Understanding family support needs of people in prison custody: literature review

2 - Policy Context

Introduction

The policy landscape surrounding family care and support within Scotland's custody system is multifaceted. This chapter identifies key strategies and initiatives implemented to enhance familial relationships and support networks for individuals in custody, as context ahead of the review of evidence.

Family care and support in custody within Scotland are intricately structured through several robust strategies: the Scottish Prison Service’s (SPS) Family and Parenting Strategy 2024-2029, the SPS Strategy for Women in Custody 2021-2025, The Vision for Young People in Custody 2021, and through targeted grant funding to Prison Visitors’ Centres (PVCs).

These strategies aim to create a cohesive and supportive environment for the families of those in custody. Central to these strategies are efforts to recognise and mitigate the impact of imprisonment on families, aiming for positive rehabilitation outcomes and successful community reintegration.

From the Scottish Prison Service's strategies to targeted initiatives like Prison Visitors' Centres and technological advancements in family contact, this chapter sets out how these strategies and initiatives address the diverse needs of families affected by imprisonment.

The chapter ends with a discussion of key related policies to this literature review: His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland (HMIPS) Standards, the Scottish Government’s Tackling Poverty Delivery Plan and the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund, and highlights examples of family support and services provided in Scotland.

Scottish Prison Service Family and Parenting Strategy

Following SPS Family Strategy 2017, the new Family and Parenting Strategy (2024-2029) published by SPS in June 2024 sets out the following principles for family support:

1. Families are treated with dignity and respect.

2. Families are included and engaged.

3. Children’s rights and best interests are at the centre of policy and practice.

4. Families are diverse and unique.

5. Partnership working is essential to achieving positive outcomes (Scottish Prison Service, 2024b).

This renewed strategy contains several key strands:

• Communication and engagement: Actively consulting families, children and young people in the implementation, review and improvement of family support strategies.
• Culture of reflection and improvement: By utilising self-evaluation based on a clear shared understanding of what the strategy should look like in practice, to plan for implementation and guide continuous improvement, and embedding review and research.
• Implementation and sharing best practice: Implementation of the strategy across the prison estate, and supporting establishments to develop consistency.
• Workforce: Implementing training for the staff group who come into contact with families, providing knowledge and information to help support their role in upholding children's rights, and understanding the impact faced by families which works towards positive wellbeing outcomes.
• Partnership working: In delivering positive outcomes, SPS will continue to form meaningful partnerships that support the health and wellbeing of those in the care of SPS, identifying barriers and being proactive in promoting and signposting universal services for families, children and young people (Scottish Prison Service, 2024b).

Strategy for Women in Custody (2021-2025)

The Strategy for Women in Custody is built on principles recognising the unique experiences of women, including trauma and adversity. It advocates for a gender-specific, trauma-informed approach to the care and support of women in custody, ensuring that their specific needs are met, and their experiences are understood. This strategy aims to provide a supportive environment that addresses the unique challenges faced by women in custody, promoting their overall wellbeing and facilitating their rehabilitation (Scottish Prison Service, 2021a).

Community Custody Units and HMP&YOI Stirling

The innovative Community Custody Units (CCUs) and HMP&YOI Stirling are grounded in the Strategy for Women in Custody. These facilities are designed to provide a more supportive and rehabilitative environment for women in custody. Two CCUs became operational in 2022, with the opening of the Bella Centre in Dundee and the Lilias Centre in Glasgow.

The Scottish Prison Service (SPS)^[1] states that: “The Community Custody Units have been designed to provide safe and secure accommodation, which is trauma-informed and gender-specific. The CCUs will support the needs of women who would benefit from closer community contact and access to local services. Women will be supported to live independently in accommodation based on a ‘shared house’ principle to develop a range of independent living skills, which are reflective of real life.”

An evaluation of the CCU model was commissioned in May 2023, and will report outcomes in Summer 2025. The aim is to evaluate the early impact and emerging outcomes of SPS’s new innovative model of Community Custody Units (CCUs), and the operation of the Strategy for Women in Custody in the CCUs. The CCU evaluation also aims to support and inform ongoing improvement of gender-specific and trauma-informed care and support for women in custody and on release, and support policy decisions in the future, specifically on the implications of the CCU model for other population groups in custody.

Further, the evaluation will include relevant family support insights to be shared with service providers, identifying best practices and areas for improvement, ensuring that the support provided to women and their families is effective and impactful.

The evaluation will also inform a review of the Strategy for Women in Custody.

Commitment to Better Outcomes

The Strategy for Women in Custody commits to ensuring women’s time in custody leads to better outcomes for themselves, their families and communities. It aims to establish a comprehensive structure and process to ensure the wellbeing of women, uphold the rights of children affected by maternal imprisonment, and adhere to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). This commitment ensures that women receive the support they need to rehabilitate and reintegrate successfully, while their families, particularly their children, are also supported.

Vision for Young People in Custody (2021)

SPS’s Vision for Young People in Custody is a long-term plan to support young individuals, emphasising preparation for a positive future. This vision is grounded in engaging, motivating and supporting young people in custody, reflecting SPS values of belief, respect, integrity, openness, courage and humility. It recognises the potential of young offenders to contribute positively to society, and aims to provide the support and opportunities they need to realise this potential (Scottish Prison Service, 2021b).

Recognising Potential and Responsibility

The Vision posits that young offenders have the potential to positively contribute to society, and that SPS and its partners bear the responsibility to facilitate this transformation. The Vision aims to mitigate the adverse effects of custody on young people, focussing on education, relationships and mental health. It seeks to provide a supportive environment where young people can engage in learning and find mentorship, helping them to build a better future.

Alignment with International and National Standards

The Vision aligns with international conventions, such as the UNCRC^[2] and Scottish Government priorities and strategies for children and young people, including Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC)^[3], The Promise^[4] and the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014^[5]. It supports the Scottish Government’s Vision for Justice^[6] and a whole-system approach to youth justice, ensuring that young people receive the support they need throughout their time in custody and beyond.

Prison Visitors’ Centres (PVCs)

The Scottish Government has supported the development of PVCs since 2016/17. There are currently 11 PVCs^[7] and 3 ‘Support Services’^[8] across the custodial estate. These are independent non-statutory services provided by a range of third sector not-for-profit organisations, which are independent of the prisons they work alongside^[9]. PVCs work to achieve positive outcomes for the families of prisoners – serving a dual function:

• First, for those visiting prisons – particularly with children – the PVC offers a ‘soft landing’ to improve the experience; reduce trauma, stress and anxiety; and facilitate meaningful family contact. This is outside of the secure line of the prison, and is separate but complementary to the formal visiting arrangements which are handled by SPS.

• Second, PVCs take advantage of the opportunity afforded by visits to provide a range of direct support, including advice and referral to wider agencies and services to families – many of whom come from seldom-heard groups and represent, or are directly impacted by, the disadvantages identified in the Robertson Trust’s Hard Edges report.^[10]

There is not a single PVC service model adopted nationwide, rather each organisation determines the exact nature of their own provision to the families visiting the prison they work alongside. The National Performance Framework for Prison Visitors’ Centres in Scotland^[11] guides these functions, ensuring that PVCs provide valuable support to families, and contribute to the overall wellbeing of those in custody.

Families Outside provides the national coordinating role for Prison Visitors’ Centres in Scotland. Families Outside (2017) identifies that these centres offer a welcoming environment, access to information and emotional support. Programmes facilitating family visits, parenting programmes within prisons, and communication aids like video calls are essential components of these centres. Lockwood et al. (2022) suggest that these facilities are key to creating a more welcoming and supportive environment for some of Scotland’s most vulnerable families.

An example in England is that of Partners of Prisoners (POPS) who operate visitor centres in 11 prisons in the North West of England. An evaluation by Yarwood et al. (2017) showed that these services help reduce feelings of being stigmatised as ‘guilty by association’. Further, McCarthy and Adams (2021) found that despite no statutory support for families of prisoners in England and Wales, mothers tended to seek support from prison visitor centres rather than from family and friends.

Children’s Visits

Families Outside (2024b) highlights various initiatives across different prisons in Scotland aimed at enhancing family connections and supporting children's wellbeing during visits, as follows:

• Grampian: The Family Centre and Help Hub offers weekly art and craft activities during children's visits, tailored to each family. They organise events for significant dates like Mother’s Day and Christmas to foster family bonding. The SPS supports with events such as giving out presents at Christmas.
• Barlinnie: Efforts include making rooms more child-friendly with activity packs and loaned tablets, regular updates on activities via an information board and newsletter, and participation in children's visits to strengthen family relationships. They have also introduced a sensory room to enhance the visiting experience. These efforts are coordinated by the PVC in partnership with Family Contact Officers. During the pandemic, tablets provided were funded by the Scottish Government.
• Edinburgh: Play, Learn & Connect Sessions feature morning activities with healthy breakfasts and themed evening events. These are facilitated by Early Years Scotland and Barnardo’s support these sessions, providing homemade pancakes and waffles, themed evenings like pizza and ice cream nights, and photo opportunities to capture special memories. Additionally, personalised birthday cakes are donated by Edinburgh Cake for Kids.
• Addiewell: The 'Creative Adventures' programme during children’s bonding visits includes various toys, games and sensory equipment to foster relaxed interaction. Events like feeding lambs at Easter and a summer funday with games and activities help families create positive shared experiences. This is run by the PVC and supported by the prison.
• Perth: Informal play and arts and crafts sessions, a picnic-themed visit with afternoon tea, and personalised birthday gifts help families interact and bond. A feedback tree in the visit room allows families to shape their visits. These are run by the PVC.
• Low Moss: Initiatives include movie nights, virtual visit boxes and programmes like the Fathers’ Programme and Baby Massage, which promote interaction and family bonding during visits. This programme is run by Early Years Scotland who also host the PVC at HMP Low Moss.
• Polmont: The Visitors’ Centre hosts events such as Easter parties and summer activities, with new toys and resources funded by the Scottish Government. The Storybook Families Project run by the PVC, with support from parenting officers, facilitates quality contact by enabling parents to record stories for their children.
• Stirling: Information on children's mental health and wellbeing is provided, along with the Jelly Baby Tree for recognising emotions. Books and resources about children's mental health are available and a new mascot is planned to support visitors with autism and learning disabilities. This is run by the PVC.
• Glenochil: PVC staff attend all children's visits, offering educational and interactive activities. The PVC provides resources about children's mental health and supports families with back-to-school supplies and sensory activities.
• Shotts: The Family Time Project facilitates children’s bonding visits with tailored activities based on family interests. Events like Easter parties and oral health initiatives promote family interaction and wellbeing. The Visitor Centre maintains a playroom and sensory area for children to enjoy before visits. This is run by the PVC with support of the Family Contact Officer.

These initiatives collectively aim to create a supportive environment that strengthens family relationships and promotes the wellbeing of children with imprisoned parents, addressing the emotional and practical challenges they face. Evaluations of these initiatives were not found during this review.

Technological Advances in Family Contact

The rollout of mobile phones across the prison estate and virtual visit options now offer alternative ways to maintain contact with loved ones in custody in Scotland, supplementing traditional face-to-face visits. These technological advancements provide additional means for maintaining family connections, which are crucial for the emotional and psychological wellbeing of those in custody. At the time of writing, the Scottish Prison Service is rolling out in-cell telephony across the estate.

Key Related Policies

His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland (HMIPS) Standards^[12]

HMIPS Standard 6: Purposeful Activity ensures prisoners engage in constructive activities and maintain positive relationships with family and friends. Quality Indicators 6.9 to 6.12 measure the effectiveness of family contact facilitation, visitor support, alternative arrangements for family interaction and the management of restrictions on family contact. These standards ensure that prisons provide a supportive environment that encourages positive relationships and constructive use of time.

All HMIPS prison Inspection Reports can be found on their website^[13].

Tackling Child Poverty

The Scottish Government's “Best Start, Bright Futures: Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022 to 2026” sets out Scotland’s national mission to tackle child poverty. This includes key actions to “maximising the support available for families to live dignified lives and meet their basic needs.” This mission recognises that there is a strong interaction between poverty and deprivation and engagement with the justice system, and that the system can play a stronger role in tackling child poverty.

The Delivery Plan further recognises parental imprisonment as an adverse childhood experience (ACE) that significantly impacts long-term health and wellbeing and negatively affects both attainment in school and later life experiences. The long-term aim is for imprisonment to only be used for those who pose a risk of serious harm, and for community based interventions to be the default for those who do not.

A key action to support families impacted by imprisonment is through the £800,000 (yearly) funding provided to Prison Visitor Centres (see earlier at page 13), to meet the specific needs of families including: alleviating poverty, mitigating loss of income and providing practical and emotional help, including referrals for income maximisation and housing support (Scottish Government, 2022a).

The Delivery Plan also sets out the £500 million of funding for the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund over this Parliamentary term.

Whole Family Wellbeing Fund (WFWF)^[14]

The WFWF is helping to transform services so that families can access preventative, holistic support, which is wrapped around their needs, and provided when they need it, and for as long as they need it (Scottish Government, 2022a).The fund is guided by 10 National Principles promoting support which are:

1. Non-stigmatising: Support should be promoted and provided free from stigma and judgement. Services should be as normalised as accessing universal services.

2. Whole family: Support should be rooted in GIRFEC^[15] and wrapped around the whole family. This requires relevant join-up with adult services and whole system, place-based, and preventative approaches, addressing inequalities.

3. Needs-based: Support should be tailored to fit around each individual family, not be driven by rigid services or structures. It should cover the spectrum of support from universal services, more tailored support for wellbeing and intensive support (to prevent or in response to statutory interventions). Creative approaches to support should be encouraged.

4. Assets and community-based (community-empowered): Support should be empowering, building on existing strengths within the family and wider community. Families should be able to ‘reach in’ not be ‘referred to’. Support must be explicitly connected to locations that work for local families and the community, such as schools, health centres, village halls and sports centres.

5. Timely and sustainable: Flexible, responsive and proportionate support should be available to families as soon as they need it, and for as long as it is required, adapting to changing needs.

6. Promoted (and accessible): Families should have easy, well understood routes of access to support. They should feel empowered to do so and have choice about the support they access to ensure it meets their needs.

7. Take account of families’ voices: At a strategic and individual level, children and families should be meaningfully involved in the design, delivery, evaluation and continuous improvement of services. Support should be based on trusted relationships between families and professionals working together, with mutual respect to ensure targeted and developmental support.

8. Collaborative and seamless: Support should be multi-agency and joined up across services, so families don’t experience multiple ‘referrals’ or inconsistent support.

9. Skilled and supported workforce: Support should be informed by an understanding of attachment, trauma, inequality and poverty. Staff should be supported to take on additional responsibilities and trusted to be innovative in responding to the needs of families.

10.Underpinned by children's rights: Children’s rights should be the funnel through which every decision and support service is viewed.

These principles emphasise a family-centric approach, ensuring that support is accessible, inclusive and responsive to the dynamic needs of families, fostering an environment where children thrive in supportive familial settings rather than in care systems. This will create a Scotland where more children will only know care, compassion and love, and not a ‘care system’. The Promise^[16] clearly highlights the importance of un-stigmatised access to effective universal and intensive family support, with early intervention and prevention at its core.

As the literature review study was funded by the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund, the study explored whether any of the WFWF principles for holistic family support were evident in the literature reviewed, particularly in the context of approaches and models of family support (chapter nine). The principles are also reflected on in chapters ten (reflection opportunities) and twelve (points for consideration).

Examples of Support and Services Provided in Scotland

Much of the literature reviewed describes support in a generic sense, rather than being focussed on either the period of custody or post-release in the context of family support. Below are some examples of support provided in Scotland by Families Outside, Barnardos and SACRO, with whom the research team engaged as part of the research.

An example of support offered in Scotland is from Families Outside. According to their 2022-23 impact report, Families Outside offers the following support:

• Support and Information Service, which supported 1,351 people in 2022-23 with 3,041 contacts. The helpline support was primarily taken up by women (81%), but helped a variety of family members including partners, parents and other family members. Emotional support was another reason identified for people reaching out to Families Outside and other common issues raised were visiting, concern for someone in prison and information about prison.
• Regional Family Support Coordinators based across Scotland, who provide direct face-to-face support to families. Coordinators connect with key agencies and referral sources such as prison staff, schools and social work.
• Support and Participation model running since September 2022, which aims to work with families to encourage peer support groups, and ensure participation of families in important conversations across the criminal justice landscape.
• Delivering training and awareness raising for key professionals to widen the support available for families, across three modules:
  • Understanding the issues for families affected by imprisonment
  • Supporting children and young people who have a family member in prison
  • Prison and prison visiting.
• Practice learning whereby social work student placements can learn in the areas of family support, helpline, peer support groups and research.
• Influencing change for prisoners and their families by contributing to consultations, requests for input and research projects on matters related to family support in Scotland (Families Outside, 2023a).

Barnardo’s Scotland also offers a range of services throughout the country to children, young people and families who are currently in contact with youth justice services, or with previous experience of the justice system and imprisonment. These services include prison-based support such as those within HMP Polmont Young Offenders Institution and the HMP Edinburgh prison visitors’ centre; community-based youth justice services including those based in Stirling and Clackmannanshire; women’s justice services like Shine Women’s mentoring and Ayrshire Court screening; and family support for children affected by parental imprisonment (Barnardo’s, 2022).

SACRO^[17] offers a free volunteer driving service which helps to facilitate visits between families living in the Edinburgh and Lothian areas and their loved ones in prison. This aims to mitigate against the barriers associated with cost and practicalities of travel, and to help maintain contact between families (SACRO, 2024).

In addition to this service SACRO also offers:

• A Bail Supervision Service which works to prevent unnecessary custodial remands and re-offending on bail by providing supervision, monitoring and support (including electronic tagging in some areas).
• Throughcare which offers support to people on release from prison. This is often done by meeting people at the prison gate and arranging support with appointments, accommodation, health, employment and other issues that may need attention to help with the transition back to successful independent living.
• The Arrest Referral Service which engages with people at the point of arrest whose offending is linked to drug or alcohol misuse. By seeing the person as soon as they are arrested, SACRO can offer individuals a pathway into harm reduction, treatment and rehabilitation services. Engagement is voluntary and not a formal part of the criminal justice process. SACRO workers offer the service daily to individuals within the Sheriff Court cells in addition to contacting those suggested by police assessment, post-release.
• SACRO Custody Navigators work to reduce the number of people entering and re-entering custody in Fife. They help individuals who have offended to re-integrate successfully and safely back into the community. The service aims to enhance capacity for change, reduce harm caused by substance use or violence, improve overall wellbeing and stop the revolving door of imprisonment (SACRO, 2024).

Conclusion

Scotland's approach to family care and support within its custody system demonstrates a commitment to human rights, rehabilitation and community wellbeing. The strategies and initiatives outlined in this chapter, from the SPS Family and Parenting Strategy to the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund, highlight the importance of maintaining familial connections and supporting the holistic needs of individuals in custody and their families. Although it should be noted that limited evaluation evidence of these initiatives was found as part of this review. After the methodology discussion in chapter three, the remainder of this report explores the existing literature reviewed, to understand these needs and inform future developments in addressing the support needs of families affected by imprisonment.