To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what consultation was undertaken on Prison Service Order Number 4950; and what representations were received. (120937)

The current edition of the Prison Service Order was published in December 2006 following consultation with, among others: the Youth Justice Board; the Department for Education and Skills; the Department of Health; governors/directors of young offender institutions; the Prison Governors' and Prison Officers' Associations; HM Inspectorate of Prisons; and the Independent Monitoring Boards Secretariat. Responses were received from 53 bodies or individuals.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what advice his Department makes available to (a) children, (b) their representatives and (c) their family members on the regime to which they are entitled under Prison Service Order 4950 on regimes for children in prisons; and for what reason (i) girls are no longer treated separately under the order, (ii) the requirement for prison staff to have training in dealing with girls was removed, (iii) the specification on hours to be spent out of the prison cell on purposeful activity was removed, (iv) the mandatory minimum number of hours of education was removed and (v) the requirement to produce records of achievement for children was removed. (120938)

Young people newly received into custody must be given information about the establishment and a sentence plan. General information for families and others can be accessed on HM Prison Service's website or requested from the local establishment. Prison Service Order 4950 is complemented by a service level agreement between the Youth Justice Board and the Prison Service, which contains a specific service specification for the service's five dedicated girls' units. The PSO requires that staff working with under-18s should receive specialist training as specified in the SLA. Training is currently provided through the Juvenile Awareness Staff Programme, which contains elements specific to young women. The SLA sets a level of at least 10 hours a day for time out of cell. The under-18 version of the Offender's Learning Journey (OLJ), the specification for the learning and skills delivery service, requires each learner to receive 25 hours learning a week. The SLA reinforces this with the requirement that young people in young offender institutions receive an average of 25 hours of education, training and personal development activity each week. The OLJ requires that every young person should have an Individual Learning Plan, which the learning provider is required to pass on as young people transfer between custodial institutions and, through the youth offending team, to the responsible learning provider following release.