Evaluation of the Jail-Based Occupational Therapy Transition and Integration Services Program for Community Reentry

Transition and integration reentry services continue to grow in carceral settings; however, related provision of occupational therapy is limited.

To examine the implementation fidelity of an occupational therapy-administered interprofessional reentry program initiated in an urban jail.

Retrospective, mixed quantitative and qualitative design.

Community-based reentry services provided prerelease in a Midwestern urban jail and postrelease in the local St. Louis community.

Occupational therapy practitioners tracking process measures for identifying reentry project feasibility.

Provision of recruitment, assessment, and skilled occupational therapy services with people held in a short-term jail facility and follow-up during community reentry.

Detailed logs were analyzed to describe attendance at and duration of sessions. We coded barriers to and facilitators of implementation from weekly team meeting notes and logs using social-ecological categories.

Findings indicate that it was feasible to implement prerelease jail-based services (N = 63) because of jail operations and community partnerships (facilitators) and to overcome institutional policies and environmental limitations (barriers). Full 8-wk prerelease programming was completed by 38% (n = 24) of participants, and 52% (n = 33) participated less than 8 wk. All who completed the full prerelease program and transitioned to the community (n = 15) initiated postrelease occupational therapy services.

The iterative feedback provided by process evaluation supported the feasibility of implementing the jail-based Occupational Therapy Transition and Integration Services program.

This process evaluation provides evidence that implementation of an occupational therapy-based transition program in an urban jail is feasible.