Guidance

HMP Stocken Families and Significant Others Strategy

Our family strategy outlines how we support prisoners in our care to develop meaningful and constructive relationships with their family or significant others.

• From: HM Prison and Probation Service
• Published: 13 October 2026

Applies to England and Wales

You can find visiting information and book a visit on the Stocken Prison main page.

Our commitment to you

Families and positive social relationships can play a significant role in supporting a prisoner to make and sustain the changes which reduce reoffending.

The Lord Farmer review identified that having family ties in prison can reduce the likelihood of reoffending by 39%.

Our family strategy brings together findings from Stocken’s 2023 HMIP inspection report and the 2025 needs analysis and prisoner survey.

It combines the different services and initiatives aimed at strengthening family ties and relationships, both during custody and after release.

Using our families and significant others strategy we want to:

• maximise everyone’s potential
• promote a whole prison approach to families and significant others, by embedding support services and initiatives across all Reducing Reoffending pathways
• working closely with internal and external partners both in custody and through the gate to community
• support prisoners from across the country housed at Stocken, by helping them build and maintain meaningful family ties

Consideration will be given to loved ones who are unable to travel regularly to the prison, by using available technologies such as video visits. We also offer extended family days visits throughout the year and continue to embed our support services like the ‘far from home’ support group.

In addition to this, we also offer parenting courses and run the Storybook Dads initiative to further support family ties.

We also aim to equip prisoners with the skills needed to manage anti-social relationships through:

• targeted interventions such as Building Choices
• sentence plan targets like Personal Social Development
• other initiatives such as the positive role model programme provided via the gym and through active citizenship/mentoring roles.

Support and services offered

Visitors’ centre

Our visitors’ centre is run by Lincolnshire Action Trust (LAT).

On arrival at the visits centre, your paper identification will be checked by security staff.

You will be welcomed into our visitors’ centre which has access to children’s play equipment, lockers, comfortable seating, vending machines and toilet facilities.

First-time visitors will receive an induction from LAT staff so they are well prepared for what to expect.

We also have a child-friendly guide available presented by ‘Action Ted’.

When the weather is nice outside, we have benches and children’s activity boards for visitors to enjoy.

Visits Hall

We have a large spacious visits hall offering hot food and drinks.

There is a play corner with a wide range of toys and activities for children to use throughout their visit.

To support our visitors, children under 12 can get a free lunch pack if required consisting of a sandwich fruit, drink and yoghurt pot.

Goodie bags are also available, you can speak to member of the team for more information.

You can visit our Durham Prison page on GOV.UK for details on how to book visits, visiting hours and other ways to keep in touch with prisoners.

Partnership working - meet the team

Our aim is to a take a whole-prison approach to families and positive relationships.

The work to make this strategy happen spans across the Reducing Reoffending pathway teams. These teams include:

• Education
• Training & Employment
• Mental & Physical Health
• Substance Misuse
• Finance
• Benefit and Debt
• Family & Relationships
• Attitudes
• Thinking & Behaviour
• Accommodation (sustained)
• Domestic Violence and Sexual Exploitation.

Lincolnshire Action Trust

LAT staff are an embedded and crucial partner that drive the importance and effectiveness of prisoners in both improving and maintaining family ties.

They continue work to support and signpost prisoners, their families and loved ones. They have proven to be a very dedicated and important partner in helping with anything relating to family matters.

Some of the services offered via LAT include:

• meet and greet service, particularly for first time visitors
• visitor inductions
• visits play
• signposting to support services including employment, debt advice, children’s services, women’s services and housing
• monthly family days and visits enrichment activity
• ‘Being Dad’ parenting course
• ‘Far from Home’ monthly prisoner support group

Library team

The library staff have previously been recognised by the CEO of Storybook Dads for their ‘sterling work and commitment (which) has brought a lot of joy and comfort to hundreds of children and will have had a big impact on family ties’.

They have continued to run the Storybook Dads initiative as a way to support prisoners in maintaining family ties.

In addition, children’s books are provided within the video visits hub to allow prisoners to read to their children and letter writing support is also provided.

Stocken’s community gym team

The gym team run a programme called ‘the positive role model scheme’ to support prisoners in developing positive relationships in prison.

They also support prisoners in completing first aid courses with an additional focus on paediatric first aid for infants and children.

The gym team are also often a familiar face at family days, offering a range of activities such as football and frisbee golf.

The Programmes team

Through providing accredited interventions, the programmes team place emphasis on teaching prisoners valuable skills to help them to develop and maintain positive relationships.

Through the Building Choices course, prisoners complete a range of modules that help them understand other people’s perspectives and think about positive relationships that can support them in moving away from crime

We run all accredited programmes is in line with the guidelines set by HMPPS Intervention Services.

Prisoners families and loved ones are encouraged (where appropriate) to attend post programme reviews as a supportive measure for the prisoner and to celebrate their success.

The College & Employment team

Within the college, partners run short courses and initiatives to support ties with families and loved ones.

Particularly the ‘Positive social development’ course made up of the following modules:

• Understanding family relationships
• Personal and interpersonal conflict
• Assertiveness and decision making

Prisoners’ families are invited to celebrate success when prisoners reach certain education, training and employment milestones, for example when graduating with the Open University.

Our gardens and industries departments are regular supporters of family days also, often growing pumpkins each year for carving around Halloween.

Chaplaincy team

Chaplains support families and prisoners in several ways:

• liaise with families over bereavements and unwell relatives, and can organise visits where appropriate
• liaise with families about the pastoral and spiritual care given to prisoners
• act as a point of contact for family members who haven’t had a phone call from a prisoner for a while
• share positive news, such as births, and can liaise with families about marriage in prison

Chaplains will attend some of the visit sessions to welcome and introduce themselves to families, so keep an eye out for them and come say ‘hello’.

Offender Management unit

The safety of our prisoners and their families is paramount, and our Offender Management Unit ensure safety through Public Protection and risk management meetings.

The Offender Management in Custody model also includes the role of keyworker.

Each prisoner at Stocken has an allocated keyworker who will meet with them regularly to see how they are getting on and signpost to support services where necessary.

A whole prison approach

It’s not just the pathway teams who support this strategy - conversations about families and the importance of these feature within keywork sessions and with staff on the wings.

Our kitchens team are always on hand to provide refreshments during visits and family days.

Our engagement and equalities team have worked to embed a yearly toyshop for prisoners wishing to purchase and wrap a toy for their loved ones. This has become a huge hit.

Our Operational Support Grade and officer group work to support families and friends every week during social visits and family days.

Some of these staff have been central in making some of the suggestions within this strategy about how we improve our family and significant others offer.

For the year ahead we will work with staff, prisoners and families (and significant others) to get their views and feedback. We will focus on the needs of different prisoner cohorts, including our care leavers to make sure their views are represented and listened to. In addition we will also engage more with outside partners.

Safeguarding measures

At HMP Stocken we have a safeguarding policy that ensures safeguarding measures are in place for people in our care, vulnerable adults and children.

All adults in need of safeguarding have the right to live their lives free from abuse of any description. All agencies and individuals that have contact with adults in need of safeguarding have a duty to protect them from abuse.

Where abuse is reported to or suspected by any person the response will be prompt and in line with prison service policies.

The prison works as a multi-agency team to meet the needs of prisoners in ensuring that they remain safe.

See our main GOV.UK page for contact details if you have a safeguarding concern

For further reference to safeguarding measures, please see the HMPPS Child Safeguarding Policy Framework - GOV.UK

What we have achieved

• Far from Home support group - as a national resource, many of our prisoners are far from home.This regular support group provides support from people in similar situations and provides advise on how to maintain meaningful family ties
• Introduced more visit sessions - from 7 sessions to 8 sessions every week and 13 family days a year
• Under 12s get a free pack lunch - to support families with the cost of visiting a loved one in prison
• More evening video visits available - following feedback about video visits being available outside of school times, sessions are now available Monday to Thursday evenings and all day Friday
• Refurbished the visitors centre and visits hall - we have invested in new furniture and carpets in the main visits hall as well as furniture, windows and fresh paint for the visitors centre making this more welcoming and comfortable for all
• Official Visitor scheme to support prisoners who do not receive visits. A number of volunteers have been vetted to visit prisoners without families or significant others
• ‘Being Dad’ parenting course - based on feedback from the needs analysis and the first pilot course which took place last year, now we are running the course twice a quarter
• Lifer and IPP family day - our needs analysis tells us that prisoners serving longer sentences can find it difficult to maintain family ties, in response to this we introduced an IPP and long serving prisoner day to our annual family day schedule
• Digital Support guide - in response to survey feedback, we have developed a step by step digital guide and offer telephone support for families using digital video visits

What’s next?

• Interactive visit activities in response to feedback from prisoners and older children on visits, we will look to set up a gaming corner that dads can book out with their older kids.
• More homework clubs - This year we would like to run more homework clubs and story clubs for prisoners to complete via digital visits with their younger loved ones, whether that be children, nieces, nephews etc.
• First time dad family days - with sessions on changing nappies and paediatric first aid.
• Drop-in feedback sessions - we are keen to hear your feedback. Heads of functions responsible for improving family services will hold a monthly drop in sessions within the visitors centre to hear your feedback and to answer questions.
• Continue to improve facilities.

How we will measure our success

• Prisoner family needs questionnaire.
• Prisoner Council meetings.
• Reducing Reoffending meetings.
• HM Inspectorate of Prisons reports.
• Prisoner Managing the Quality of Prison Life.
• Visitors monthly drop in sessions.
• Performance measure.

Staffing structure

• Governing Governor
• Head of reducing reoffending
• Operational Family and Significant Others Lead
• Family and Significant Other Champion
• Family Engagement Manager
• Family Support Workers and volunteers