OPINIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE FRENCH CGLPL working party set up on 20th November 2008 to examine the working conditions of prison service staff); and lastly to practices encountered during the course of his inspections (an establishment for minors in the Paris region; a prison in Eastern France; a number of secure educational centres, etc.). 6/ Supervision is where employees are given the option, either during or outside their working hours, and either at their place of work or away from it, to discuss, on a one-to-one basis and in complete confidence, in the context of a peer-to-peer relationship, how they are discharging their duties, especially in circumstances where the latter are posing particular difficulties for the employee, which may impact on his or her personal life; the aim is to control the situation more effectively. 7/ Such instruments already exist today for certain professions or institutions: they are to be found in the healthcare professions (e.g. for nursing staff at psychiatric hospitals), in the field of education (e.g. tutors working at secure educational centres) and even for representatives of charities and other organisations working at detention centres. These instruments, whose value has been recognised, should be available on a comparable scale and organised in a similar way, for the benefit of staff working for the security services. Some of them are already in place. Firstly, the occupational medicine and employee welfare departments offer a good initial illustration of what can be achieved. Secondly, a variety of forms of support (notably psychological support) are available in a number of situations, notably where staff have been the victim of a major incident, such as an attack. Thirdly, in some establishments or departments, the authorities have already successfully implemented the idea of supervision, in the form recommended here: what follows is based largely on their example. Nevertheless, despite the efforts made by the people implementing them, these initiatives are limited in scope because they are exceptional, because they may rapidly take on a ritual nature, because they cannot be isolated from the line-management structure (e.g. the psychologist reports to a regional prison service directorate); and above all they are limited due to the fact that, given the way they are currently viewed, having recourse to them represents an admission of weakness on the part of the employee. Staff therefore face a choice between being regarded as “fragile” or keeping silent about any serious incidents encountered in their working life. 96