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Picture a number: 5,000. That's how many children in Wales are estimated to have a parent in prison at any one time.

Now picture a number that’s much smaller: zero. That's how many of our public bodies in Wales currently have a specific statutory duty to routinely identify children affected by parental imprisonment.

This gap is the starting point of a new briefing I've had the pleasure of co-authoring with Aimee Hutchinson at Pact, entitled, Identifying and Supporting Children of Prisoners in Wales: a Rights Based Case for Legislative and Policy Reform.

The absence of a duty to identify these children has a simple consequence: too many remain unseen and unsupported until they reach crisis point, leaving their rights unrealised — a failure we explore in greater detail in our briefing.

An invisible population

Children with a parent in prison have long been called the "invisible victims" of the justice system. They had no say in what happened and are rarely considered by the courts that impose their parent’s sentence. With no routine mechanism to identify them, they're mostly left to be discovered by chance. That invisibility has real, measurable costs. Affected children face up to three times the risk of mental health difficulties compared with their peers, alongside grief, stigma and what researchers call "ambiguous loss": a parent physically absent but psychologically still very present. This is a form of grief that rarely gets recognised, let alone supported. At school, they face a higher risk of poor attendance, exclusion and disengagement. At home, families routinely face sudden loss of income, housing instability and disrupted care.

No prisons in Wales for Welsh mothers

For children of Welsh mothers, the impacts are often starker still. There are no women's prisons in Wales. Every Welsh woman given a custodial sentence (most for non-violent offences, most for 12 months or less) is sent across the border, often over 100 miles from her children. The Ministry of Justice’s planned 12-bed Residential Women’s Centre in Swansea has stalled without a confirmed timetable, prompting the Welsh Affairs Committee earlier this year to call for urgent clarity and stress that it must be a genuine alternative to custody, “not a prison in all but name.” As mothers are usually the primary carer, the majority of affected children are forced to leave home, when their mothers are taken into custody. That's not simply a side effect of the system: for Welsh families, it's built into the way the system operates.

The rights-based case: Wales’s unique legislative landscape

Wales has already built a legal framework around children's rights, prevention and well-being. The Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011 requires Welsh Government Ministers to have due regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in the exercise of any of their devolved functions, and requires the publication of a Children’s Rights Scheme setting out how this duty is met, including proofing the development of policy and legislation through the use of children’s rights impact assessments. England has no equivalent duty.

Furthermore, in Wales, the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 puts prevention and well-being at the heart of public body decision making, while the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 provides routes to preventative support, information and advice, assessments and protection.

While criminal justice in Wales – including courts, sentencing, prisons, probation and policing – stays reserved to Westminster, safeguarding, social care, health and education are devolved to the Welsh Government and local authorities. That means the invisibility of children of prisoners here isn't simply a policy gap: it's arguably a live compliance issue under Welsh law.

In short, parental imprisonment is a children's rights issue.

 

The wider UK picture Colleagues in England have long advocated for further incorporation of the UNCRC into UK law, and just last year proposed a duty of due regard to the UNCRC, as an amendment to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and later a narrower amendment to undertake children's rights impact assessments (also a specific recommendation of the Covid-19 Inquiry). Both amendments were regrettably rejected. However, strong and collective advocacy on this issue thankfully continues unabated, and we hope that the UK Government takes the necessary steps to incorporate the UNCRC into UK law.

What we're asking for

The problem is not that there is no legal framework in Wales. The problem is that these children are too often invisible within it.

Without a statutory duty to identify these children, assess how their rights are affected, and offer support, Welsh Government risks breaching its own duty, under the 2011 Rights Measure, to have due regard to multiple UNCRC provisions.

So, what could be done about this? There is already a helpful precedent. Operation Encompass provides a statutory mechanism to notify a child's school following a domestic abuse incident. A similar, carefully designed pathway could ensure that when a parent is imprisoned, the child is not left invisible to the services around them - with identification built around trusted adults, rather than police-led contact, which families have told Pact can increase fear and stigma.

Our briefing sets out fourteen practical recommendations for Welsh Government, but underneath all of them sits three key asks:

1.            Children affected by parental imprisonment constitute a distinct, rights-bearing group who are currently failed by the absence of any systematic mechanism for identification and support.

2.            Addressing this failure is not discretionary but is required by the Welsh Government’s existing statutory obligations under the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011 and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and would activate entitlements that already exist, but currently often go unused for children and their carers, under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014.

3.            Welsh Government, should move, without further delay, to develop and implement a national statutory model of identification and support for this cohort, building on the evidence already gathered by Pact and through the Welsh Government’s own ASPIRE research.

Wales has chosen to be a nation that puts children’s rights, prevention and well-being at the centre of law and public policy – but for children affected by parental imprisonment, these commitments are not yet being fully realised.

We urge the Welsh Government to act with urgency to ensure the rights of children of prisoners are respected, protected and fulfilled in Wales.

Dr Rhian Croke, Child Rights Policy and Strategic Litigation Lead, Children's Legal Centre Wales, is co-author, with Aimee Hutchinson of Pact, of the Briefing: Identifying and Supporting Children of Prisoners in Wales: a Rights Based Case for Legislative and Policy Reform (September 2026).