By Laura Tidswell

This section will discuss the services and organisations available to children with parents in prison. This topic isn’t widely discussed and therefore services are limited and aren’t necessarily available to everyone, despite the welfare of the child being so important. The aim of this section is to make people aware of services available to them and how to access them.

It is important for children to have services available to them if they are in a situation where either one or both parents are in prison, as it can be a difficult time to deal with. Having parents in prison becomes a more urgent situation to deal with, the younger the child is. Younger children especially will have little comprehension of what is going on, so it can be a confusing time.

‘Current estimates indicate that as many as 1.5 million children have an incarcerated parent’ (Seymour and Hairston, 2017). Although children with parents in prison isn’t a widely discussed issue in society, we can see from this figure that it is still a prominent issue that affects a large number of children. Children can often be forgotten in the process when a parent goes to prison 

PACT

A commonly used organisation is PACT (Parents and Children Together). ‘PACT is a charity committed to preserving vital relationships between prisoners and their families’ (PACT, N.D). PACT is an incredibly useful service for children with parents in prison as it not only focuses on helping the child with the transition of having a parent in prison, but also places key focus on maintaining the relationship between the parents and child whilst they are incarcerated. As well as the children benefiting from this service, the parents can also benefit. It can make their time in prison more settled knowing that they haven’t lost a relationship with their child, and that they will still have a relationship with their children to return to when they leave prison. 

PACT covers all issues surrounding children with parents in prison, for example: making sure children remain in education, providing social workers, working with social workers outside the prison, and prison based family workers, and taking into account both the child’s and the parent’s perspective by creating solutions and informing policy. However, limited statistics are available for this work to suggest how well their efforts contribute to the life of both the child and the parent. Therefore, although they cover a range of topics and they seem to make consistent efforts to improve and help lives, there isn’t a lot of evidence available to show for this online. All information and contact details for PACT are on their website.

NEPACS

NEPACS (North Eastern Prison After Care Society) is another service available to offer support to children with parents in prison. They focus on offering support and friendship to the individual going through the Criminal Justice System and those closest to them, including any children (NEPACS website, N.D). They are a beneficial organisation as they focus more on the personal side to the process including maintaining personal connections and positive mental health, rather than the technical side to a parent being in prison. Children with parents in prison are more likely to suffer from mental health problems in the future (Laub and Haskins, 2018). This is why charities such as NEPACS are vital  to children with parents in prison as well as the parents themselves as mental health is often overlooked, when it is, in fact, a serious problem for these people. Therefore, as a service, NEPACS’s aims and priorities are incredibly helpful. More information can be found on their website.

CHILDLINE

A commonly used charity in the UK is Childline. Childline is a charity specifically aimed at children up to the age of 19. Childline is often widely advertised around schools so it is a charity well-known to children across the UK. 

‘Childline is free, confidential and available any time, day or night’ (Childline Website, N.D). As Childline is a service only for children, they tend to feel more comfortable using it. Although the service isn’t in person, it still gives the child someone to talk to about how they are feeling; and talking to someone online like this may help them to make sense of what is happening and how they are feeling. For children with parents in prison, Childline is most likely the more favourable charity for them. This is because the children are often too young to seek out help for themselves unless a service is provided to them. Therefore, as they are aware of what childline can be used for and how to access it through school, they are more likely to lean towards it. Although Childline offers easy and accessible help to children, it isn’t a ‘prison specific’ charity and therefore, may not offer as many resources as others such as PACT and NEPACS. It may be beneficial to children to educate them in schools on more specific charities that are available to them and make charities more child-friendly for those children who don’t have such a positive support-network to organise services for them.

A list with further services, organisations and charities than the ones covered in this blog can be found on Page 43 of the Prison Reform Trust (2018). Although there are a variety of organisations available to support children with parents in prison, it is still a topic that needs more recognition. More child-friendly services are required and it needs to be recognised as a topic of more concern, with more conversations about what can be done to help. 

Beresford, S (2018), Prison Reform Trust: What About Me? Prison Reform Trust, London

Childline, N.D, About Childline, viewed 24 November 2021, https://www.childline.org.uk/about/about-childline/

Laub, J and Haskins, R (2018), The Future of Children: Helping Children with Parents in Prison and Children in Foster Care, Princeton-Brookings, Princeton University and the Brookings Institution

NEPACS, N.D, Aims and Values, viewed 24 November 2021, https://www.nepacs.co.uk/page/aims-and-values

PACT, N.D, Who Are We, viewed 24 November 2021, https://www.prisonadvice.org.uk/who-we-are

Seymour, C and Hairston, C (2017) Children with Parents in Prison, 1st Ed, Routledge, New York