Who we are
We are a team of professionals, including mental health nurses, social workers, lived experience peer mentors and support practitioners with a vast knowledge and experience of the criminal justice system. We work in and out of HMP Liverpool and HMP Altcourse. Our main base is South Sefton Magistrates Court.
Reconnect offers support to people who are due to leave or have recently left prison to access health and care services in the community. You can access Reconnect services if:
- You are aged 18 or over
- You are due to be released from prison within the next 12 weeks or sooner or have been released within the last 28 days
- You have health and care needs and feel you would benefit from support accessing community based services
- You are being released from HMP Liverpool/Altcourse, or will be resettled in the Merseyside area.
Reconnect will work with you in identifying and helping you to access health or care services you may require in the community. These may be physical health, mental health, substance misuse, or barriers that prevent you from getting help from health care services. This is to make sure that your needs are met on release and to help ease your transition from prison into the community by making these links to services as easy as possible for you.
Reconnect will work with you whilst in prison or on release to understand what is important to you and what needs you might have.
Reconnect can start working with you from 12 weeks before your release and up to 6 months after release.
We will do a holistic needs led assessment with you so that we can get to know you better, understand what matters to you and understand your needs. This will be done while you’re in prison and/or on your release depending on your circumstances.
We will write a support plan with you identifying what support you need and how we will work with you to address it.
You will be allocated named Reconnect workers.
Once we’ve done this, we will work with other services and teams, with your consent, as required, to get as much information to help you as we can.
This may include services such as physical health, mental health, recovery services, your prison offender manager or community offender manager as well as others - this will all be guided by you.