Brinsford Prison: families and significant others strategy
Brinsford’s family strategy explains how we support prisoners in our care to develop meaningful and constructive relationships with their family or significant others.
Applies to England and Wales
Our commitment to you
We will provide strong leadership.
We aspire to be role models for our colleagues, young adults, and all those that visit Brinsford including families and significant others.
Our colleagues will be supported to:
- be their very best
- work collaboratively with each other and partners
- support our young adults throughout their resettlement journey
We are committed to an equalities, inclusion and decency charter. This encourages all staff, visitors, and young adults to treat one another with respect and decency.
All who work, visit, or live at Brinsford will be treated fairly, openly and humanely at all times, providing a safe, fair and decent environment for all.
We will take a whole-prison approach in creating a community where everyone feels respected and people value equality, diversity and inclusion.
We are committed to creating an environment where people feel safe to speak out against unacceptable behaviours and have the courage to report them.
When we see racism or other forms of discrimination, wherever they may be, we will take necessary steps to challenge such behaviour.
Aims:
- maintaining family ties for young adults and their families as part of our resettlement offer
- ensuring that our population have at the very least, one trusted person that is part of their support network to help them progress in their sentence
- providing one-to-one interventions, family forums, group work, family engagement, and outreach work
- providing advice, guidance and support to young adults and their families
Support and services offered
Staff will explain the visits process to all first-time visitors. They will put you at ease and talk you through everything you need to know. (They can also answer any questions you may have.)
In the visits centre, we have information about services to support visitors, including:
- debt advice
- children’s services
- housing
- substance misuse
- health, and wellbeing
Staff will share up-to-date prison information as and when required.
We also offer refreshments, which can be ordered at the visits centre on your arrival.
Children’s play facilities
The visits centre has books and games to keep young children occupied.
Within the main visits hall we have a children’s soft play area.
Family engagement work
Brinsford has a family engagement worker.
They support our young adults with any issues they may have about contact and communication with their families.
They can:
- give one-to-one emotional and practical parenting support
- support our young adults with maintaining family ties and improving communication and positive relationships
- provide family mediation and support for contact issues with children
- speak up on behalf of our young adults and their families
- support with signposting to other agencies
Foreign national phone credit and letters
Foreign national young adults can change their standard visiting orders to phone credit to make calls abroad or send airmail letters.
Family support
Several partners and agencies support us, including with:
- one-to-one interventions
- family forums and group work
- family engagement
- outreach work
Our partners work with our Offender Management Unit and other teams in the prison to ensure any work or contact with families meets all safeguarding requirements.
Our main partner is the charity PACT, who have a contract to provide services until late 2027.
PACT also support those with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). These experiences can have a lasting impact on someone’s mental health, physical health, and overall wellbeing. Our onsite ACEs facilitator will support those with such experiences either through individual or group work.
We also have HMPPS staff known as ‘FaSO champions’ who focus on our family support work.
Family days
Brinsford holds 6 family visits a year. Our young adults can apply for these.
These visits are more relaxed. Our young adults and their visiting children can take part in crafts and structured play together.
Family visits are held on the last Wednesday of every other month (10am to 3pm) in our visits room.
These days include:
- lunch provided by Brinsford
- crafts
- face painting
- a variety of other activities run by Brinsford and PACT staff
All of our family days are themed, for example: Easter, Christmas, Valentines Day.
They usually have related gifts for the children to take away with them.
Our staff can take photographs at family days - when consent is given.
We know photographs can be very precious, and sometimes rare, for those with a family member in prison.
Care leavers
We have a good understanding of care leavers needs and can offer ongoing support.
We work with personal advisors from the local authority to support those with care experience and associated complexities.
Our Safety colleagues run forums and share what they learn with others in the prison.
We also have in place a ‘care leaver flat’. This is set-up like a flat you might live in outside of prison. We use it to teach our care leavers basic skills including:
- cooking
- washing clothes
- ironing
- other useful guidance to prepare them for release and living on their own for the first time
Library
The library runs family projects, including:
- Storybook Dads – but not just for Dads: any prisoner with young children in their family can take part - so younger siblings, nieces and nephews can receive stories.
- Storybook “Me and You” - an activity sheet for our prisoners to complete and send out to their young family members
- Raising Readers – open to any prisoner with young children and teenagers in the family
- Family Visit Books – in partnership with Give a Book, we receive a selection of books 4 times a year to give out to the children on family visits. These are free and the children can take then home with them.
Neurodiversity
About 65% of the young population at Brinsford have some sort of neurodivergent need.
Our neurodiversity lead works closely with our head of security and visits staff to break down barriers and to create safe spaces within visits to support visitors with neurodiverse needs.
If you have a family member that requires adjustments so they can attend visits, then please let us know.
We can provide resources to support family members with neurodivergent needs.
Please ask to speak to our neurodiversity support manager or the supervising officer in the visits hall.
Safeguarding measures
Creating a safe environment is fundamental to ensuring that young adults can achieve, grow and remain hopeful, without the fear of threat or harm during their time here at Brinsford.
Our safety team works in partnership with both internal and external agencies that support everyone working and living in Brinsford.
This also includes outreach work for the families of our young adults.
See Brinsford’s main GOV.UK page for contact details if you have a safeguarding concern.
You can also report a safeguarding concern by completing a Safer Custody Contact Form on the Prisoner’s Families Helpline website.
For further details on safeguarding measures, please see the HMPPS Child Safeguarding Policy Framework
What we have achieved
- a visitors survey has been completed, and feedback has been welcomed
- we held a celebration event in the chapel for prisoners who had gained qualifications through education and work, families were invited to attend. This was hugely successful and future events are planned
- we continue to help support prisoners and their families in maintaining their family ties as our family visits continue to be extremely popular, and we are aiming to enhance this experience for those attending moving forward
- our reading strategy makes sure every prisoner is offered a book on induction to encourage reading; this is continued in family visits with the Shannon Trust and library staff encouraging fathers to read to their children
- we have a separate area in the visits hall for baby bonding visits. This allows new fathers to meet their babies and have initial contact in a more relaxed environment
- we provide ear defenders, fidget toys, a quiet space and made reasonable adjustments to rules to support the needs of individuals and provided literature to families about neurodiversity
- our ‘X’ page @HMP_Brinsford shares updates and success stories
You said, we did
- following feedback from the visitors survey we have introduced a more varied hot food offer in the visits hall
- we will be moving to cashless payments soon
- families are now invited to celebration events to see Young adults receive their qualifications through education and work
How will we measure our success
- Prisoner council meeting
- Reducing reoffending meeting
- Prisoner family needs questionnaire
- Prisoner MQPL
- Visitors advisory board
- Performance measures
Our focus for the year
- review seating arrangements and space available within the visitor’s hall
- invite specialist organisations to attend the visitors centre
- head of Recuding Reoffending to organise focus groups for young adults with support from PACT providers and our families and significant others (FaSOs) champions
Staffing structure
- FaSO champions – overseen the governor
- Families and significant others’ strategy - overseen by the Head of Reducing Reoffending, who is also our local FaSO lead
- Care experienced lead – deputy governor
- FaSO champions - recruited from across Brinsford to offer coverage throughout the establishments