UpFamilies aimed to provide prisoners’ families with a compendium of services available to support them with imprisonment impacts, accessible via a mobile app. It also sought to raise awareness about building the capacity of organizations working with these families to improve their preparedness. The main focus was to strengthen community organizations’ roles in the social inclusion of these families and prisoners upon release. To achieve this, several objectives were set: Ob1-to develop a roadmap on existing services; Ob2-to launch a mobile app validated through 5 pilots with 100 families; Ob3-to increase app usage, targeting 100 downloads; Ob4-to create a network of institutions/professionals supporting prisoners’ families; Ob5-to promote good practices in service provision via 5 stakeholder consultations with 30 CJS professionals; Ob6-to improve services through 5 pilots with 40 CBOs; Ob7-to create society awareness of CJS families’ needs, providing a training manual to mobilize community capacity for informal support and assistance.
Despite the significant developments made in the Criminal Justice System field (CJS), namely investing in offenders' social reintegration programmes during detention or community measures, little attention has been paid to prisoners' families and their needs during the re-entry process. The incarceration experience represents economic, social and psychological impacts for the families of the prisoners. The prisoners’ families are among the most vulnerable and disadvantaged populations in society, experiencing multidimensional and intersectional forms of inequality (Western and Pettit, 2010). Given that, many of the consequences on prisoners’ families can be alleviated by some moderators. Two of these moderators are the work of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), i.e., the support from civil society and the welfare policies and social services (Condry & Smith, 2018). These NGOs, enterprises and social services have a diverse range of goods and services that are provided to families that are crucial for the family support and wellbeing. The problem is that most of the time CJS' families lack awareness on where and how to look for the right support, they need new ways to find and connect with this support.