Helping to turn the page: exploring the lived experiences and barriers encountered by civic sector workers engaged in prisoner-based interventions.

• In Event: Prison and post-prison experiences

Abstract

The importance of a service user's professional interaction with a healthcare or other appropriate professional in making interventions, such as bibliotherapy, successful, is well documented (Cox, Andrew, & Brewster, Liz, 2020; Brewster, 2011). When the healthcare professional is more involved in the design and implementation of a planned and structured bibliotherapeutic intervention they work better to promote positive and sustained outcomes for the service user (Maunder et al., 2009). Staff buy-in is also vital to the intervention's success (Lai, et al., 2022; Turner, et al., 2022; Maunder et al., 2009).

Therefore, it is necessary to examine the staff decision-making processes that govern how specific interventions are planned, implemented, and evaluated. This research will develop the understanding of the mechanisms that govern why certain interventions succeed and others do not.

Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, this research explores the lived experience of practitioners working within civic sector roles. The success of interventions aimed at supporting prison leavers and current prison inmates is impacted by factors that include, staff motivations, staff buy-in, the availability of appropriate materials and literature, and the other associated barriers and challenges faced by staff developing these interventions.

Using a social constructivist lens, the rebranding of specific terminology relating to those who have experienced incarceration will be discussed. A change in terminology from prisoners, and associated terms (ex-prisoner, etc.) to a more inclusive set of terminology will be proposed. The intention is to aid in the reduction of harmful stereotyping caused by secondary prisonization of the children and other family members of people who have been incarcerated.

Author

• Daniel Williams, Cardiff Metropolitan University