Prison and Offender Research in Social Care and Health - North East

Overview

The Prison and Offender Research in Social Care and Health (PORSCH) network was established in 2005 with the following:

  • Dedication: to enhancing the contribution of high quality research and development to the improvement of the health of offenders and in turn the communities in which they live.
  • Aim: to build and maintain a collaborative network of those in the North East of England with interests in offender heath and social care research and development both to contribute to the evidence base for the commissioning and provision of offender health services and to enhance research and development capacity in the region.
General Objectives in realising these aims:
  1. To develop PORSCH as a collaborative, multi-disciplinary, multi-agency regional network focused on offender health and social care innovation, evaluation and knowledge dissemination.
  2. To contribute to regional research strategies and prioritisation for offender health by working with health and social care and criminal justice agencies in the region.
  3. To develop support for offender health R & D among criminal justice agencies, including prisons, police and probation services.
  4. To secure future longer term funding for PORSCH.

The development of the PORSCH network is the result of a collaboration between a number of agencies in the region including: Universities, Prisons, NHS Trusts, Primary Care Trusts (PCT), the Strategic Health Authority (SHA), and the Police.

While PORSCH has strong links with the national Offender Health Research Network (OHRN- http://www.ohrn.nhs.uk/), the development of a north east network provides a local focus for prison and offender health and social care research across the region. PORSCH provides the local knowledge, expertise, support and training needed to enable researchers to undertake high quality work in prison and community settings throughout the north east that will address the particular needs of this population.

PORSCH is currently hosted by the North East Public Health Observatory (NEPHO: http://www.nepho.org.uk/).

PORSCH covers: