RESEARCH & INSIGHTS

POP’s difficulties in re-building social relationships - Emotion Awareness and Communication Skills

As the main source of information for the research, we conducted interviews with three main stakeholder groups, people on probation (POP), probation officers and navigator mentors from Catch22. We used various co-creation methods during interviews, such as ‘One Day in Your Life’ and ‘Body Map’ to do ice-breaking and create a more interactive environment for interviewees to engage with, which brought us lots of POP’s real thoughts and deep insights.

For the research outcome, we found that social relationships are the key to keeping people on probation away from reoffending. However, they may meet some difficulties when re-building their social networks, which could be reflected in two ways, an internal perspective about their emotion awareness, and an external one about their communication skills.

SOLUTION

I am - Self-expression journey

Combined with the previous research, to solve the problems we framed, possible services should follow the cognitive and expressive processes of the human being. During this process, trust-building between people on probation (POP) and navigator mentors is significant to help POP move from self-awareness to self-expression. In addition, trust-building should accompany the whole process.

Our solution, “I am”, is a packaged program for the Catch22’s pilot, encouraging POP to be aware of and express themselves by building trust with navigator mentors for their stable emotional conditions and better relationships with others.

It delivers a guidance leaflet for navigator mentors to understand and use our approach in practice, demonstrating the main steps for them to follow and how this helps POP make progress.

IMPACT

Re-building better social relationships by self-expressing in the current probation system

The programme consists of four parts; self-awareness, trust-building, self-expression and progress reflection, which align with stages in the pilot.

In the self-awareness stage, people on probation (POP) discover themselves well through writing down their experiences; it also helps navigator mentors understand who the POP is and their real needs. In the trust-building stage, both gain each other’s trust by delivering on promises. This makes the POP more willing to self-express and gives them stronger motivation to participate in activities. During the self-expression stage, the POP shows their daily lives using Instagram short videos. This helps the navigator mentors understand the POP’s personality and their realities, which leads to better communication between them. Finally, in the progress reflection stage, the POP looked back on positive memories with their families and friends during the pilot by watching their posts. This reflection can benefit future pilots.

In the current journey, POP are always being told what they should do following the instructions from the probation officer. This programme could provide channels for POP to express their feelings and also their hope with the help of navigator mentors to get positive feedback and support from the probation system.