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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri

Time: 12:23 pm

Results for community services

4 results found

Author: Cnaan, Ram A.

Title: Assessing Philadelphia’s Social Service Capacity for Ex-Prisoner Reentry

Summary: This report presents a portrait of prisoner reentry services and needs for the City of Philadelphia. The people who need re-entry services • Every year some 40,000 people are released to Philadelphia from federal, state, and local prisons/jails. Over the years, some of them are repeating this cycle of incarceration and release. When they move back to the community, they are in need of social and human help for a long period of time. We estimate that at any given time there are 200,000 to 400,000 ex-prisoners who are in need of some kind of help. • The majority of the ex-prisoners are male (85%) and African American (70%). In Philadelphia, only 44 percent of the population is African American. • Neighborhoods with the highest numbers of those returning from prison and jail are Fairhill, North Central, Kingsessing, Frankford, Richmond, Cobbs Creek, and Tioga. These neighborhoods had more than 800 ex-prisoners return home in 2005 and accounted for more than a third of the ex-offenders mapped. (For the neighborhoods with the highest ratio and/or number of ex-prisoners, see Map 1) The serving organizations • Based on a list of 2,100 organizations, 924 were found not to exist or not to serve ex-prisoners; 487 were duplicates, and 150 refused or were inaccessible. • There were 539 organizations surveyed in this study that knowingly served ex-prisoners or had no restriction to serving them with an additional 221 service locations that provide services under the organizational structure of some of these 539 organizations. • A slight majority (52.1 %) of the organizations (281) served ex-offenders, while 47.8 percent (258) did not serve ex-offenders, but had no restrictions to doing so. • Each organization identified a primary provider type: faith-based – 16.7 percent; mental/behavioral health – 14.3 percent; employment and education – about 11 percent; HIV alcohol/substance abuse treatment, housing, and HIV/AIDS/primary healthcare, all about 10 percent; advocacy/legal and other, both around 7 percent. • Organizations that provide social and supportive services served, on average, about 5,147 clients in 2006. This number includes both those that served ex-prisoners and those that did not. This high average implies that many people in Philadelphia receive services from multiple providers. However, there little inter-agency coordination. Distribution of Services • The heaviest concentrations (nearly a third) of organizations which provide social and supportive services to ex-prisoners are in the Center City (East and West), Riverfront, and University City neighborhood-area. • The distribution of organizations available to serve ex-prisoners and the community at large is inadequate. For example, in Fairhill, which is among those neighborhoods with the highest count and density of ex-offenders, there are only seven organizations that were available to serve 1,101 ex-prisoners returning in 2005 (and many more from previous years) who reside among 16,919 adult residents.

Details: Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Policy & Practice, 2007. 39p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 15, 2011 at: http://www.phila.gov/reentry/pdfs/research_study.pdf

Year: 2007

Country: United States

URL: http://www.phila.gov/reentry/pdfs/research_study.pdf

Shelf Number: 111154

Keywords:
Community Services
Prisoner Reentry (Philadelphia)
Reintegration

Author: Burgess, Cheryl

Title: Women in Focus: An Evaluation

Summary: Women in Focus was introduced in South West Scotland as a partnership between Criminal Justice Social Work Services and Barnardo's, aimed at supporting women on court orders to complete these orders and to avoid custody through breach. Support workers from Barnardo's were located in criminal justice social work offices, and using a mentoring-style approach, Women in Focus provided support for women to meet the requirements of court orders and to access community resources aimed at supporting them in the longer-term. The development and operation of Women in Focus resulted from the concerns that many practitioners, policy-makers and others have expressed in relation to the increasing imprisonment of women in Scotland (and internationally). The report sets out the mentoring approach introduced and examines issues arising from the implementation and operation of the service. The report also attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of the service in terms of increased community re/integration and reductions in breach and reoffending. However, innovative attempts, while making a significant difference to the individual women who are able to access them, are introduced and required to operate within, a wider social, political and economic context that can influence how services operate (i.e. short-term funding imposes its own constraints) and how 'effective' these innovative services can be seen to be.

Details: Stirling: Scottish Centre for Crime & Justice Research, 2011. 69p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 23, 2014 at: http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Women_in_Focus_FINAL_REPORT.pdf

Year: 2011

Country: United Kingdom

URL: http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Women_in_Focus_FINAL_REPORT.pdf

Shelf Number: 133389

Keywords:
Community Services
Female Offenders (Scotland)
Mentoring
Offender Rehabilitation
Offender Treatment
Recidivism

Author: Easton, Helen

Title: Evaluation of the 218 Service: Examining Implementation and Outcomes

Summary: 1.1. The 218 Service opened in Glasgow in December 2003 in response to growing concerns about the needs and treatment of women offenders in the criminal justice system. Since this time, the service has provided holistic, women centred support for adult women offenders through a partnership between Turning Point Scotland (TPS) and Glasgow Addiction Service (GAS). This report presents a summary of the findings of a second evaluation of the service and provides an estimate of key outcomes for women offenders and the cost benefits of the service. Main Findings 1.2. The 218 Service has continued to evolve and remains a highly regarded, holistic, 'person centred' residential and day service for adult women offenders. The maximum period of engagement permitted has changed to six months for the Residential Service and 12 months for the Day Service. The programme has also been updated to focus on offending behaviour and to incorporate a recovery focussed model of change (Prochaska and DiClemente, 1982) which provides increased flexibility, improved measurement of change, and has potential to increase levels of engagement. 1.3. Police-recorded offending reduced by 21% following contact with the service among the cohort of 320 women referred to the service between 1 June 2007 and 31 May 2008. Among women engaging with the service beyond their assessment overall offending reduced by 31% and dishonesty offences by 44%. 1.4. A conservative estimate of the cost benefit established that for every $1 invested in the service there was a potential saving of $2.50 per year. Further savings are likely if longer term impacts such as the impact on women offenders' children are taken into consideration. 1.5. Most referrals to the service are made by the courts (43%) or Criminal Justice Social Work (CJSW)(16%) and are aged 25-39 years (66%). From 2007 to 2009 there was a reduction in referrals of women aged 20-34 (71% of referrals reducing to 57%) and an increase in referrals of women aged 35-44 years (21% increasing to 33%). CJSW referrals had declined slightly from 19% to 16% of the total over the same period. 1.6. The number of assessments increased slightly from 198 in 2007 to 214 in 2009. A total of 439 women were assessed 630 times by the service. Multiple assessments accounted for half (51%) of all assessments compared to two thirds (67%) of referrals. 1.7. Over half (54%) of all referrals were assessed. Referrals from the Drug Court, Social Work, CJSW, and Community Addiction Teams were more likely to be assessed than referrals from other sources. 1.8. The combination of decreasing numbers of referrals, increasing numbers of assessments and lower numbers of multiple assessments than referrals could suggest an improvement in the quality of referrals made to the service. 1.9. Over half (52%) of the women offenders assessed engaged with the service. Those aged between 25-39 years and referred by CJSW, the Sheriff Court, CATs, Social Work and the Drugs Court were more likely to engage.

Details: Glasgow: Scottish Government Social Research, 2010. 108p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 23, 2014 at: https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=9497&p=0

Year: 2010

Country: United Kingdom

URL: https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=9497&p=0

Shelf Number: 133390

Keywords:
Alternatives to Incarceration
Community Services
Female Offenders (Scotland)
Offender Reintegration
Offenders Rehabilitation
Recidivism

Author: Nochajski, Thomas H.

Title: Hillside Children's Center: Livingston County Youth Court and Community Services Evaluation

Summary: From 2008 to 2010, State University of New York at Buffalo, School of Social Work conducted an evaluation of the Hillside Children's Center - Community Service Livingston County Youth Court (LCYC) program. Analyses focused on the recidivism (readmission) rates of children ages 12-17 who participated in their program. A particular strength of this evaluation is the use of a mixed method design, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative data elements. Additionally, the ability to integrate research and clinical practice with client outcomes provides an added strength to this evaluation, ultimately building the knowledge base in an effort to more appropriately meet the needs of the children and adolescents that Hillside Children's Center serves. Based on the initial goals and the interest in having enough allotted time to track follow-up recidivism rates, prospective data was not collected for this evaluation. Beginning in the year 2006, participants entered the LCYC and continued receiving services until 2008. Following discharge, the year of 2009 serves as the follow-up period for this evaluation. With a vast amount of rich data, pretest information utilized for this evaluation was collected by Hillside Children's Center which included program participant information. Additionally, information was collected from Livingston County Probation (Youth Assessment and Screening Instrument [YASI] Recidivism information) and Livingston County Department of Social Services (LC-DSS) (Placement information). The qualitative data collection component of this evaluation consisted of either a face-to-face or a telephone interview, and included multiple sources: LCYC participants and their parents, LCYC volunteers and their parents, LC Probation, and Hillside Children's Center staff. Due to constraints based on the relatively low rates of recidivism and placement, the available size of the sample was quite small, which perhaps reduces the power to detect significant differences between the groups, essentially elevating the risk for Type I errors. As a result, information on marginal trends (p<.25) is also presented. Because of limited power and the increased chance of causality related to a random occurrence, evaluators considered nearly all other potential elements or variables that may help improve existing Hillside Children's Center programs, with the understanding that these factors will need to be evaluated further. This information could perhaps point to areas of future investigation, in addition to potentially saving time, effort, and monetary costs associated with future data collection. The current evaluation utilized data from 120 participants, of which 55 were LCYC participants and 65 were Community Service Only (CSO) participants. To increase the accuracy of comparisons and results, the two groups were matched on age and gender. Although evaluators were unable to locate a true control group of juvenile offenders who did not experience LCYC or community services in Livingston County, which is the reason for use of the CSO as the comparison, information was found for comparison groups from various other states that were included in an evaluation of teen courts from 2002. While not ideal, the addition of these comparison groups in this evaluation does provide some useful information concerning recidivism among youth. Lastly, evaluators also considered cost-effectiveness of the LCYC program using recidivism and placement rates as the results or outcomes of interest. For purposes of this executive summary, the Livingston County Youth Court group will be referred to as LCYC, and the Community Services Program Only group will be referred to as CSO.

Details: Buffalo, NY: State University of New York at Buffalo, 2010. 69p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 4, 2017 at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54231470e4b00cb5c6464dc7/t/547d4e82e4b0756a4a5d2c35/1417498242299/Youth+court+evaluation+_1110.pdf

Year: 2010

Country: United States

URL: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54231470e4b00cb5c6464dc7/t/547d4e82e4b0756a4a5d2c35/1417498242299/Youth+court+evaluation+_1110.pdf

Shelf Number: 147547

Keywords:
Alternatives to Incarceration
Community Services
Juvenile Court
Juvenile Diversion
Juvenile Offenders
Juvenile Probation
Recidivism
Youth Court