RESULTS
Project Result 1.
Review on Missing Social, Emotional and Parenting Skills of Prisoners and the Impact of Incarceration in their Families
The aim of this analysis is to assess the needs of prisoners in social and emotional skills and competencies related to their ability to bond successfully with their families and significant others. Of great importance in this analysis is also the need to identify the ways in which prisoners can (re)gain an active involvement in their family life – even during their imprisonment – but most importantly upon release.
The Golden Thread systematic review on missing parenting skills of incarcerated parents and the impact of incarceration in their families is comprised of two parts:
- The literature review
- The survey and in-depth interviews
Project Result 2.
The Family Learning Curriculum
The Family Learning curriculum is set to help prevent institutionalization and re-offending by providing basic, social and life skills to help prisoners understand the benefits of being part of a family and a community, and of the importance of maintaining family relationships from prison. The Family Learning Workshops aim to empower prisoners in their ability to make and sustain these types of relationships.
This curriculum is expected to support prisoners not only in maintaining relationships but also in enhancing their parenting skills and building an encouraging vision of their future.
Project Result 3.
Family Support Groups
The aim of this result is provide a framework and a “place” for the support of children, parents, spouses, partners, and other family members of prisoners. This result proposes to provide a framework in the form of Family Support Groups.
Family support groups constitute a powerful tool to provide opportunities to share experiences; meet, learn and gain encouragement from others in similar situations and offer family members of prisoners a place to focus on their own needs. Family support groups may provide the context for a safe, non-judgmental place where people in similar situations can connect with each other and provide compassion, support and information during their very difficult times.
Project Result 4.
The Prison Family Learning Guide
The aim of the Prison Family Learning Guide is the development of a comprehensive approach for the successful future transfer of the project experience to other prison institutions throughout Europe. The elaboration of this Guide will be an effort to institutionalise permanently and to ordinarily introduce the proposed family learning and family support methodologies in the European penitentiary system.
This Guide aims to address the need to “mainstream” the Golden Thread intervention so as to harness widely available power of family support, that is now only patchily utilized in favour of prisoner rehabilitation.
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