Process and impact evaluations of Surrey Prisons Gambling Service

Overview

The Surrey Prisons Gambling Service (SPGS) is a 3-year programme which runs from July 2020 to April 2023. The service will run across 5 Surrey prisons where CNWL already deliver primary care, mental health and substance misuse services to existing offenders.

GambleAware have commissioned KantarPublic to conduct process and impact evaluations to capture learnings from the delivery of SPGS, this work will run from December 2021 until the end of August 2023. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the SPGS in order to inform future commissioning and roll out of the project to other prisons in England, Scotland and Wales.

The Evaluation

The aims of the process and impact evaluations are summarised below.

The process evaluation will focus on implementation, seeking to understand the extent to which ‘at risk’ prisoners or those experiencing ‘gambling harms’ are being identified, barriers and facilitators to engagement with the programme, and the impact of COVID-19 on delivery. This will be evaluated by using qualitative methods to capture the experiences of those implementing and attending the programme.  The qualitative data will be supplemented with secondary analysis of existing programme data.

The impact evaluation aims to investigate any early effects the programme has on service users’ health and gambling treatment within prisons. This will draw on qualitative approaches such as interviews with prison staff and beneficiaries of the programme. Findings from other sources including scoping interviews with delivery leads and prison heads of healthcare, and secondary analysis of PGSI responses before, during, and after treatment may also be used to contribute to this analysis.

Methods

This evaluation is primarily made up of qualitative research such as interviews and group discussions. This will be complimented with secondary analysis of existing programme data.