Sussex Prisoners’ Families was established in 2013 to support families affected by the imprisonment of a loved one. We have benefited from collaborative working with a number of organisations but our relationship with the University of Brighton has been particularly rich, helping to advance the organisations’ growth considerably.

Active Student Volunteer programme: Between 2014-2018, we recruited 89 volunteers (60 student volunteers from Active Student programme) to our Court Support Service and HMP Lewes Visits Centre who provided 10,404 volunteer hours with a living wage value (£7.83) of £81,463

Monitoring, Evaluation & Impact Partnership: We attended several workshops of the MEI Partnership led by Mary Darking and Carl Walker that enhanced our understanding and provided us with the confidence to celebrate the unique work being done by our volunteers. We subsequently tailored our monitoring and include in all funding bids a description proudly stating our approach: “Community engagement of prisoners’ families and collecting data from people in distress is challenging. We are committed to retaining dignity in how we serve families experiencing this trauma”. Subsequently we have seen an increase in successful funding applications affirming this approach.

Digital story telling: As part of the ‘Hidden Voices’ arts project, a digital storytelling project was delivered by the University of Brighton and DigiTales over an intensive three-day workshop. The short films produced express the young people's experiences of the criminal justice system and give an insight into the issues faced and wider impact of imprisonment on families. We are now looking to build ‘Hidden Voices’ and use the arts as a platform for voice.

Research Sussex by Master's students in Community Psychology.

Rebecca Threlfalls’ research project “How Best to Meet the Needs of Prisoners’ Families in West Sussex’ (2015), highlighted the lack of knowledge about children of prisoners in West Sussex and we have now delivered more training and presentations to Health and Children’s Services professionals in West Sussex than in any other area.

Victoria Stallwoods’ ‘Stakeholder-led impact evaluation of the court and prison volunteer services’ (2017) helped us understand the impact of our volunteer services for our stakeholders and for volunteers themselves.

Fundraising events: Several staff from the University are in bands and who have given their time to play at ‘Punk for Prisoners’ Families’, a (now annual) fundraising gig for the project, attended by our volunteers, families we’re working with, stakeholders, partners and the unruly mob.

Resilience Forum: We have enjoyed attending the Resilience Forum. Recognising the trauma families’ experience we aspire towards a resilience model in our approach. We were chuffed to be able to come along and take part as a guest speaker and have made several fruitful contacts at the forum.

Thank You! We’re most grateful to our friends at Brighton University who have offered encouragement and contacts and contributed to the growth of the project. Many thanks to Beth Thomas-Hancock, Bethan Prosser, Rebecca Threlfall, Victoria Stallwood, Mary Darking, Carl Walker, Suze Cruttwell, Ross Adamson, Isobel Creed, Helen Johnson, and Stuart Laing.

Denis Byrne, Sussex Prisoners’ Families, October 2018

http://www.sussexprisonersfamilies.org.uk/