TRACEY Salathial's work involves contact with some of the prison system's most challenging offenders - and it has earned her a Wales mental health nursing award.

A forensic community psychiatric nurse, her job takes her to Usk and Prescoed prisons to assess the mental health of prisoners, many of whom have committed sexual offences.

She says the role is "challenging and stressful" but her and colleagues' efforts to deal with prisoners' mental health needs are gaining widespread recognition.

The award is in the nurse-led projects category, for developing risk assessment and structured treatment programmes at the prisons.

"The award should have been for the whole team (Gwent Healthcare Trust's forensic mental health team)," said Mrs Salathial.

"I devised an assessment tool for Usk and Prescoed prisons. We did a basic mental health needs analysis to establish the level of mental health problems.

"There were no programmes for dealing with mental problems, no follow-up when people were released. This can lead to people getting ill again and offending again. "We had to make sure everyone with a problem had an assessment."

The Usk and Prescoed programmes are helping development of unified assessment for prisoners in Wales and are considered best practice as models for prisons in England and Wales.

The forensic team also assesses Gwent people with mental illness who are involved with crime. This includes detailed profiling to assess risk of offending or re-offending.

The job involves hearing of very harrowing offences, but Mrs Salathial's spur is public protection.

"That keeps me going. Our aim is to help that person and if that helps them not offend again, that helps the public," she said.

"It's very challenging but rewarding. No two days are ever the same."