PLAY IN PRISONS

Play in Prisons was a Big Lottery funded project which was delivered in HMPs Channings Wood, Dartmoor and Exeter for three years from August 2008. It was set up to support and enhance parent-child relationships through the medium of play and interaction. Through doing this we aimed to reduce the negative effects of parental imprisonment, strengthen family ties, and ultimately reduce re-offending.

The project has now come to an end. Our goal was to bring families together in order to reduce re-offending and the risk of social exclusion. At the conclusion of the project we published a final evaluation, which assessed our success against this goal. The report can be downloaded here (pdf, 1MB).

Play in Prisons offered innovative ways of visiting and interacting. Since its inception, the project aimed to improve relationships by helping children feel safer and less stressed when visiting a parent in prison, by introducing a number of new initiatives centred around play involving all the family – these initiatives included: specialised children’s visits; dads-only sessions; baby and toddlers sessions; gym visits for prisoners and their children; and table-top play boxes for families to use together during general domestic visits.

Such initiatives were intended to improve understanding surrounding parent-child interaction amongst prisoners and provide them with the opportunity to learn about and practise this skill with their children. As well as the above, we also developed preparatory workshops for prisoners attending our events to provide further, more in-depth opportunities to reflect on their role as a father.

Why do it?

Each year 160,000 children will see a parent sent to prison, an experience which may be frightening and damaging. It is important that visits to see their parent are as positive as possible, and play is an integral part of this.
For prisoners themselves, playful experiences with their children are vital for helping them to improve their lives, build stronger family ties and resettle in their communities following release.
It has been shown that prisoners who maintain contact with their family whilst inside are up to six times less likely to re-offend upon release.

“The whole day was a great success, we really enjoyed it. The officers were excellent!”
“It helped us all feel like a family and be normal.”