Deborah McCance, Stephanie Da Silva, Lauren Quemard, Ashley Goodwin, Victoria Aley, Kirsten-Louise Park and Kathryn Mills, who are all due to start work at La Moye Prison next month, braved the heights as part of a bonding exercise.
They have been employed as part of an all-female recruitment drive, with six due to become prison officers and Ms Mills due to start as a health care officer.
Ms McCance said the event generated plenty of interest, as well as donations for the charity Rock2Recovery, with dozens of spectators turning out to watch on Saturday.
‘It was really good, we raised about £320 on the day and we have some cash donations to come through. We have raised more than £2,000 now, including donations from the JustGiving page,’ she said.
‘There were lots of people there. We had a lot of support from the other prison staff. People came down during their lunch hours to see us and others came down on their day off.
‘There were tourists down there as well who were asking what we were doing.’
The team had initially hoped to raise £750 from the exercise.
Ms McCance, who has previously worked with adults with special needs, said that the event came together following a brainstorming session among the group.
‘We were trying to think of activities to do and one of the girls said abseiling. People said that they hadn’t done that before,’ she said.
‘We spoke to the fire service and they were happy to lend us some of their equipment to do it. Five people from the fire service came down on Saturday to help us out on their day off.’
She added: ‘All of the recruits gave it a go, even though a few of them were quite scared of heights.
‘They [La Moye Prison] needed more female officers due to retirements and things like that, so they had an all-female recruitment drive,’ said Ms McCance.
‘We just completed our seventh week of training out of eight and we are all looking to start at the beginning of May.’
Rock2Recovery is a charity which aims to help save the lives of distressed servicemen, veterans and their families by putting them in touch with appropriate mental health professionals for emergency and routine support.
Donations can be made at justgiving.com/crowdfunding/jerseyprisonnewrecruits.
