"Everyone needs to be cared for”: exploring care from the perspective of prison officers working with young adult offenders

This research thesis is focussed upon staff who work with offending populations.

Paper one is a literature review, examining eleven papers, with the aim of summarising what is known about the presence and factors related to secondary trauma in staff working with adult offenders. Secondary trauma is a broad term referring to negative impacts which can be experienced by those indirectly exposed to trauma (e.g. witnessing or hearing narratives of traumatic events). The results found secondary trauma to be present within all samples, staff were predominantly categorised as being at low to moderate risk. Factors associated with secondary trauma are discussed, the results suggest support could be improved to assist in mitigating the effects of secondary trauma. This literature was challenging to synthesize due to a lack of conceptual clarity and methodological issues within the included studies.

Paper two is an empirical study exploring experiences of care with prison officers who work in an Offender Personality Disorder Pathway service, located within a young adult offenders’ prison. This qualitative research utilised a grounded theory approach. Twelve officers were interviewed regarding their understanding of care, how they demonstrate care to service users, their own relationship to care and their support needs. Analysis revealed three themes, which were organised into an explanatory model of care for prison officers. The themes were: relationships, impact of caring and development of officers’ caring approach. The results demonstrated that officers need to be sufficiently cared for in order to most effectively provide care to service users. Clinical implications, limitations of the study and directions for future research are discussed.

An executive summary of the empirical research is presented in paper three. It has been written in an accessible style aimed at prison officers, prison management staff and NOMS decision-makers. The paper consists of an overview of: the background to the research, methodology, results and recommendations for supporting prison officers.