Setting the Vision for Correctional Healthcare Projects

Strategic visioning exercises bring all stakeholders to the table, aligning priorities and establishing a shared direction that can position correctional healthcare projects for success from the outset. | Photo Credit: Generated using OpenAI (ChatGPT)

By Dave Redemske

Once a correctional healthcare capital project is approved and eventually funded, it is essential to make sure that the project gets off to a positive and productive start. As soon as the team of agency leaders, architecture and design consultants and other project stakeholders is assembled, it’s imperative to create an environment that is supportive of new ideas, open to exchanging information, and receptive to positive challenges to the status quo. The most efficient way to do that is through a visioning session.

Depending on the size of the project, a visioning session can be as short as an afternoon or as long as multiple days, and can include a wide range of participants, from facility management and frontline staff to outside service providers and community organizations.

In any case, the goal is the same: to make sure everyone is moving toward the same goal and that the expectations and outcomes are aligned across leadership, the stakeholders and their consultants.

Regardless of project size, visioning sessions should include the following.

Project and Visioning Process Overview

Everyone on the team must understand exactly what’s in and what’s out of the scope of the project. Sometimes there are earlier understandings of the project that may have changed during the funding process, such as project size from a square footage or bed count perspective, or the types of programs and healthcare services that will be accommodated. It’s important that all team members are aligned on the approved scope before moving forward, and that intended outcomes are clear and agreed upon.

Not all team members may have been through a correctional healthcare capital project before. Therefore, a simple and complete understanding of what happens in a visioning session needs to be explained to the team. That way, everyone feels empowered to share their ideas and insights. Make sure that everyone understands what’s expected of them and ensure them that this session is a safe space to share ideas.

Free Thinking

Many times, stakeholders such as frontline staff or even facility leaders have only worked in their home facility. They may not have a complete understanding of current best practices outside of their own facilities, or be aware of the different features other agencies have been able to implement in their facilities. Because of that, there should be an exercise (or series of exercises) that encourages free thinking.

Conducting exercises that allow stakeholders to look at their current facility with a critical eye, discuss pros and cons and think about what the future holds will help them be more open-minded and creative as the project moves forward.

Approaches such as “moonshot thinking,” where team members strive to create a ten-times improvement to their current conditions, is a great way to start, though it is not the only method.

Establishing the Baseline

Though it doesn’t have to happen at the same time as the visioning session, tours of other facilities or projects are a great way for the team to understand what current best practices are and how other facilities are dealing with similar issues. It also allows the team to talk informally with their peers and collaborate on the best way to deal with certain situations.

Using these projects as a “baseline” for their project enables big-picture, outside-the-box thinking and creates an expectation of larger improvements, in lieu of smaller, more incremental improvements.

Vision Boards

Absent of (or in addition to) in-person project tours, vision boards are also a great way to visually show the team different ideas for the project. Creating a series of boards with images of other facilities — both inside and outside corrections — is a great way for the team to consider what’s most important, and also think about the best way to solve their problems.

The boards can be more general in nature, or they can be focused on specific criteria such as access to nature and natural light, therapeutic colors, normalized furniture, staff amenities and more.

Population-Specific Visioning

Next, the team should think about the needs of the specific populations they serve. Depending on the size of the project and the duration of the visioning session, these can be divided into groups as broad as residents/patients, staff and visitors, or can get into more specific populations such as aging, transgender or those with chronic conditions or other medical or mental health needs.

They key is to think about each population specifically and account for not only their current needs, but what their future needs may be.

Vision and Mission Statements

Finally, the team should create collective vision and mission statements. These will be the overarching guideposts that the team members can refer back to when making decisions on the direction of the project. These should be living documents that can evolve as the needs and scope of the project get more dialed in.

There are a few additional exercises that can be completed if the team determines they are necessary.

High-level design principles can be established in addition to support the vision and mission statements. These are meant to guide the design team on the specific goals that the project is trying to accomplish. This is a way to keep the design team focused and ensure that they are moving in the same direction as the rest of the team.

Also, it’s useful to ask a simple question: what does success look like? This is a frank discussion among the design team on what they feel success means for their particular project. It should be noted that success will mean different things to different team members. The key here is to have an honest and open discussion on what success actually means.

Finally, it’s important to keep in mind that, because of the hierarchical nature of correctional organizations, front-line stakeholders may hesitate to share honest feedback in front of leadership. Still, facilitators of the visioning session must ensure that everyone’s voice is heard. One effective approach is to have these stakeholders report the results of these specific exercises to the team. This not only encourages participation, but also builds ownership of content and ideas and helps stakeholders frame the outcomes as “ours” rather than “theirs” when reporting back to their teams.

Dave Redemske is an architect and correctional healthcare consultant.