Source · Select Committees · Justice Committee
Recommendation 171
171
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Ensure mandatory specialised training for all HMPPS staff in substance misuse and trauma-informed care.
Recommendation
The Government must urgently accelerate and broaden the scope of training under the ‘Enable Programme’ to ensure all HMPPS staff, particularly prison officers, receive mandatory, specialised training in substance misuse, trauma-informed care and drug dependency. This training should be a core, non-negotiable component of both foundation training and continuous professional development for all staff who interact with prisoners, directly addressing the deficiency in knowledge and experience. (Recommendation, Paragraph 49)
Government response summary AI-generated
The government's response focuses on robust security measures to prevent drugs entering prisons, including drug trace detection equipment and X-ray body scanners, and continuously reviewing substances for testing. It does not address the recommendation to accelerate and broaden staff training on substance misuse and trauma-informed care via the Enable Programme.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
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HM Government · verbatim extract
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We welcome the Committee’s focus on positive staff-prisoner relationships, which are vital to rehabilitation. To ensure prison officers can effectively support prisoners with a drug dependency, we must tackle stigma, and improve staff understanding of drug and alcohol use, dependency and recovery. HMPPS has already taken steps to improve workforce capability on drugs and recovery, including introducing the Adult Health, Care and Wellbeing Core Capabilities Framework in May 2025, with strengthened staff guidance. Building on this, MoJ, HMPPS and NHSE are working in partnership to broaden and accelerate training under the Enable Programme to embed specialist knowledge on drugs and alcohol, dependency and trauma- informed care. This includes integrating lived experience perspectives, reflective practice and coaching support to enable staff to respond effectively to complex challenges in custody. For new prison staff, a comprehensive redesign of Foundation Training is underway to strengthen confidence, competence and support recovery whilst addressing knowledge gaps. The refreshed 12-month programme will blend classroom, online and practical learning to deliver a structured and engaging learning journey. Crucially, specialised components on drug and alcohol misuse will be mandatory for all staff – and more widely, modules on gangs and human factors will help officers manage the risks associated with organised crime groups (OCGs), who often drive the supply and misuse of drugs in custody. This revised curriculum will provide a holistic approach that strengthens officers’ ability to disrupt drug markets, support recovery and create safer and more psychologically informed prisons. Alongside improving training for our workforce as a whole, we will ensure staff in specialist roles have the capability they need – in particular our 54 Drug Strategy Leads in key prisons. In addition to targeted support for these roles, in 2025 we recruited 17 new Group Drug and Alcohol Leads, who will support and assure work on drugs and alcohol across their prison groups, and establish links with community providers and local authority partnerships, such as Combatting Drugs partnerships. As these changes embed, we will keep evolving staff capability on drugs and alcohol under review. We will undertake a training needs analysis in early 2026 to identify key gaps which will inform ongoing work.
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