ABOUT THE PROJECT

In 2014, Bon Secours Community Works (BSCW) implemented a Returning Citizens Program to support recently released prisoners back into the Bon Secours’ primary service area.  The program was met with enthusiasm and community support, however as individuals left BSCW, historical knowledge was lost and the skills that made the program an initial success were unable to be easily replicated leading to some program  inefficiencies. It was determined that documentation was needed to act as a historical record of steps in an existing process to provide a factual basis for revising steps when a process is changed.

CHALLENGES

Data from the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services shows that of the 8,823 inmates released in fiscal year 2015, at least 1,120 returned to Bon Secours’ primary service area.  For BSCW to have the capacity to serve an impactful number of returning citizens, standard practices needed to be identified, defined, and codified in actionable documentation.

SOLUTIONS

As people move from job to job within and between organizations, unwritten knowledge and skills disappear from the workplace. Standard operating procedures (SOP) that are well written and properly maintained can document a best practice that is specific to the program and serve as a training document for new staff. In addition, these documents enable programs to seamlessly operate during periods of staff transition. 

Requity interviewed staff at various program levels to determine what processes existed, what processes needed to be better defined and where staff may have different opinions on what process should be used for program implementation.  After these discussions, Requity wrote a comprehensive SOP for the Returning Citizen Program After final organizational approval of the SOPs a staff training was conducted to review the SOPs and ensure they would be implemented correctly.

Additionally, the SOP for the Returning CItizen program was utilized as the organizational template and framework for developing SOPs for other BSCW programs.