Support for Prisons
Welcome to this page of the Care for the Family website specifically for those working with those in prison and their families.
At Care for the Family we are passionate about equipping those who are seeking to support and strengthen family life by adopting a ‘whole family’ approach.
We have a variety of resources which you can use to strengthen family relationships including those you can signpost to. These have been designed for use in a variety of community settings and have been successfully used in a number of prisons.
Some of the resources on this page are free for you to download and ‘ready to run’, while others require access to training.
Please watch our short promo film to find out how one prison has engaged with our resources.
Your prison might like to:
- Run one of our parenting or relationship courses
- Run a book group using the newly revised Daddy’s Working Away: A Guide To Being A Good Dad In Prison
- Share our media content via prison radio, TV or in-cell devices
- Stock our books in the prison library
- Signpost prisoners’ families to our support
- Place our leaflets in the visitors’ centre
- Attend our Bereavement Care Awareness training to refresh your skills for supporting the bereaved.
General support
Our resources support all aspects of family life focusing on parenting, couple support and bereavement and include further support, for example, through our CareLine team and specialist support for parents of children with additional needs. Our Top Tips leaflets are printed and downloadable and are a great place to start with clear practical advice on many areas of family life.
Parenting support
Our Parentalk courses are available free to stream. Parentalk is easy to deliver by your staff in their setting.
Our Time Out for Parents courses require a license to deliver and you can find out about our training here.
Media content to share in your establishment
The following content has been edited specifically for prisons. You are welcome to view the content here; contact us about permissions to obtain audio/ video files to share.
There is no one way to be a perfect parent, but there are hundreds of ways to be a great parent.
Five episodes tackling tough issues that may affect our teenagers, including self harm, eating disorders, depression and suicidal thoughts, gender identity and school reluctance.
The Dad Cave podcast discusses fatherhood in its varying forms and unpacks some of the things that often just don’t get talked about.
Books
The following books are an easy to read, practical approach for prisoners and their families. They aim to bring hope and encouragement in a realistic and honest attempt to deal with the difficult issues facing prisoners who, although away from their children still want to be good parents.
Several of these books have downloadable worksheets which can be used for group discussion.
If you have difficulty around budgeting to purchase these books, please do contact us to discuss.
Support for chaplains
We have a training course to help you support bereaved people. Find out more about Bereavement Care Awareness.
Visit The Kitchen Table Project website for resources and ideas to share with those in prison who have a Christian faith and would like to explore how they can nurture faith in their children.
We regularly attend prison chaplain conferences and would love to meet you there.
Still need more support?
Contact us to talk to one of our team and request a free pack of resources for prisons.
