A clean slate: the skills contest showcasing training for prisoners
A competition to find the country's best cleaners is now running in a number of prisons. The UK Team Clean Challenge has already been held outside the prisons' sector. It is hoped the roll out to 12 prisons will help highlight the excellent training available to offenders while they serve their sentences.
The purpose of the challenge - a joint initiative between Asset Skills, (the Sector Skills Council for the cleaning industry) and Working Ventures UK - is to:
* Highlight the high standard of cleaning training delivered in prisons
* Provide an opportunity for participants to build confidence and demonstrate a range of skills to secure employment following release
* Showcase these skills to potential employers
* Highlight the commitment to delivering 11,000 British Institute of Cleaning Science certificates issued each year to prison cleaners, trainers and assessors
This contest is one of 22 skills contests running across a range of industries and overseen nationally by UK Skills. The UK Team Clean Challenge covers the following categories: best prison, best manager, best supervisor and best operative. The judges will also look for social skills, including teamwork and project management, when deciding the winners. Employers from across the cleaning industry will be present at each stage of the competition, which culminates in an awards ceremony on 11th March where the winners will be acknowledged.
The UK TCC Prison Strand is jointly sponsored by HMPS Regime Services and JohnsonDiversey and the competition is running in Lindholme, Blakenhurst, Scrubs, Wandsworth, Holloway, Pentonville, Rochester, Highdown, Holme House, Birmingham, Manchester & Styal prisons.
Each team has a manager, supervisor and two cleaners and is marked against criteria specific to their roles. Managers tackle issues like costing and risk assessment, the presence of customers on site and the motivation and management of their team.
Supervisors are assessed on team-leading and front line troubleshooting. The skills and competencies required of each team are based on the national occupational standards and industry qualifications like those offered by the British Institute of Cleaning Science.
"For too long the cleaning industry has been considered without skill or poorly skilled," says Chris James, Head of Research at Asset Skills. "We can show that this bizarre assumption is simply not true. Cleaning really is a skilled occupation whether the worker is a manager, a supervisor or as a cleaner. This is about showing employers that there is a wealth of talent and top-class training offered within the prison estate, delivered to BICSs standards."
Asset Skills and Working Ventures UK are constantly striving to raise awareness of the importance of having skilled staff. They believe events like the Prison UK Team Clean Challenge can provide a focus for offenders to review and refine their talents. It allows them to test their competence against the best in their class and benchmark their own performance.
"We want to create a circle of skills development, refinement, testing and benchmarking through the competition and on into the workplace," says Chris. "This makes for an ever increasing upturn in skills.
"By focusing on the challenges faced by cleaners and the skills required to overcome them, the UK Team Clean Challenge hopes to make the cleaning industry the biggest winner of all."
This is the first year of trying to organise such an event and it is only supported and funded to cover the prison estate. If it is successful, in future years consideration will be given to including community-based providers/offenders and possibly broadened to something more than just cleaning skills.
The UK Team Clean Challenge has already been open nationally to any organisation in the cleaning industry. For the winners outside the prisons' sector, this focus on excellence is now critical as they go forward to represent the UK in the EuroSkills competition in Rotterdam in September. Not surprisingly the winners of the prison strand won't be able to progress to the Euroskills competition but it's hoped the event will highlight to inmates the fact that cleaning can be a viable and worthwhile job to consider for the future.
T: 0207 238 0830
E: rebecca.goff@dwp.gsi.gov.uk
T: 07769 900 963
27th March 2008