Enhanced Reconnect Evaluation

Helping vulnerable prison-leavers link into services. This pilot study is conducting an evaluation to help understand what support these people need when they leave prison. 

The Reconnect programme helps vulnerable prison-leavers link into services. An Enhanced Reconnect service is being tested for more complex people who may have an increased risk of harm to themselves or others. The project is carrying out five small studies and then in a sixth study it will look at all the results together. It is conducting familiarisation work to understand who is delivering the service and how people think it should be having its effect.

What is this project doing?

The project is conducting interviews and virtual workshops with clinicians delivering the service, as well as the people involved in the planning of Enhanced Reconnect (ER). Observation and qualitative interviews are being done to understand how the Enhanced Reconnect team members work together and with other services. Examination of Enhanced Reconnect records will look at how Enhanced Reconnect services are helping people and linking them into other services. The team is also working with Enhanced Reconnect sites to see how they can collect a minimum data set to monitor longer term programme outcomes. It will also create case studies describing in detail how individuals are supported and respond to Enhanced Reconnect services.

How will you do it?

This will be based on qualitative interviews and some observation, and health records. A small economic study will a) calculate the cost of delivering ER, and b) estimate the potential future costs and outcomes which the service could make a difference to. The team will then bring all this evidence together to understand how the programme is working, its impact and likely value. A first cross-sector virtual workshop of stakeholders will help understand findings, and a second will help identify what further service improvements are needed.

Who will be involved?

Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) has been undertaken and this public engagement work has helped design this study. The project is developing a research advisory group with key policy stakeholders and lay members with lived experience of the criminal justice system (CJS). The team are recruiting people with lived experience of CJS from its local networks and across Enhanced Reconnect service sites into a virtual PPIE group. This group will advise on how the team conduct the research, how they understand findings and with dissemination. Dissemination Workshops to support care-navigators develop therapeutic and other skills; cross-sector workshops with follow-on support for policy action; academic papers, policy briefings, lay summaries and resources.

What are you hoping to achieve?

The evaluation aims to understand whether the Enhanced Reconnect innovation makes a difference to complex offender health, and if it should be nationally developed. Prison, and the time of release, provides opportunity for preventing problems and linking people back to services after release. That is the rationale of the Reconnect services. The service aims to work at a deeper level for individuals presenting high risk to themselves and others.

This study is addressing 3 main aims:

  1. Understanding the value and impact of the Enhanced Reconnect service in achieving intended outcomes across sites.
  2. Exploring individual and organisational-level barriers and facilitators of Enhanced Reconnect delivery and implementation (service configuration and partnership arrangements across sites).
  3. Identifying infrastructural supports needed for successful Enhanced Reconnect implementation and delivery (support, policy, finance, training, supervision, standard operation procedures, equipment).

Key Deliverables

  • Collaboration with a Research Advisory Group with co-designed and rapid response dissemination outputs.
  • Two cross-sector dissemination workshops with followed up support for action in a policy briefing.
  • An NIHR report and national webinar based on a refined programme theory which presents logical evidence informed blueprint for service improvement.
  • A refined minimum data-set co-designed with ER sites to support the continual monitoring of the service and its longer term outcomes.
  • ER practitioner guidance to sit as an appendix to existing ER protocols. Three peer-reviewed journal papers Written case studies and cross-case analysis of ER site differences.

Partner Organisations

University of Northumbria

Centre for Mental Health

University of Exeter

Collaborators