In November 2010 the Family Interventions Unit opened at HMP & YOI Parc, Bridgend, Wales. A landmark in its own small way. The first custodial residential unit of its kind in the UK, where the whole focus and purpose is centred on repairing the damage inflicted on the families and children of offenders, with a view to building positive, healthy adult and parenting relationships.
Why bother? Well, it’s not a philanthropic experiment, rather, a carefully constructed model that has at its cornerstone the ever-mounting evidence from the UK and beyond, that where it can be safe and appropriate to do so, engaging prisoners effectively with their family and children has a clear and significant impact on not only reducing reoffending, but also intergenerational offending, and social exclusion.
What other prison based activity could lay an evidence-based claim to such a wide reaching ambition?
As one of the 60 residents on the Family Intervention Unit, the men have an individually created plan that includes individual and group based interventions that engage the whole family, we work in partnership with Safe Ground UK, Action on Addiction, Care for the Family, Barnardos, Time for Families, NSPCCas well as facilitating mutually beneficial, and cost negative interventions with our Local Authority and Social Services, such as ‘Language and Play’, ‘Design to Smile’.
The Family Interventions Unit has evolved alongside a symbiotic project that has overhauled the prison visits function, from one that is traditionally security led and focused, to one that is managed and delivered as an intervention. Visits is the only place outside meets inside, and so to amplify this model of positive family engagement to reduce reoffending and intergenerational crime, visits is the obvious place to deliver a concentrated and specific approach to reach the most prisoners and their families.
Throughout the development of this model at Parc, we have been very fortunate to have had regular support and guidance from NOMS, both in Wales and London. Sarah Davies and her policy team, Laura Tranter and Tim Carter (seconded from Barnardos) have been a constant source of support and help, similarly, the contracted prisons Controller team Nick Lewis and Tarul Clement here at Parc, and nationally Brian Pollett, have all given positive encouragement and guidance.
As to the future… We have just begun a 4 year BIG Lottery Funded project that takes this work even further for socially excluded families, entitled ‘Invisible Walls Wales’. Part of which is a replication model for this approach, and to date we have been able to train managers here and work in partnership to open adapted Family Intervention Units in HMP Altcourse, Liverpool, and HMP Maghaberry, Northern Ireland.
Corin Morgan-Armstrong: Senior Manager – Family Interventions & IWW