FTO Program is on the Move

It has been a while, but our Field Training Officer (FTO) program is starting to pick up speed again. We had the first FTO Oversight meeting of the new year on February 10th, here at the academy. Site Coordinators from four facilities attended the meeting, along with Vermont Department of Corrections’ Training Center staff. We are working to get all seven sites represented at our next meeting.

Training Coordinator Michaela Hammond has joined our FTO Oversight Team and has provided detailed minutes from the meeting. Check them out on our FTO webpage.

Meeting participants engaged in a ‘critical issues’ review, and then they worked on developing solution strategies to address the identified need areas.  The committee put some plans in place to increase effective communication between worksites and the academy regarding recruit training to optimize the FTO/academy experience.

Strategies to optimize supervision of new staff included:

• online meetings in week four of the academy to review supervisory notes and issues, 
• implementation of Site Coordinator training 
• and professional development opportunities that concentrate on supervisory skills, active addressing and providing good documentation 

As the FTO program begins gearing up to welcome in the next generation of correctional professionals, we will be looking for new FTOs at all our worksites. We are looking for motivated individuals with common sense, a good attitude and an interest in developing high functioning work teams. If you are interested in being a FTO, please submit a letter of interest to you local Site Coordinator. As always, thank you for your support of this critical program.

You can contact the FTO Oversight Team at this address, AHS-DOC-FTOSiteCoordinators@ahs.state.vt.us