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Facilitating people living with severe and persistent mental illness to transition from prison to community: a qualitative exploration of staff experiences

BACKGROUND: Transition from prison to community is a challenging time for all people who have been incarcerated. It is particularly challenging for those also living with serious and persistent mental illness. This study explored staff experiences and perspectives of what helped and hindered them in...

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Autores principales: Hancock, Nicola, Smith-Merry, Jennifer, Mckenzie, Kirsty
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6085690/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30116292
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13033-018-0225-z
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author Hancock, Nicola
Smith-Merry, Jennifer
Mckenzie, Kirsty
author_facet Hancock, Nicola
Smith-Merry, Jennifer
Mckenzie, Kirsty
author_sort Hancock, Nicola
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Transition from prison to community is a challenging time for all people who have been incarcerated. It is particularly challenging for those also living with serious and persistent mental illness. This study explored staff experiences and perspectives of what helped and hindered them in their work to support that transition. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 mental health staff working across three service sectors directly engaged in the process of supporting people with mental illness transitioning from prison to community; the forensic mental health provider Justice Health, Community Mental Health and a non-government delivered community-based service called Partners in Recovery. Data were analysed using constant comparative analysis. RESULTS: Five main themes were identified through the analysis. All five themes were key practices that, when occurring, supported staff to work in a way that they felt would maximise positive outcomes for people transitioning from prison to community. These included: housing secured before release; clearly defined and effective communication pathways; shared understanding of systems and roles; in-reach and continuity of contact, and consumers’ pre-release preparation and knowledge. All staff participants described barriers to good transition to community outcomes when some or all of these practices could not, or did not, occur. CONCLUSIONS: Staff experiences highlight the complexity but importance of getting multi-sectorial partnerships and practices right for good prison to community transitions for people living with serious and persistent mental illness. Currently fragmented and disparate systems and practices need to align and clear expectations and understandings need to be shared across the whole. These changes, along with prioritised housing are likely to lead to better long-term outcomes for people.
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spelling pubmed-60856902018-08-16 Facilitating people living with severe and persistent mental illness to transition from prison to community: a qualitative exploration of staff experiences Hancock, Nicola Smith-Merry, Jennifer Mckenzie, Kirsty Int J Ment Health Syst Research BACKGROUND: Transition from prison to community is a challenging time for all people who have been incarcerated. It is particularly challenging for those also living with serious and persistent mental illness. This study explored staff experiences and perspectives of what helped and hindered them in their work to support that transition. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 mental health staff working across three service sectors directly engaged in the process of supporting people with mental illness transitioning from prison to community; the forensic mental health provider Justice Health, Community Mental Health and a non-government delivered community-based service called Partners in Recovery. Data were analysed using constant comparative analysis. RESULTS: Five main themes were identified through the analysis. All five themes were key practices that, when occurring, supported staff to work in a way that they felt would maximise positive outcomes for people transitioning from prison to community. These included: housing secured before release; clearly defined and effective communication pathways; shared understanding of systems and roles; in-reach and continuity of contact, and consumers’ pre-release preparation and knowledge. All staff participants described barriers to good transition to community outcomes when some or all of these practices could not, or did not, occur. CONCLUSIONS: Staff experiences highlight the complexity but importance of getting multi-sectorial partnerships and practices right for good prison to community transitions for people living with serious and persistent mental illness. Currently fragmented and disparate systems and practices need to align and clear expectations and understandings need to be shared across the whole. These changes, along with prioritised housing are likely to lead to better long-term outcomes for people. BioMed Central 2018-08-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6085690/ /pubmed/30116292 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13033-018-0225-z Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Hancock, Nicola
Smith-Merry, Jennifer
Mckenzie, Kirsty
Facilitating people living with severe and persistent mental illness to transition from prison to community: a qualitative exploration of staff experiences
title Facilitating people living with severe and persistent mental illness to transition from prison to community: a qualitative exploration of staff experiences
title_full Facilitating people living with severe and persistent mental illness to transition from prison to community: a qualitative exploration of staff experiences
title_fullStr Facilitating people living with severe and persistent mental illness to transition from prison to community: a qualitative exploration of staff experiences
title_full_unstemmed Facilitating people living with severe and persistent mental illness to transition from prison to community: a qualitative exploration of staff experiences
title_short Facilitating people living with severe and persistent mental illness to transition from prison to community: a qualitative exploration of staff experiences
title_sort facilitating people living with severe and persistent mental illness to transition from prison to community: a qualitative exploration of staff experiences
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6085690/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30116292
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13033-018-0225-z
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