Achieving Compliance & Engagement
(ACE)
Client: Catch22, Ministry of Justice (MOJ) | 2022 | Social Care, Justice System, Empowerment
Project Summary
PARTNER
Catch22 & Ministry Of Justice (MOJ)
THE CHALLENGE
The mission of ACE is to Achieve Compliance and Engagement for people on probation. ACE is a pilot programme provided by the social business Catch22 and funded by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ). Our aim was to support rehabilitation programmes in reducing the reoffending rate which is at 60% in the UK.
INDUSTRY
Justice System: Social Care
TOP 3 INSIGHTS
1. To find programmes the Navigation Mentors (NMs) from the ACE rehabilitation programme use an internal resource guide, google or their peer networks.
2. These methods are time-consuming and information is often either not available or inaccurate, resulting in rejections of referrals, costing between 1 to 7 hours of their working week.
3. There is a lack of ways of getting to the existing rehabilitation programmes for People on probation.
THEME
Probation services: Achieving compliance and engagement
SERVICE PROPOSITION
Introducing Compass, a multi-stakeholder digital platform for Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Services and associates in the community that maps together all rehabilitation programmes. It empowers frontline prison, probation and community-based practitioners to spend more time doing what they signed up for - making a difference
FOCUS
Reducing reoffending rates amongst prisoners
IMPACT
Compass can become a resource centre, collaboration tool, progress checker and ultimately, a community builder connecting people not just programmes. The impact it creates for the involved stakeholders is as follows:
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1. People on probation: It can improve digital literacy and provide motivation, agency, support and knowledge.
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2. Service Providers: It can be seen, learn from others, collaborate on projects and scale their initiatives.
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3. The Ministry of Justice: It can help them make better decisions and provide funding where most needed, through data collection and categorization which enable them to identify service area gaps and surpluses.
My Responsibilities
END-TO-END: 1. Conducting user research and ecosystem analysis. User Research: Quantitative & Creative Qualitative, insight framing, user interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, creating taxonimies 2. Information architecture 3. Collaboration and co creations with the team to ideate and conceptualiuse solutions. 5. Facilitating workshops 6. Systems & strategic thinking 7. Wireframing & prototyping 8. Visual design & communication 9. Stakeholder management
1. Overview & Introduction
Probation is when an offender is released from prison and is subject to a period of good behaviour under supervision. It is a significant part in an offender's journey as it represents 50% of a sentence period. People on probation have to abide by certain rules known as licences, and throughout this period they are monitored and have to report to Probation Officers. If they break the licence conditions, at some point the probation officer can ask for the police to return them to prison. This is called Recall
Re-offending still remains a siginificant social concern, beyond the costs to taxpayers, it permeates fear and anxiety across neighbourhoods.
What was our brief?
Having received a grant from the MoJ, Catch 22 which is a social business piloted the ACE programme with the aim to highlight that a change in probation management can reduce the number of recalls. The pilot introduces the navigator mentor into the process, whereby they work with POP referred by PO for a minimum of 5 weeks with 20 hours of engagement.
The navigator mentor(NM) curates a plan of engagements based on the interests of the person on probation and they support them in employment, shelter and really anything that the person on probation is dealing with.
2. Ecosystem Analysis
2.1. Framing our research in a statement
PROBATION AS PEOPLE IN A PLACE WITHIN A PROCESS
People on probation (POP)
Navigator mentor (NM)
Probation practitioner (PP)
Probation office
Home
Community
Prison
Employment
Operations
License
Tasks
We used these headings - people, place and process as our storage tool to categorise stakeholders, emotions, operations and any real data of value. This enabled us to dive deeper, helping us to start building patterns, and identify intervention points.
2.2. Methodology
DESK RESEARCH Comparative macro and micro understanding of the defined themes INFORMAL CONVERSATIONS Relaxed conversations with POP, PP & NM. In environments they live, work, chill etc. IN THE ROOM OBSERVATIONS We sit in meeting between staff amongst themselves and with POP SHADOWING A day-in-the-life being with the POP, PP & NMs. We do what they would do. STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS We test our finding, assumptions and hypothesis in a more structured setting
2.3. Framework
MICRO License conditions Activities & interventions Daily journals of PPs Referrals made for POPs Probation offices ....
MACRO National policy & strategy UK prison services UK probation services History of probation Cases from other countries Rehabilitation services Prisoner's psychology .....
2.4. Preliminary + Detailed Research & Insight generation
Initial Key Problems
1.
To scale any intervention it must be adopted organically by the system.
2.
There is a lack of communication and coordination between stakeholders.
3.
ACE is just a very small part of an offender's journey.
We realised, that even after having initial insights they weren't solid enough to be translated into actionable opportunities. We continued to explore the front liners for deeper engagement and stories.
Strategic Direction 1.0
"What if the ACE pilot were a testing ground for creating positive outcomes through co-creation and participation between us as designers, the ACE team and their service users - the people on probation?"
After conversations with people who had successfully worked on themselves during and after probation, we analysed that positive probation outcomes come from pre-prison, which is family, education and unique experiences.
To gain a deeper understanding, we organized a workshop with the NMs to establish a hierarchy of needs and identify commonalities between the two groups. We then compared the values and ideologies shared by our eight NMs with the values and needs of the POPs.
Direction: Through co-creation and self-designed refliective and agile methodology workbooks we were able to come to the conclusion that the staff are institutionalised, are unable to deliver within project timeline and are action-oriented.
Therefore, we had to rethink our approach
Strategic Direction 2.0
We pivoted!
To identify the gaps we further looked into rehabilitation programs basing it on Maslow's hierarchy of needs and realised that there a lot of need-based programs that already exist. So what is the problem?
INTERVENTION POINT/OPPORTUNITY: So how can we buy time?
Currently to find programmes NMs use an internal resource guide, google or their peer networks. These methods are time-consuming and information is often either not available or inaccurate, resulting in rejections of referrals, costing between 1 to 7 hours of their working week.
After speaking to the NMs and mapping out a journey with their pain points we were able to form our
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The barrier is not the scarcity of resources but the lack of visibility of programs and resources and the time-frame to access them.
Hypothesis
What if we could create a time machine by consolidating all available programs and making the relevant criteria visible to mentors and practitioners?
Desired outcome
This change will reduce the administrative headache for practitioners, remove the isolation of services and redundant and duplicate programmes.
It will increase collaboration, programme quality, chances of successful referrals and engagement with People on Probation.
Impact
The Impact is that more time and resources can be spent on building relationships and trust so that people on probation have a greater chance of engaging, complying and reintegrating into society.
Impact theory
Final solution - ideation & delivery
We created an excel sheet to map out all the services in the areas in London that offer rehabilitation programs and sub-categorised them into different sections like housing, employment, etc., and active/inactive with contact details. We further shared this with the NMs for our first round of feedback.
In order to get a more detailed interaction logic, we went back to the NMs office with a low-fidelity version to make iterations.
PROTOTYPE
(Click on the images to read more)
This is how we hope to turn expectations into reality
Impact & Learnings
For People on probation, Compass can improve digital literacy and provide motivation, agency, support and knowledge.
Service providers can be seen, learn from others, collaborate on projects and scale their initiatives.
And for the Ministry of Justice, they can make better decisions and provide funding where most needed, through data collection and categorization which enable them to identify service area gaps and surpluses.
VISION:
Once the directory is developed we can start to build it better. Compass can become a resource centre, collaboration tool, a progress checker and ultimately, a community builder connecting people not just programmes
Learnings:
1. The system is complex and adaptive. It has no single identity and any intervention must come up from the ground naturally .
2. Initially our primary focus was to change the situations of the people on probation by making them stable. But later we had to inform our thinking.
3. We brought in agile methodology and self-iterative and reflective work structures for the frontline staff and failed because the staff was institutionalised.
4. Finally, we placed a smaller intervention in place trying to combine the above two concept, make the work flow more effecient.
Our own flexibility in thought and through letting go of naevity we were able to understand the complexities of the system.