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This is a Royal College of Occupational Therapists funded project

Lay summary: People in prison are more likely to have poor physical and mental health, and have faced adversity and disadvantage in their lives. Every year 80,000 people are released from prison in the UK. It is important that when people are released, they receive the support they need to participate in activities and roles that support their wellbeing and to move away from activities that bring them back in contact with the justice system.

Occupational therapists focus on enabling prosocial occupational participation, defined as undertaking activities and roles that are personally meaningful and socially valued. Occupational therapists can therefore make a vital contribution to national policy agendas to support justice-involved people to achieve health and move away from crime.

Occupational therapists must choose and deliver interventions based on evidence that they are effective. However, we don’t currently know the effectiveness of interventions for improving prosocial occupational participation for people released from prison.

To address this knowledge gap, we will apply Cochrane Collaboration guideline to conduct a systematic review of studies that test the effectiveness of interventions to improve prosocial occupational participation for people released from prison. Because the interventions tested and outcome measured are likely to be varied, we will synthesise the results using narrative synthesis. However, if there are enough similar good quality studies, we will do a meta-analysis.

Results will allow occupational therapists and stakeholders to select interventions most likely to achieve improved prosocial occupational participation, and inform service commissioners in deciding which staff and interventions to fund.

Question How effective are interventions to improve prosocial occupational participation for people released from prison?