Creating new opportunities in Erie County’s prisoner re-entry program with wellconnected

wellconnected is proud to announce that its ‘allco’ platform has been selected to support the Erie County ReEntry Coalition with referrals and case management.

The coalition was created seven years ago to support formerly incarcerated individuals as they acclimate to life outside of prison, connecting them to crucial resources at local nonprofits. Led by Charise Cobbs, the coalition helps hundreds of Western New Yorkers get the help they need each year.

Until now, referrals were largely made on an ad hoc basis and there was no formal system for tracking the formerly incarcerated individuals. Now ‘allco’ will be adopted by the coalition and 10 of its community-based organization partners, creating more collaborative relationships between the stakeholders, making referrals easier and generating data that can be used to guide everything from high-level strategy to individual care.

“This is a vital service that can make all the difference for individuals who are motivated to create a better future for themselves and their families,” Cobbs said. “Our partnership with wellconnected creates a transparent system for all the participating nonprofits and drives us toward our end-goal of improving the community by helping the people who live in it.”

The project is being funded by the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo, which was instrumental in creating the coalition alongside the Greater Buffalo Racial Equity Roundtable. The funding flows through Peace Prints of WNY, a nonprofit that offers comprehensive re-entry services to men and women involved in the criminal justice system.

Each of these partners believes deeply in regional re-entry services as a way of supporting people who need help in improving their lives.

“The Erie County Sheriff's Office is committed to assisting incarcerated individuals with their re-entry into the community,” Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said. “We thank wellconnected for its support of our goal to reduce recidivism and improve our community.”

One of the benefits of allco is that stakeholders will now have granular data on the activity and performance of the re-entry program, creating easier reporting and a better snapshot of how the program is functioning. 

wellconnected is a networked enterprise software platform, meaning it has been engineered to drive collaboration in the social care industry. Its mission is to turn the siloed social care networks across the U.S. into collaborative and integrated systems, with standardized reporting that creates efficiency and transparency between nonprofits and their funding partners.

“allco will help the Erie County ReEntry program better understand the people it is serving, and dramatically increase the places where they can referred for vital services,” said Duane Conners, wellconnected CEO. “When you make reporting and data collection really easy and you create equitable access to all the services within a community, you start to realize the benefits of our vision of a truly digital social care network.”