional entrance because they are an out of education for quite some time by building our teaching capacity and coming up with innovative ways of teaching and looking at learning styles. This will allow us to target different types of learners and to increase the educational, hopefully, the impact of the education on our students. I'm going to pass you over to Fanoula just to talk about our proposal. Just to kind of back, I was looking, we're proposal type three. So it's a small program based proposal. And I just pulled out the words out of that proposal type and put it in with the prison service values. And I suppose, like we owe a great debt of gratitude to the prison service. It's kind of unspoken about profession. And it's to the benefit of all of society. So we have an opportunity now and a duty of care really to create this teaching and learning experience for prison officers going forward in their careers. That is a meaningful experience that we can improve the prison service and the provision of that. Sorry, I had another point I wanted to make there. Yeah, it's really just around that, the safer society and also the professionalization of prison service and that role that prison officers can feel and do feel a pride and recognition in their role. And that we contribute to that in terms of the reflective practice and are involving the student and the prison officers who obviously are going back in. That's our sustainability when our prison officers are going into service and coming back as trainers. The trainers who were delivering with me at the moment, my colleagues from the Irish prison service are seconded for three years. So there's a turnover there which allows an opportunity for feeding that by getting into service in that philosophy. Sorry, Julie, you're back up again. We're just talking about impact and sustainability. Do you realize we'd be sitting down on nothing? So, Fenula has obviously mentioned tapped in there to impact and I want to talk a little bit more about that. So the development of the new resources and the teaching methods and the stable community of practice will ensure that the impact of this project lives on long after it concludes. As mentioned previously, recruitment will continue for another six years at least at a rate of about 200 prison officers, recruit prison officers per year. So by improving the teaching, which improves the learner experience, which hopefully increases the professionalization of the service, which ultimately, as we've said, we want to create safer communities. And in terms of also we want to identify associates or champions or people amongst our tutoring team and our lecturers, but also in terms of students who will really promote lifelong learning and will encourage others going forward to engage in lifelong learning in the service. And because we have that turnover of tutors that go from tutors back into the prison service, we're hoping to continue that process back into the prisons and have that multiplier effect. And I've also mentioned obviously embedding the practice to the mentoring and resources. So we want to come up with innovative ways. We want to encourage our tutors to become and our teachers to become more confident in the use of different teaching methodologies and to bring that into their service and to promote that within the prison service. And we also want to obviously integrate the learner voice. We have Colin here representing, the students are our learners in terms of RPOs. We want to encourage that and we want to ensure that our project really hits the nail on the head in terms of the type of learning and the way that they want to learn. And then finally the learning will go back into the prisons as well in terms of our tutors going back in and having that impact across the prison service as well.