Health Promoting Criminal Justice Settings: Learning Networks for Offender Health

This project builds on and seeks to transfer knowledge and learning from earlier regional development work on Healthy Prisons co-ordinated by the Healthy & Sustainable Settings Unit and funded by the Department of Health and NW Prison Area Office.

Through this work, the project seeks to address the wider determinants of health, thereby reducing inequalities, tackling social exclusion and bringing about real health improvement and effective resettlement of ex-prisoners back into their communities. The project is focused on knowledge transfer, but includes research components.

Using postal questionnaire, a literature review and case study research, it has the following objectives:

• To share learning from the North West healthy prisons work amongst prison professionals.
• To map organisations which play a role in the ‘total offender pathway’, understanding the extent to which they already act as a healthy setting and identify their learning needs in relation to their further development as a healthy setting in the future
• To create a learning network, consisting of interested professionals from organisations who play a role in the ‘total offender pathway’, and using this as a basis for participation in CPD and networking events, in-depth organisational support, two-way communication channels and a brokering service to link professionals together
• To consolidate existing knowledge about health settings and using this to develop resource material to meet identified learning needs.