Time for Families case study

The relationship between prisoners and their partners is under enormous strain during a prison sentence. Time for Families runs relationship courses in the prisons for the offender and his/her partner which have a powerful impact on the participants. However, without effective IT they had no way of knowing how powerful their impact really was.

Time for Families has a small staff team who work all over the county delivering education programmes in parenting, relationships and money to people in prisons. They work with prisoners and their families who are at risk of relationship breakdown and work towards family stability after release.

After visiting prisons, the trainers recorded the information on an Access database to help the charity maintain clients' details and to monitor performance. However, with staff all over the country they needed a new, web-based database that would keep all the information secure and in one place. Simon Pellow, CEO of Time for Families, contacted the iT4Communities team looking for some high-level database support.

One of our most active volunteers, Yewande Olowokere, decided to share her 20 years of professional IT experience with Simon to create exactly what the charity needed.

Despite the complex specifications and the enormous amount of work involved, Yewande produced a brand new bespoke database using MySQL and PHP.

Simon told us how pleased he was with the whole experience saying: The project went very smoothly and we really appreciate Yewande's willingness and support!

Now Time for Families has a truly unique online database to help evaluate the excellent work they do.

The final database release allows the staff to work in the prisons whilst keeping the data and reports safe and accessible.

As Simon says: We now have a robust method of collecting performance statistics. This is essential for monitoring our effectiveness and for producing data for donors and our management. Yewande's technical achievement is amazing.

14th August 2008