"Imagine if I'm not here, what they're going to do?"-Health-care access and culturally and linguistically diverse women in prison

Peer support for adult social care in prisons in England and Wales: a mixed-methods rapid evaluation

Background

More adults in prison need social care support. In some prisons, prisoners ('buddies') are trained to provide social care support for non-personal care tasks to other prisoners. These services are not mandated but have been proposed as a solution to support social care provision in prisons. Previous research explored delivery of peer support initiatives in prisons, but there has been little research evaluating the effectiveness, implementation and experience of social care peer support. There is a need to establish how best to measure the impact and cost of peer support schemes for social care in prisons in England and Wales.

Objective

To evaluate peer support schemes for adult social care in prisons in England and Wales (including implementation, experiences, risks and benefits, outcomes and costs, available data, and how to measure impact and cost).

Methods

A rapid mixed-methods study, including a rapid systematic scoping review (n = 70 papers), a documentary analysis of 102 His Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons reports, and a multisite study of implementation and experience. The multisite study included 1 workshop with national and local stakeholders (n = 13) and 71 interviews with national and local leads (n = 7), prison leads from 18 prisons (n = 20), staff (n = 7), peers (n = 18) and recipients (n = 19) from 5 prisons. Qualitative analysis took place in two phases: (1) rapid analysis (using rapid assessment procedure sheets) and (2) in-depth thematic analysis. We analysed availability of data to measure impact and cost of services.

Results

'Buddies' are frequently used in prisons in England and Wales, filling an important gap in social care provision. Implementation varies, due to service, prison, staff and prisoner factors. Prison service instruction guidelines for peer-supported social care are not consistently being implemented. This study identified areas for improvement, for example the need for formal training for buddies and staff, and the need for clear standardised employment procedures. Buddy schemes are valued by staff, buddies and recipients. Some barriers were identified, for example, lack of peer and staff training and supervision, and prison regime. Peer-supported social care may have wide-reaching benefits, yet there are several risks for recipients and buddies that must be mitigated, including the potential for exploitation of the role by staff, buddies and recipients. It is currently not possible to evaluate impact and cost due to limited data. We have developed an evaluation guide which outlines operational, cost and outcome data that needs to be collected to enable regular monitoring and/or evaluation in future.

Limitations

There is a lack of data collected on impact and cost, so we were unable to measure effectiveness and cost in this study. Instead, we developed an evaluation framework to inform future impact and cost evaluations.

Future work

National standards for peer-supported social care (including national data infrastructure) would enable robust monitoring and evaluations of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of peer support for social care.

Conclusions

Peer support services are well received by different stakeholders, but standardisation is needed to ensure they are sufficiently resourced and appropriately monitored and evaluated to mitigate against risks.

Study registration

This study is registered as researchregistry8783.

Funding

This award was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme (NIHR award ref: NIHR135689) and is published in full in Health and Social Care Delivery Research; Vol. 13, No. 1. See the NIHR Funding and Awards website for further award information.

Welcomeness for people with substance use disorders to general practice: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND

Good primary care for people with substance use disorders (SUDs) is crucial given the high prevalence of SUDs and overdose deaths.

OBJECTIVE

To explore general practice care for people with a history of SUDs from the perspectives of women involved with the criminal justice system.

METHODS

Qualitative interview study with pre- and postrelease interviews, undertaken in Australian prisons and community settings. We utilized thematic analysis informed by constructivist grounded theory.

RESULTS

We undertook 65 interviews with 39 women. Access to and experience of general practitioner (GP) care was affected by perceived welcomeness, decisions around disclosure, and consultation experiences related to medication prescription. Participants reported that they were not as welcome as other patients, welcome could be conditional on not disclosing SUDs or only requesting unrelated healthcare, and GPs did not always differentiate between past and current drug use. Participants perceived difficulty finding general practices where the potential benefit of disclosing SUDs outweighed the risks of stigmatized reactions and lack of GP skills and interest. Participants did not always recognize that care beyond physical health could occur in general practice. The pejorative implications of labelling patients as "doctor shoppers" were challenged by participants, as they considered it could be necessary to attend multiple GPs to find a welcoming practice.

CONCLUSIONS

People with histories of SUDs do not uniformly experience welcomeness in general practice, perpetuating poor engagement in healthcare and poor outcomes related to SUDs. Programmes targeting prescription drug misuse through general practice should also promote welcomeness for people with SUDs.

Language barriers between nurses and patients: A scoping review

OBJECTIVE

Global migration and linguistic diversity are at record highs, making healthcare language barriers more prevalent. Nurses, often the first contact with patients in the healthcare system, can improve outcomes including safety and satisfaction through how they manage language barriers. This review aimed to explore how research has examined the nursing workforce with respect to language barriers.

METHODS

A systematic scoping review of the literature was conducted using four databases. An iterative coding approach was used for data analysis. Study quality was appraised using the CASP checklists.

RESULTS

48 studies representing 16 countries were included. Diverse healthcare settings were represented, with the inpatient setting most commonly studied. The majority of studies were qualitative. Coding produced 4 themes: (1) Interpreter Use/Misuse, (2) Barriers to and Facilitators of Quality Care, (3) Cultural Competence, and (4) Interventions.

CONCLUSION

Generally, nurses noted like experiences and applied similar strategies regardless of setting, country, or language. Language barriers complicated care delivery while increasing stress and workload.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

This review identified gaps which future research can investigate to better support nurses working through language barriers. Similarly, healthcare and government leaders have opportunities to enact policies which address bilingual proficiency, workload, and interpreter use.

The mental health of culturally and linguistically diverse offenders - what do we know?

OBJECTIVE

A key challenge facing justice health service providers is addressing and treating the high rates of mental illness among offenders. It is well documented that rates of mental illness are substantially higher within prison populations compared to the general population. As such, the need to provide ongoing treatment to prisoners experiencing mental health issues is of fundamental importance. Prisoners experiencing mental health disorders are more likely to have poorer social outcomes on release, including a greater likelihood of recidivism and poorer health outcomes. The growing numbers of justice-involved individuals from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds signal the need for justice systems to adapt to the changing demographic.

CONCLUSIONS

In this commentary, we argue that greater efforts to explore the nature and prevalence of mental illness among CALD groups in custody, where such concerns are often intertwined with additional complex personal, environmental and historical criminogenic risk factors, are desperately needed to improve system responses and reduce recidivism.

"Imagine if I'm not here, what they're going to do?"-Health-care access and culturally and linguistically diverse women in prison

BACKGROUND

Women in prison have complex medical needs and poorer health status than the general population. Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) women in prison, particularly those with limited English proficiency (LEP), have distinct needs and risk additional isolation, discrimination and marginalization when they are in prison.

OBJECTIVE

We sought to examine how cultural and linguistic diversity, particularly LEP, affects the health-care experiences of women in prison.

DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

We conducted focus groups and semi-structured qualitative interviews with CALD women and frontline nursing staff in the three female Correctional Centres in New South Wales, Australia.

RESULTS

Participants comprised 30 women in prison and nine nurses. Both women and staff reported communication difficulties as a significant and additional barrier to accessing and receiving health care. For some women with LEP, barriers to care were perceived as discrimination. Fellow prisoners were often utilized as support persons and informal interpreters ("peer interpreters") in place of formally trained interpreters. While peer interpreters were perceived as useful, potential challenges to their use were vulnerability to coercion, loss of confidentiality, untrained health advice and errors of interpretation.

CONCLUSION

The persistent use of peer interpreters in prison is complicated by the lack of clearly defined roles, which can include informal peer support roles and lay health advice. These are highly complex roles for which they are unlikely to be adequately trained or supported, despite perceived benefits to their use. Improved understanding and facilitation of health-related communication could enhance equity of access for CALD women in prison.