LEADCOR project aims to develop training curriculum and programme for occupational stress reduction through leadership development in the prison context. These professionals, which will be engaged in various piloting and training activities throughout LEADCOR’s timeframe, will be involved by the comprehensive consortium found within this partnership, which comprises four prisons/prison administrations and two trade union representatives of prison officers. Therefore, stress levels will be assessed (IO2) and leadership competences will be upscaled (IO3 & IO4) in an integrated and innovative approach. Its main activities comprise management and coordination of the project (A1), literature review & methodological conceptualisation (A2), innovative approaches development, piloting & fine-tuning (A3), sustainability (A4), overall mainstreaming & dissemination (A5), and assessment & evaluation (A6). There are six Intellectual Outputs (IOs) resulting from the aforementioned activities, namely: LEADCOR conceptualisation & methodological support (IO1), innovative occupational stress diagnosis assessment tool (IO2), leadership training curriculum and programme (IO3), e-learning training course (IO4), train the trainer course (IO5), and promising practices repository (IO6). LEADCOR’s expected impacts are: i) increased awareness on the importance of leadership and the negative impacts of occupational stress in the daily life of prisons; ii) transversal skills development for prison staff, especially leadership and management competences that can positively impact the reduction of stress; iii) mitigation of tensions among management and staff, between staff, among staff and their families, and between staff and inmates (through stress reduction); and iv) positively enhanced health of prison staff members, benefiting society (i.e., enabling considerable savings in personnel budgets by reducing early retirements and absenteeism, while improving the quality of work with inmates and, ultimately, enhancing opportunities for rehabilitation). Regarding its beneficiaries, besides the project partners and their inherent vast network, LEADCOR will be an advantage for prison staff (frontline & technical staff), prison governors/directors, and academics in the short-medium term, as well as inmates/ex-inmates and policy/decision-makers in the long term – 619 participants, at least.
Leadcor project aims to reduce occupational stress levels inside prisons by enhancing the leadership competences of management and frontline staff (correctional officers, educational staff and psychologists, social workers…), contributing therefore to the mitigation of tensions among management and staff, between staff, among staff and their families, and between staff and inmates. The specific objectives included: 1. Create awareness on the importance of leadership and the negative impacts of occupational stress in the daily life of prisons; 2. Develop the tools and instruments for prison management and line-level staff to assess leadership competences, stress levels and occupational well-being; 3. Develop a corrections leadership game (digital and board game) to support prison staff leadership development; 4. Establish leadership-training programmes for prison management and frontline staff (e-learning course and train the trainer course).
One of the key determinants of the performance of any organisation is its staff. LEADCOR was an opportunity to tackle a previously identified gap: the need to connect the topics of leadership and stress / burnout in prisons. That is, leadership and leadership training play an important role in potentially reducing stress among prison staff, mitigating the tensions between staff, staff and prisoners, staff and their families and management and staff. Thus, addressing the need to improve prison staff leadership skills in order to reduce staff stress and burnout was the main reason to apply for this project. Therefore, a strategic partnership for adult education was the perfect option to implement the LEADCOR project, providing the right balance between the production of research reports (to theoretically support our work) and tools (to measure what we intend to measure) with the practical component of training development and implementation (to develop partners skills and achieve the desired impact on target groups).