In Wheatfield Prison the CDVEC School is run by Head Teacher, Brenda Fitzpatrick and has a teaching staff of 27. The school’s curriculum provides a Health Education Programme which includes PHECC’s Cardiac First Response (CFR) course. Twenty three students have undertaken the CFR course since June 2009 and it is within this context that PHECC’s Director, Dr Geoff King, presented the first students with their CFR certification in December.
Prisoners demonstrating effective hand
washing techniques using a glow box.
Students demonstrated some of their CFR skills to an audience which included Evan Buckley, Education Officer CDVEC, Stephen O’Connor, Organiser of Prison Education CDVEC, School Management, Dr Graham Betts-Symonds Health Care Manager and the Governor of Wheatfield, John Surgue. Students also spoke about how their CFR skills are linked in with the Community Based Health and First Aid in Action course (CBH-FA).
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CBH-FA is an integrated communitybased scheme in which Red Cross volunteers work with their communities in disease prevention, health promotion, and first aid. Remarkably, Wheatfield is the first prison in the world to run this programme where prisoners, who have successfully completed it, are given the opportunity to work as peer educators by becoming Irish Red Cross volunteers.
Launched in June 2009 the CBH-FA scheme is still in its infancy in Wheatfield. Since then Red Cross volunteers have acted as peer educators within the wider prison community with the first group due to complete the course in April 2010.
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