Prison Facilitator

**Job Description & Person Specification**

**Shannon Trust Facilitator - HMP Lancaster Farms**

Location HMP Lancaster Farms, Lancaster

Reporting to Regional Manager

Role summary

Shannon Trust’s vision is of a future where everyone can experience the positive impact of learning. As a prison facilitator, your role is to make this a reality by ensuring the successful delivery of the Shannon Trust reading and maths programme within your prison. You will be working onsite at HMP Lancaster Farms. You will work closely with people in prison, prison officers, prison education staff, Shannon Trust volunteers and your regional manager.

Core objectives of the role
- To raise awareness of the Shannon Trust programme, encouraging referrals from staff and prisoners.
- To grow the programme, ensuring potential learners are identified and have access to the Shannon

Trust programme throughout the prison.
- To ensure mentors are trained, equipped and supported to deliver the reading and programme.
- To utilise systems to ensure effective delivery, monitoring and evaluation.

Tasks & responsibilities

1. Programme planning and delivery
- Access assessment data to inform how many people need help with reading and maths, identifying where they are likely to be during the core day and weekends.
- Create and maintain a prison action plan aimed at growing the programme and meeting the identified need.
- Hold responsibility for programme performance in your prison. Through effective programme management, resource management, planning and prioritisation, work with your regional manager and volunteer support teams to ensure each prison is on track to meet and, where possible, exceed its objectives and targets.
- Work in partnership with induction officers, education providers, mentor coordinators and other agencies to raise awareness of the programme, increase referrals and achieve a ‘whole prison’ approach to delivery.
- Identify learners and mentors transferring between prisons and ensure ongoing support.
- Identify potential learners and hard to engage prisoners, ensuring they are offered the programme and matched to appropriate mentors.
- Working with wing officers and education, identify potential mentors and ensure they have access to

Shannon Trust mentor training and ongoing support and supervision, ensuring sufficient numbers of mentors to meet demand. Work with prison security to ensure clearance for the role.
- Recruit a mentor coordinator to support delivery, where this is possible.
- Ensure systems are in place for mentors and learners to be unlocked for Shannon Trust sessions and able to meet in a suitable learning environments. Work with allocations/activity hubs/education/library and other areas to enable learners to have access to their mentors during the core day.    
- Ensure learners have access to sufficient learning resources to include books, manuals, videos and digital programmes as appropriate.
- Work in line with Shannon Trust’s ethos of ‘learner choice’, ensuring multiple options for learning are available.
- Ensure quality programme delivery by ensuring organisational standards are being met, seeking ideas and opportunities for improvements. Share best practice and learning with other prisons to drive up standards and encourage innovation across the organisation.
- Develop solutions to overcome operational challenges

Reporting
- Utilise systems (Nomis, Curious, Shannon Trust database) to record and submit learner progression data and mentor training achievements.
- Provide relevant and timely information about the reading programme to the prison’s learning and skills manager and Shannon Trust’s regional manager.
- Contribute to the regional manager’s quarterly reports.
- Monitor progress against targets in relation to numbers of new and retained learners.

Partnership
- Work in partnership with the Shannon Trust volunteer, to ensure mentor training is delivered and mentors are supported in their roles.
- Work in partnership with prison staff, to include officers and staff from the library, education department and other agencies within the prison.
- Work in partnership with Shannon Trust mentors, ensuring they are kept up to date with Shannon

Trust news, and that they have the opportunity to share ideas and feedback to the organisation.
- Facilitate a ‘feedback loop’ to ensure themes from mentor meetings and area meetings feed into organisational decision making, and that organisational updates are shared appropriately with regional teams.
- Work with mentors, prison SMT, prison partners and Shannon Trust volunteers to implement and maintain effective communication across the prison.

Other
- Put the learner at the heart of what you do, actively contribute to a culture of learning, reflection, team work and development, in line with the organisation’s values.
- Participate in regular one-to-ones and annual reviews, contributing to the identification of objectives an