HMP Lincoln: Families and significant others strategy
This strategy outlines 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
You can find visiting information and book a visit on the main Lincoln Prison page.
We plan to build on our learning and experience, while further developing the recommendations of Lord Farmer.
This will ensure we provide effective services that successfully strengthen ties of people in prison with family and significant others.
To do this we will work in partnership with Lincolnshire Action Trust (LAT). The charity has successfully provided prison-based family support in HMP Lincoln since 2011.
Support and services offered
Visitors’ centre
At Lincoln prison, our LAT staff help make your visit as easy and stress-free as possible. We offer the following support:
- Pre-visit contact: before a visitors first ever visit, we’ll contact them to explain what to expect on arrival, check whether they have any special needs, confirm their ID and the dress code, and share information about the Assisted Prison Visits Scheme and transport options. We’ll also answer any questions to help ease concerns about visiting.
- Opening the visits centre one hour before the start of each scheduled visit session.
- One-to-one induction to all new visitors, to establish any needs or concerns that the family support services can assist with.
- Activity packs available for children to use whilst waiting for visits to start.
- Visitor access to information about support services e.g. debt advice, financial support, employment/skills, housing, substance use, gambling, health/wellbeing.
- The chance for visitors to offer feedback or complaints to allow the prison to improve the visitor service.
- Running an annual visitor survey, in conjunction with Lincoln University. The feedback received will be used to inform continuous service improvement.
Our visitor centre offers a range of activities, toys and games for all age ranges including resources for children with additional needs.
Providing play facilities during visits is important to help children feel safe, welcome and comfortable when visiting a prison.
Play during visits can also help children explore their feelings and concerns, as part of wider family engagement activities.
Family engagement work
We feel this as an essential element of successful family service provision. It can be additional to visits our provision for some prisoners or as a stand-alone support for others.
Our family engagement and advice interventions are tailored to each individual’s needs and circumstances, but all work to the same outcome; developing and maintaining positive links with family and significant others.
Secure social video call support
Our family engagement workers ensure that emotional and practical support is available for both prisoners and families before or after secure video calls.
Secure video calls are a great way to maintain family contact, particularly for families who are unable or reluctant to visit the prison.
Parenting/relationship courses
‘Being Dad’ is one of the most successful interventions for purposeful activity at HMP Lincoln.
Learning takes place within the prison to a small group of up to 8 learners in a classroom setting. Prisoners can self-refer to take part.
The course looks at various aspects of parenting, including:
- parenting styles
- children’s behaviours and challenges
- health and safety in the home
- social media awareness and the potential risks
- making memories and feelings
- what makes a good dad, and what qualities make a good parent
- areas of development and skills
- understanding prison from a childs perspective,
- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
- neurodiversity awareness
- self esteem
Although not an accredited course, learners receive a certificate upon full completion.
Family days
We provide 12 extended visiting days throughout the year.
These longer sessions allow visitors and prisoners the freedom and space to enjoy quality time together. Refreshments and a buffet lunch are all provided by the prison.
All prisoners can apply for these. Families can also apply by speaking to the family engagement team.
Family days are also:
- designed based on the needs of the full family
- held in school holidays
- specific family days held for children with neurodiversity
Care leavers
Lincoln prison identifies the specific needs of care-experienced individuals during induction to ensure appropriate and ongoing support.
When a care-leaver enters the prison for the first time, Lincolnshire Action Trust ensure there is a representative present in the reception area of the prison, to support them with the induction process.
The Family and significant others team also then continues to provide support to the individual for their time in prison.
Safeguarding measures
Creating a safe and supportive environment is fundamental to ensuring that prisoners in our care are able to stabilise, progress and remain hopeful, free from fear of harm or intimidation during their time at HMP Lincoln.
You can report concerns about the welfare of a prisoner on our main prison page.
Lincolnshire Action Trust supports prison staff by providing regular training, to help keep their skills and knowledge up to date.
For further reference to safeguarding measures, please see the HMPPS Child Safeguarding Policy Framework HMPPS Child Safeguarding Policy Framework
What we have achieved
- Created a support group, ‘Lincoln Link Group’ for prisoners that do not receive visits.
- Helped prisoners who have lost family contact to re-establish links with their families by referring them to the family engagement team. This has been especially vital for care leavers and prisoners who are out of their local area.
- Supported the Year of Reading by taking part in the HMPPS National Reading Strategy. This included encouraging reading during visits, giving children books to take home, and giving the person in prison a copy of the same book.
- Facilitated an Ambassador Day - invited local schools, healthcare providers, social care professionals involved in child safeguarding to the prison each year to help them gain a greater understanding of children affected by a parent in prison.
- Received positive feedback on the most recent HM Inspectorate of Prisons visit.
- With assistance from LAT, we applied for and received toys through the Cash4Kids scheme, for children affected by a parent in prison at Christmas.
You said, we did
We use an annual families survey to help find ways to improve our family support offer. The most recent survey highlighted that some families experience hidden neurodivergent conditions, and that visiting prison can sometimes be overwhelming for them.
In response, we researched ways to make visits less stressful for these families.
We introduced noise-cancelling headphones and a badge on a lanyard, so staff can easily identify children visiting with sensory needs. We also provide sensory boxes filled with toys and books suitable for neurodivergent children.
We successfully applied for grant funding to improve the visits area, which now has comfortable seating, reading materials and suitable activities. The funding also covered staff training on neurodiversity in prisons, giving our team practical tools to better support visitors with neurodivergent needs.
How we measure our success
We encourage our prison-based staff to seek to understand the challenges and aspirations of each prison they work in, and to identify innovative, practical solutions.
-
We help prevent reoffending and stop offending from passing down through generations, by providing safe, high-quality and cost-effective support that helps families stay connected and strengthens their relationships.
-
We check that our service is performing well through regular meetings where we’re challenged and supported on how we’re doing. We also support our staff through supervision, appraisals, and ongoing learning and development, and we hold the Matrix and Mentoring & Befriending quality marks.
-
We follow best practice to keep people safe. All staff are trained every year in safeguarding adults and children, information security, and Prevent duty, and our safeguarding policies are checked by independent auditors.
-
We keep our service running reliably by having local managers on hand to provide support, a central pool of volunteers and sessional staff who can step in at short notice, contingency plans at each prison for when things go wrong, and clear arrangements for managing risk.
-
We provide positive outcomes, which we track using performance measures
-
We provide an experienced, qualified and trained team covering a range of family support disciplines. All team members hold enhanced disclosure and barring (DBS) checks and prison vetting, meeting the requirements for working in the establishment, and are supported by trained volunteers.
-
Offering added value through:
- Active engagement with wider prison work, including the Offender Management Unit, Safer Custody, ACCT, to maximise the contribution that families can make.
- Usage of wider LAT services and expertise to benefit the prison and family services. For example, community based personal wellbeing services, women’s services, employability support, prison-based resettlement services, community support for children affected by substance use.
- We have trained, security-cleared staff and volunteers with local knowledge, so that we can start quickly and smoothly, with very little set-up needed.
- Collaboration with University of Lincoln to support design and data analysis of regular satisfaction and needs surveys.
Staffing structure
Central team
- Director of Operations (DoS) - Strategic oversight
- Head of Service (HoS) - Strategic lead and contract manager
- Volunteer Coordinator (VC) - Recruitment and training of volunteers
Site-based team
- Family Engagement Manager (FEM) - Operational management responsibility of site delivery and staffing
- Family Engagement Worker - Case work, family visit days, support for prisoners without contact to family or significant others, visits enrichment activity, video call support
- Family Support Worker (FSO) - Visits play, visits meet and greet
- Catering Assistant (CA) - Provision of refreshments facility (HMP Lincoln only)