Healthcare
We have significant experience of providing humanitarian holistic - that is, whole person - offender healthcare. Within low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), we care for detainees, ex-detainees and their dependents.
Our holistic healthcare service has four arms - medical care, patient information, welfare, and spiritual care.
medical care
A senior UK doctor volunteering with a local interpreter to care for a patient in a rural jail
in-reach Clinics
Healthcare for detainees takes place within a variety of secure environments including police stations, remand jails, sentenced prisons, and forensic psychiatric hospitals.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we develop a strong track record in providing regular in-reach clinics to remand jails within the Zambales region of the Philippines.
One of our telemedicine clinicians Zooming directly into a Philippine police custody suite
telemedicine clinics
The pandemic brought these clinics to an abrupt halt. Then, inspired by our occasional pre-pandemic use of telemedicine, we took advantage of the COVID-inspired relaxation of rules around wifi-enabled devices within many secure environments. Our official telemedicine service was born.
We now conduct regular telemedicine clinics within Philippine police stations and jails, and occasionally other secure environments.
Upon request, we also utilise telemedicine to reach into other countries’ secure environments elsewhere. Telemedicine really has shrunk the world for us - and we are willing to consider deploying our service wherever it is needed.
We also provide third party consultations, to interested parties including relatives and embassy officials, when it is not possible to contact patients themselves.
A detainee’s child being measured during a child health surveillance clinic
Dependents
Detainees are often financially challenged, and their families suffer further when the main breadwinner is detained.
When appropriate, we extend our humanitarian medical care to ex-detainees and the dependents of both detainees and ex-detainees, if they have medical needs that cannot reasonably be taken care of otherwise.
Our Philippines manager evaluating the immediate needs of an ex-detainee
ex-detainees
Being released from detention does not necessary end a detainee’s problems. Often they often face ongoing hardships including chronically damaged health and persisting social stigma resulting in perpetual unemployment and deepening poverty.
We extend our services to appropriate
ex-detainees in those areas where our detainee services operate. This both helps them to get re-established within society and also demonstrate God’s ongoing love for them.
Patient information
patient information leaflets
We are publishing, expanding and translating our range of patient information leaflets (PILs), making them freely available for download and use around the world.
Welfare
Our personnel distributing hot fresh food and personal hygiene items in a Philippine police cell
personal care
Police detainees in particular often have even less access to appropriate food and medical care than those in prisons and other secure environments.
And this has only worsened since the pandemic: legal processes are delayed so spend even longer in police custody than pre-pandemic; and lockdowns, curfews and deepening poverty prevent relatives from taking food to their loved ones.
Responding to this dilemma early on in the pandemic, we started a police custody welfare programme.
One of four siblings, children of a detainee, found in a precarious state in a rubbish dump home - before we moved two of them into care
social care
We consider the safeguarding and other social needs of detainees and their families. Often we become aware of detainees’ children being in the community without adequate accommodation, care or nutrition.
Our team responds to this by going to investigate and acting as required. Sometimes this results in children being taken into care, though this is generally a position of last resort.
And to enhance our ability to make high quality assessments and liaise effectively with national social services, our welfare team includes our own in-house social worker.
spiritual care
Our specially design leaflet
Holistic care
We work with a holistic model of healthcare - considering our patients’ social, psychological and spiritual needs as well as their physical health problems.
Integral mission
And we are fully committed to integral mission - bringing social justice in the form of healthcare for the world’s neediest detainees regardless of their religious beliefs, and also sharing the Christian message with those detainees who wish to hear it.
We use a specially designed cross-shaped leaflet explaining the Christian message. It uses simple words and concepts and is available in a variety of local languages.
That said, we generally deliver medical care and welfare before spiritual care. We never force the Christian message on anyone. And we always have - and always will - care for detainees of all faiths and none.
“Why does your teacher [Jesus] eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick…”
(Matthew 9:11-12)