Finishing time at a distance: an exploration of support mechanisms for socio-economically disadvantaged and criminalised individuals during the Covid-19 crisis and beyond.

This proposal is to conduct research with LandWorks CIO (LWC), a resettlement charity providing a supported route into employment and community for prisoners and people on community sentences (collectively called trainees), many of whom are socio-economically disadvantaged in terms of employment, housing and health indicators. Since lockdown LWC have maintained and/or re-established relationships with trainees, graduates and their families. In the absence of face-to-face contact, this research aims to map the ways individuals engage with the charity through mediums such as texts, phone calls, letters and email exchanges, with a view to developing an asset-based framework for use beyond the pandemic. The research further aims to explore the lived experience of criminalised individuals negotiating changing circumstances as a consequence of covid-19, whilst identifying some key areas of economic and social disadvantage in order to maximise mechanisms of support that could be initiated by LWC (and others) in the future.