Family Link Workers at Pact

Pact’s Listen to Families project includes Family Link Workers (FLWs) at certain prisons in London and in the Southeast of England: HMP Wandsworth, HMP Downview, HMP Elmley, and HMP Huntercombe. Please note that Pact Family Link Workers are not available everywhere. Pact’s Family Link Workers work for Pact – not HMPPS and not the prison healthcare team.

Family Link Workers are case workers who work in the prison. Their job is to be a bridge between patients, their support network, and prison healthcare teams. They can help families and carers to stay in the loop, when it comes to their loved one in prison’s health needs.

Family Link Workers can share information about your loved one’s health with you if the proper consent is in place, but this is not their main role. Their primary aim is to help families link up with the healthcare team and to support you to have conversations about health with your loved one.

Key responsibilities of the Family Link Worker role include:

·       Helping family members to share information with healthcare team to support their loved one’s care

·       Helping family members to give their input into their loved one’s care plan, if possible

·       Keeping family members aware of their loved one’s treatment plan, where appropriate, so they can make sure the patient understands their treatment and sticks to it

·       Helping family members to support their loved ones emotionally and encourage them to make healthy choices

·       Where relevant, helping family members to give input into their loved one’s release planning

Family Link Workers recognise that family members and carers have an important role to play in keeping their loved ones in prison healthy and well. They work to keep families and carers involved in their loved one’s healthcare, where appropriate and in line with security measures within the prison.