“Why don’t I have a daddy?” asked Vix’s son. She didn’t know what to say. The boy’s father wasn’t dead, nor had he disappeared. He had been convicted of a crime and sentenced to prison.
Children with a parent in prison are three times more likely to develop mental health problems and between three and four times more likely to go to prison than average. They are more likely to abuse drugs, to drop out of school and to be unemployed as an adult. We don’t even know how many children in the UK experience parental imprisonment, but the best estimates are that 300,000 are affected every year. If this was any other group it would be a national outrage, but no official help exists. There isn’t even any official effort to count or track them – despite the fact the prison population is soaring, and the sector is in crisis.
Children can be traumatised from the moment of their parent’s arrest. Imagine dark-clothed strangers breaking down your door at 4am, yelling, ransacking your house and then dragging your parent into a van and driving off with them. The house is still a mess when you leave for school. Unless your parent has been arrested for sex offences the police won’t inform anyone, so teachers won’t understand why you’re angry, distressed or can’t focus. If the arrest takes place outside the home then your parent may simply leave one day and never return.
Both the children and their non-offending parent can struggle. I spoke with Martha whose son was 18 months old when his father was arrested, and three when he went to prison. She felt “isolated” and didn’t know where to turn. Vix, who had a three year-old daughter, and was pregnant with her son when her partner was arrested, told me “you don’t feel comfortable contacting services”.
I am researching the experiences of children with a parent in prison for a PhD at the University of Southampton. I have found that Vix and Martha’s experiences are common; families with a parent in prison often experience stigma and shame because of the offender’s crime, and children can even experience grief similar to a bereavement. In such circumstances it shouldn’t be a surprise that they can struggle at school or behave in an antisocial way. But it doesn’t have to be like this. With proper intervention and support children can process and heal from their trauma.
Both Vix and Martha “stumbled across” Children Heard and Seen, a charity founded in 2014 to support children with a parent in prison, and their families. The charity provides personalised practical and therapeutic support, including support groups and residential sessions where children and parents get to share their experiences with one another. As Vix said, “we feel comfortable with people who have lived it”. Support is as much for the non-offending parent as the child; Martha found the “naughty step” caused her son great anxiety; he thought it meant he would go to prison. Children Heard and Seen helped her find a different approach which worked for them both.
Martha and her son have been supported by the charity for the past three and a half years. She describes how at school her son felt different and isolated. This changed when he began spending time with other children with a parent in prison, “he’s just free, because he feels like the other kids”. Martha remembers the first time he ran up to her, shouting with joy: “Mummy, mummy, do you know their dad’s in prison?”.
The statistics support Children Heard and Seen’s approach. Of over 1,000 children supported by the charity since 2014, only 0.5 per cent have got in trouble with the law. But they’re only one charity, and with hundreds of thousands of children experiencing parental imprisonment every year, far more capacity and support is needed.
Martha is clear, “at the point of arrest the family should be offered support”, but as Vix pointed out, “everyone assumes it’s social services, but they don’t do anything until release”. Martha agreed “social services’ view is that if the child is with a safe parent then that’s their job done”. Both agreed there needs to be support for every family experiencing a parent in prison.
Children Heard and Seen believe there needs to be a legal obligation for the government to identify and support children with a parent in prison. Now it finally seems that politicians are starting to listen. A new bill recently brought by Labour calls for “national policy guidelines in respect of children with a parent in prison, including for the identification of the children of prisoners at the point of sentence and for accountability for providing support to the children of prisoners”.
Unfortunately, given the election looming there is no time for new legislation to pass. However, campaigners hope this will raise awareness of the issue.
Exactly what identification and support would work best is open to debate. Some campaigners believe that Labour’s plans for a unique ID number linking their records might be a useful mechanism, and Sarah Burrows, Children Heard and Seen’s founder, calls for extending the Pupil Premium to all children with a parent in prison.
Some people may bristle at the idea of money for the children of criminals, but it’s really important to remember that those children are innocent, and are themselves also victims of their parents’ crimes. We support children who experience family breakdown or bereavement, because we recognise the unique challenges these adverse life events bring. Similarly we should support the children of prisoners, for their sake, and all of ours.
David Shipley served time in prison and is now a writer, campaigner and speaker on prison reform. He also works as a consultant prison inspector