Prison service to spend €480k on hairdressing course at women's prison
Gordon Deegan
The Irish Prison Service (IPS) is set to splurge an estimated €480,000 on providing a hair-dressing skills workshop for inmates at the female Dóchas prison in Dublin over the next four years.
In a tender issued on Friday, the IPS is aiming for the course to provide the trainees with the requisite skills and to develop their personal and job-seeking skills to enable them to obtain employment in hairdressing salons after their release from Dóchas prison.
The modules to be provided by the course operator include salon support service, shampooing and conditioning; curling and finger waving; blow drying; setting and styling; colour processes and career planning and job seeking skills.
The mandatory requirements for the course operator is that the training must lead to a "Certificate in Hairdressing" accredited to City and Guilds Entry Level/Level 1 or equivalent.
The tender documentation states that the contractor is expected to deliver four full-time courses of 10 weeks each for each year of the contract.
Each course must consist of a maximum of seven attendees and a minimum of 28 prisoners will require both theoretical and practical training each year of the contract.
The training class times are to be 9.30am to 12.30pm and 2.00pm to 4.30pm Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and at least one day per week must include practical demonstrations.
The issuing of the tender comes against the background of continuing overcrowding for inmates at the female Dóchas centre on the Mountjoy prison campus.
IPS statistics for Friday March 13th show that there were 335 female prisoners in the system at Dóchas, which also includes those on temporary release.
The Dóchas centre has 146 bed capacity, meaning the prison is currently running at 149 per cent of its bed capacity.
The tender states that the primary focus of training to be delivered is the identification and development of core skills required for the purposes of providing trainees with the confidence to develop their craft in hairdressing technical and professional skills.
The tender states that the IPS “places a strong emphasis on the provision of vocational training activities for prisoners and seeks to ensure that persons in custody have access to meaningful and constructive training”.
The tender further states that “training activities are chosen to give opportunities to acquire skills which help secure employment on release and are an essential requirement in improving rehabilitation outcomes”.
The tender points out that those wishing to tender to operate the course should have at least four years commercial hairdressing experience using a broad range of hairdressing skills.
The IPS is to provide all materials for the course.
The deadline for tenders is April 16th.
