Future finance: personal financial competency and prisoner re-settlement

Future Finance is interactive software developed on behalf of the National Offenders Management Service.

The Reducing Re-offending by Ex Prisoners Report (2002) identified that 48% of prisoners have a history of financial debt. The Home Office brief was to develop ideas contained within the report, Action on Debt (2004), to increase financial competency amongst prisoners before re-settlement in the community. The Social Inclusion Unit (2002) included among its findings the lack of suitably designed learning provision for prisoners with negative experiences of formal education”.

The user group characteristics of the prison community with respect to financial literacy and skills and learning delivery provides strong support for the paradigm of experiential learning, its theoretical perspectives and its practical interpretation through the alternative instruction medium of simulation gaming. By contextualising the inter-relatedness of personal finance, Future Finances raises awareness and teaches skills in the costs of day-to-day living, the need for careful budgeting and the importance of balancing leisure, work and other commitments. Users learn that decisions have an effect on each other and that financial competency is an element in the furthering of personal goals. The user group characteristics informed the design conceptualisation of Future Finances.

Dawn Lavelle
Current Research
Simulation Games
Virtual Outlets - The business simulation is intended to provide an educational and stimulating introduction into the business of fashion retailing. The simulation is designed to provide players with real world experiences in managing the variables that are encountered in business decision-making across the retail pipeline. As such players experience how the many areas of retailing are interrelated and the decision maker must consider how they affect each other in the fulfilment of the retail proposition.
Netrepreneur - This simulatory environment creates a constructed representation of the e-commerce environment. Netrepreneur simulates the initial start up phases of e-business creation and aims to create a holistic understanding of the entrepreneurial process as well as encouraging participants to 'learn by doing' in the simulated virtual world, instead of trial and error in the real e-economy.
Future Finance - The Home Office has supported and funded research into the development of an educational simulation game which creates an experiential 'virtual world', which participants can play to learn the general dynamics of managing their personal financial future. The purpose of this development was to build a simulation game to improve financial literacy amongst groups 'at risk' in terms of poor personal financial management and it’s associated problems.