PILOTING A NEW WAY OF SUPPORTING PRISONERS' FAMILIES
In June 2009 the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) asked pact to develop a new way of providing prison-based family support, linking prisoners and their families to the community-based support that they need in order to maintain a successful family life during imprisonment and on release.
This pilot is being evaluated by Professor Gwyneth Boswell.
A year in and our three tireless family support workers have helped hundreds of families. They have been undergoing training, making new links with community-based services and working closely with departments within the prisons such as Education, Healthcare, First Night in Custody and Induction.
They have also worked with Safe Ground, prison officers and education tutors to successfully include family members on 6 ‘Family Man’ courses since July 2009.
Our evaluators are very positive and we are working with NOMS and the Department for Education to develop this model further, proving and promoting the immense value of the prison-based family support worker.
One of our family support workers at Bristol Prison, Alan Bradley, describes how he helped one prisoner's wife and children, who had become homeless after his arrest: "She told me her only income since her husband's arrest had come from selling the 'Big Issue'. She had been told that she was not entitled to benefits because of her origin...." Find out how Alan helped this family
Sarah Davis of NOMS says: "We know that prisoners are much less likely to re-offend if their families make regular visits and support them on their release. But these families and children cannot be left vulnerable; they must be supported and allowed to play their part in helping us reduce the extremely costly revolving door of re-offending."
"By working with a charity with an outstanding record of work with prisoners’ families such as pact, we can form solid interventions in family support work that halt intergenerational cycles of deprivation and crime. This pilot project will establish a model which can be replicated at establishments across the country whatever their shape or size."