Lord Actonasked Her Majesty's Government:
Further to the statement by the Baroness Ashton of Upholland on 23 February regarding benefits of mentoring at the Shannon Trust (HL Deb, col. 3), whether they intend to foster such mentoring throughout the prison service. [HL1667]
§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal)Mentoring and peer support have an important part to play in improving offenders' learning and skills. The Prison Service runs a range of peer support schemes in literacy and numeracy. In addition to the approach favoured by the Shannon Trust, other initiatives include the Link Up project (funded by the DfES and delivered by the Basic Skills Agency) which trains prisoners, prison officers and staff from other agencies to become adult learner supporters and the Reading Champions scheme (run by the National Literacy Trust) which has also been extremely popular among prisoners.
It will be up to prison governors to consider whether greater use of such programmes will help to engage 110WA those who lack confidence or are put off by traditional approaches to learning, and provide them with the opportunity to gain accredited skills, based on expert advice from their head of learning and skills.