Mindfulness Listener Training
Listeners are a vital part of the prisoner support process
In the UK, selected prisoners train with The Samaritans to understand how to support others in times of stress and anguish.
These Listeners are then on-hand 24/7 to offer a sympathetic, understanding ear, when things go pear shaped, as they do.
Using Listeners helps you provide 1:1 care for vulnerable individuals. It should not be taken lightly.
Recent estimates suggest that half of the UK prison population suffers from anxiety or depression and suicide, and that self harm rates have increased by 25% in the year 2020-2021.
Offering the right conversation, at the right time, can be life changing. The right listener, trained and supportive can help you minimise any knock-on effects.
And this can limit a long range of ripples that trauma and distress can kick off.
Stress can come in many forms. Prisoners present with a variety of mental health problems, learning difficulties and complex needs including drug dependency and life trauma.
We all need people to talk to when life gets too much and everything is heightened in an enclosed environment like Prison.
So any 1:1 conversation offers both a listening ear, support and mindful direction.
A strong Listener programme works.
Adding Mindfulness awareness to Listeners’ current skills, greatly increases your power for good.
Your Listener Training course comes with all the training materials you need to help your prison Listeners understand their role in encouraging the use of Mindfulness techniques to manage any overwhelm from life inside.
Do you want to bring Mindfulness to your Prison?
See how we've been introducing Mindfulness at HMP Norwich and join the Winter 2021 launch waitlist
FAQS
You’ll get Listener and Trainer Workbooks including research background, course rationale, mp4 meditations, exercise sheets, technique explanations, recommendations on training delivery, scripts and audio recordings.
Your course covers what Mindfulness is, including exercises in Breathing, Thinking, Visualising, and Meditation. It prompts Listeners to think through 1:1 scenarios, and suggests how they might use the techniques to support anxiety and stress.
The course has clear step by step instructions for listener/prisoner interactions and the preparation covers pre-planning and leading 1:1 sessions.
I give you a number of delivery options, all clearly itemised to cover a range of situations. You can use your Senior Officers or Training Department to deliver to Listeners, or use your Education Department to run modular training during Activity Time.
Alternatively, use your Activity Allocation system to move Listeners through regular designated programmes – perhaps leading training through Personal Officers direct to Listeners on their landings.
Once your programme is established, you may like to use trained Listeners to support your training team and you’ll regularly want to train up new Listeners to replace those transferred or released.
The programme will be Evergreen once a process has been set up.
We’ve all seen the sudden spiral and change of behaviour brought on by over- thinking and overwhelm.
Simply - changing HOW we think can dramatically reduce fear and anxiety and stop us working on automatic (i.e. turning to self-harm and aggressive behaviour).
Mindfulness trained Listeners can halt that thinking by steering prisoners to other coping strategies based on self help. Once practised and used regularly (with continued Listener 1:1 or Listener Group Support) these newly learnt ways of coping can become their revised way to handle any stress.
We’re looking to break that cycle of trigger/self harm.
Most of us have not learnt to think well. Before we can think well of ourselves, we need to learn how our current thinking patterns lead us in unfriendly directions.
Listeners help prisoners recognise the moment of event/reaction and offer them gentler ways of managing their feelings through breathing, noticing, thinking and being.
As you'd expect, being quieter, calmer and more in control of our feelings brings huge benefits to all concerned.
Training Listeners in Mindfulness techniques helps you reach the hard to reach, on the landings.
These Mindful based self care approaches can be self administered without the need for invasive medical intervention.
"It is so refreshing to find a course which is easy to follow, simple to engage with and complete, and which gives some excellent hints and tips on how relatively small changes can help to develop a much more positive, relaxed and stress-free perspective on an individual's life and approach to everyday activities. The language used is appropriate and easy to understand and the content encourages users to not only consider personal circumstances, but also how to develop and improve senses and feelings with simple everyday activities and techniques."
Jugjit Chima
Head of Training, The Exams Office
"This course is amazing from start to finish. All I wanted to do was read and see what was said and then go to the next part to see what was next and learn some more. It kept me interested from the beginning. The content was plentiful without being boring or repetitive I loved the fact that you could press complete, which gives a real sense of satisfaction and that also meant you could come back to the course at any time and know where you were at – very useful. I listened to the mindfulness recordings and watched the videos and felt completely relaxed and excited to listen to more and move on with the course. I have to say this exceeded my expectations and was a professional, warm, encouraging, fascinating and interesting course and I don’t doubt that it will be a huge success "
Alison Gold
Examinations Officer and Data Manager,Brampton College, London
"Thank you for all the work you did developing the packs. They have benefitted the men and I hope will continue to add value to the in cell offer in the future"
Paul Mortimer
Learning, Skills and Employment Manager
"The PSD suite of courses have been one of the major successes via in-cell delivery this year and have been in high demand by those studying in-cell. Learners were encouraged to work towards changing behaviour and attitudes and the in-cell packs have been used to support sentence plans. They have been showcased in other establishments due to their excellence"
Zenildo Cassoneca
Education Manager, HMP Norwich
"With Geraldine’s expert guidance and skills, we now have a new range of education which is directly impacting people’s life’s in a hugely positive manner. Courses like mindfulness are facilitating learners to cope with their current predicament and gives them strategies to help reduce stress and anxiety. Feedback received is invariably positive and shows that Geraldine’s courses can help everyone, no matter what situation you find yourself in. Thank you, you have made a difference!"
Pete Donovan
Deputy Education Manager, People Plus, HMP Norwich
"It has taught me how certain ways can help you concentrate. The course has everything you need to work on your own thoughts and control them"
Prison Learner
Education Department, HMP Norwich
"I found the mindful unwind before bed exercise the most helpful. It helped me clear my head and not think so much negativity about my past. What has been and done is out of my control. All I can do now is work towards changing my future and being a better man"
Prison Learner
Job Title
Mindfulness Listener Training
Module 1
Introduction
Opening thoughts
Now You –Mindful Listening
Module 2
Thinking Challenges
How we handle stress
Thinking Skills
Automatic reactions
Resistance and fear
Now you - Handling Overwhelm
Module 3
Mindful Techniques
Noticing
Breathing
Listening skills
Doing a Check In
Visualising and Affirmations
Meditation
Tapping
Now You – Mindful Techniques
Module 4
Supporting prisoners
Giving support
Choosing the right technique
Working together
Compacts and commitments
Looking to the Future
Now You – Supporting prisoners
Module 5
Using the mp3 recordings
6 Meditation recordings
Scripts
Now you workbook - Meditation
Module 6
Prisoner Workbooks
6 Prisoner workbooks to support the mp3s
Recommendations for use
Now you – Giving Feedback
Module 7
Mindfulness on the landings
Sharing Mindfulness
Training others
Now you – Insights and Next Steps
Module 8
Trainer Workbook Materials
Module Delivery options
Listener Training Powerpoint
Listener Completion Certificate
Landing Flyers
We've all experienced Covid related Lockdown
All of us have now experienced a Covid related Lockdown and so we’re all too familiar with the personal restrictions imprisonment brings.
You can reduce the challenges that this creates by training those who currently support fellow prisoners in current Mindfulness techniques based on support, togetherness, understanding and insight. This puts them in a unique space to reach out to individuals whenever the need arises.
And when they do, they can share these trusted practices and spread them one by one throughout the landings. You’ll be helping prisoners find a place of peace and calm, where none may have been present before.
It’s important work. And now’s the time.
Prisoners play a unique role in supporting fellow inmates in times of stress. They bring their empathy and specialist training, where, and when it matters.
