In September and November 2024, Prof. Ioan Durnescu from Bucharest held the Core Corectional Skills training in Croatia under the project "Strengthening the Capacity and Visibility of the Prison System and Probation", financed by the Bilateral Fund of the Norwegian Financial Mechanism.
The training was held for four groups of participants, the first two groups in Hotel Medena in Trogir, during September, and the other two groups in Hotel Kolovare in Zadar during November. The training was attended by 42 civil servants of the Croatian probation service and 20 civil servants of the Norwegian probation service. Each of them received a book - Professor Durnescu’s training manual Core Correctional Skills, which was translated and printed in Croatian for the purposes of this training.
The training dealt with therapeutic alliance, how to win over an involuntary client and clients in resistance, how to deal with a crisis or aggressive clients. Prosocial modeling, motivational interviewing and problem solving were taught.
A follow-up training and a training of trainers is planned for 17 participants, so that probation officers could train other officers in their offices in Croatia and Norway.
All the participants were very satisfied with the training and considered it extremely useful and applicable.
