The brief
"Can you make this checklist digital"
Staff in prisons followed a paper-based process, utilizing a checklist of questions that were reviewed with prisoners 12 weeks prior to their release. This process assessed factors such as the prisoners’ interest in working upon release, their previous experience, and whether they had the necessary documentation in place.
The real problem
Research quickly showed:
• Every prison was doing things differently
• Every ‘checklist’ was different, with each Prison Employment Lead (PEL) having created their own
• Even the job role of the PEL, which was fairly new, differed between prisons
• Everything was being recorded on paper and local excel spreadsheets, meaning nothing was shared between prisons. This led to prisoners often having to repeat the process several times as they moved between prisons
• A lot of the data, or similar data, was already being captured elsewhere in other systems at other parts of the prisoner's journey through prison
The outcome
Over a 3 year programme of work we researched, designed and built a suite of products and features which fully replaced the offline spreadsheets and provided a joined up service across prisons.
Get someone ready to work
Enables prison staff (primarily Prison Employment Leads) to record someone's education and work background and future work interests for work after release.
The recorded information and 'work readiness' status of the person is then used to inform job matching in the 'Match jobs and manage applications' product.
Match jobs and manage applications
Using data from 'Get someone ready to work' and other digital prison services, the product matches people leaving prison to jobs available to prison leavers.
Reporting dashboards
Custom reporting dashboards surfacing data from all of the Work after leaving prison products. Giving users the flexibility and data they need all in one place, to create the reports they need to. These dashboards ultimately aim to save users time and effort.
