Correctional Employee Wellness Monograph

Regions 1 and 3 also do not provide many of the family-centered servic- es, such as family and marriage counseling, family events and social engagements. Although different in services pro- vided, regions all share the same barriers to providing care, such as limited funding, staffing and physical space. The community set- ting of facilities impacts staff wellness services in several ways. Fa- cilities in rural areas provided on average the fewest number of resources, but that num- ber only increases by

Photo courtesy Tennessee Department of Correction

one when compared to their suburban counterparts. Urban agencies offer significantly more services on average, but the range overlaps with both rural and suburban data, meaning urban agencies do not necessarily offer any ad- ditional resources than smaller agencies and communities. Rural facilities are also the only area to report proper fund- ing for programming. Although the community setting, and presumably agency size, can vary greatly, availability of wellness programs for agency employees does not always follow such a trend. Next steps ACA and its stakeholders will continue to gather high quality data and information through conducting discovery site visits. Analyzing proposed criteria and in consultation with the Wellness Advisory Committee, ACA will select a stratified sample of correctional employee wellness programs to conduct in-person and virtual site visits at a variety of facilities across the nation, viewing program cur- riculum and materials, gathering policies and procedures and examining administrative data on officer well-being. ACA will examine the data collected from the national scan and the information from visits to catalogue both

quantitative and qualitative aspects to an exemplary model for staff wellness which will be made publicly available. Using a web-based format, ACA will produce a well- defined data source and a clear, concise inventory of correctional employee wellness curricula and resources from across the nation. This digital resource center will in- clude recorded webinars, toolkits, publications, marketing and tangible solutions to help agencies improve their staff wellness offerings. The resource center will be housed on ACA’s website and will be regularly updated with sched- uled trainings, tools and guides for agencies to utilize in better assisting their employees in achieving their multidi- mensional health goals. With such comprehensive and nationally representa- tive data on the current availability of staff wellness programs in the U.S., future work should focus on cor- rectional staff wellness program efficacy and impact. Ensuring all provided services are making meaningful, measurable improvements in the wellbeing of participants is crucial to advancing this field. With the collaboration of ACA, state and local agencies and correctional employees themselves, correctional staff wellness programs will surely make a positive, significant impact on many lives. ♦

17