Engaging and supporting staff to co-create a successful rehabilitation journey

presented by Avraham Hoffmann at the ICPA 18^th annual conference, Bucharest, Romania , October 2016

When I was building the professional system for the rehabilitation of released prisoners in Israel some 40 years ago I faced the question:

How to build professional teams to rehabilitate released prisoners?

Before we could answer this question we had defined the employees’ functions:

1. Evaluate the prisoners prior to their release from prison.
2. Prepare the community to reintegrate the released prisoners, together with the community social services.
3. Supervise the released prisoner, continually strengthen them to rehabilitate and, be able to intervene immediately when they face obstacles both internal and those inflicted on them.

Rehabilitating released prisoners requires to change the social attitude toward released prisoners – both the community’s and the social services – and to look for new ways to rehabilitate them.

Hence it necessitates having employees who have an unconventional thinking and a willingness to partner with others in creating a new way that embraces both welcoming the chances of succeeding but at the same time accepting the risks of failure.

Not every employee is willing to engage in such a journey. Hence, in addition to the professional approach of social services organisations, they must have the ideological conviction about the need and ability of human beings to change, and especially released prisoners.  And, because in such a journey unpredictable obstacles might occur, it requires enormous and constant efforts to advance the employees, to prepare them to deal with difficulties and to stand by them.

What is the best composition of a rehabilitation team?

To achieve a successful rehabilitation the Prisoner rehabilitation Authority (PRA) created a professional team composed of social workers from five different specialisations and a defined set of skills, in a unique mix that enables us to treat the released prisoners and their needs comprehensively, and thus successfully reduce recidivism.

Each of the five different specialisations categories represents about 20% of the staff composed of social workers, psychologist and criminologists – most of which hold a Masters degree:

1. Social workers who worked in the Prison Services or in closed institutions for young delinquents – who bring the understanding of people in closed settings.

They know the prisoner’s situation and experience. They also know how to work with the Prison Services social workers, to gain their trust and obtain detailed and relevant information about the prisoners.

• Parole officers from the adults and youth probation services that had worked with delinquents before and after imprisonment.

Many prisoners have remaining unresolved problems with the police and the courts of law, that unless resolved will have a difficult time to rehabilitate. Knowing the system, parole officers can promote an open approach.

• Professionals who had worked in community programs such as programs for street gangs, programs that treat sex offenders, and domestic violence offenders.

The professional treatment of released prisoners in the community is crucial. These workers professional background help them bridge the gaps with the community workers.

• Community workers who know well the community services and who have the skills to work in cooperation with municipality and community programs, with volunteer organizations. Among them were worker that had successfully managed helping employees that have a difficulty to integrate and persevere at work and in advancing rehabilitation programs for needy populations.

They bring the community strategy.

• Social workers that specialized in family therapy and children-parents relationships therapy in the community.

We cannot stress enough the importance of the family and the children in the rehabilitation of prisoners, and it is impossible to treat a released prisoner who has a family without dealing professionally with his relationships with his children and spouse. If he has a family, he has a place to go back to. If he has no family to return to, he will most likely return to his delinquent friends.

How can we make this diverse team cooperate to achieve its fullest potential?

When you assemble employees whose professional background and expertise are so diverse, one must work at making them become a united operating force.

The leadership must understand that the employee’s struggle is perpetual both individually and as a team. This understanding allows employees to become active partners in co-creating a new approach. And, by defining the attitude and skills needed it is also easier to detect when an employee doesn’t fit in and let him go before any harm is done.

To do that we must:

1. Offer a shared training to prepare them to achieve together the organisation’s purpose and goals – rehabilitation of released prisoners.
   1. Operate multi-professional teams and ensuring weekly meeting to enable them to deal with issues at stake and to take action.
   1. Nurture an atmosphere of creativity that encourages and respects diverse points of view in discussions. And, a unified collective effort in realising the team’s and management’s decisions. As a rule, we should aim at changing roles in the team every three years, while taking into account the skills, professional background and cumulative experience, such as preparing the prisoner toward his release; community accompaniment; managing a residential hostel for released prisoners.

How do we strengthen both the team and the individual employee?

In rehabilitating released prisoners we often face a conservative reality that is not inclined toward innovation – our obligation is to educate our employees to become innovative leaders that are able to deal with the existing models in the Prison and Parole services. Leaders that are determined to achieving the organisation’s goals; able to negotiate and engage others with patience, knowing that changes require tolerance to those who have conservative views and a willingness to listen to their points of view.

Only a persevering employee who is convinced of the change needed can engage others with a conservative belief to get on board of the change process.

And, we must teach them to work and co-create with the community and its leaders and public figures to obtain ideological, practical and financial support. They must acknowledge that professional expertise alone is not enough and that they need the public’s and community’s support to be able to achieve the best possible results. A support that also strengthens them personally in their important mission to rehabilitate released prisoners.

Following are ways to strengthen the employees:

• Regular trainings.
• Allowing employees who have completed long term projects to advance academically with the organisation sponsorship.
• Encourage employees to appear in public to explain the organisation’s work and methods – there is nothing more self-engaging for an employee than taking part in representing the organisation to the outside world.
• Encourage employees to write professional articles.
• Successful and failure case study analysis by the team, and conclusions for the future, and lessons learned together.
• Visits of staff in different programs operated by the organisation.
• Field trips of management and employees to strengthen their bonding and partnership outside the daily work routine.

We must always remember that we are dealing with released prisoners that for the first time in their lives are trying to rehabilitate. Hence their chances of succeeding or failing are a priory equal. And, because in such a journey unpredictable obstacles might occur, it requires enormous and constant efforts to advance the employees, to prepare them to deal with difficulties and to stand by them. It is important to support the employee when he feels he has “failed” or is emotionally stressed of not succeeding as he wished he had.

There is a real danger that a professional that has a perfectionist approach will lose trust in him if you, the manager, do not stand on his side in his struggle with himself, and help him in time of crisis to see the opportunities and his successes.  An employee that from the nature of his work feels alone on the “battlefield” mustn’t feel abandoned. Obviously, if there are repetitive failures, the management must resolve the problem and even let this employee leave if the failure is unrepairable.

To conclude with the words of the prophet Ezekiel : “And bring them close, one to the other into one stick, and they shall be one (in your hand).” (Ezekiel 37:17). As shown above to successfully rehabilitate released prisoners we need to operate multi-professional teams. We must support these teams to enable them to achieve their full potential, both individually and as a team, to enable them to become professional leaders, form a real partnership and co-creation will developed within the organisation to enhance the rehabilitation of released prisoners.