Allowing Imprisoned Fathers to Parent: Maximising the Potential Benefits of Prison based Parenting Programmes

ABSTRACT

During imprisonment, fathers are separated from their families and contact is limited. When delivering a prison based parenting programme, providing an opportunity to rehearse newly acquired parenting skills can be key for mastering the performance of these skills and using these skills to improve father-child relationships. This paper takes an in-depth look at how one parenting programme in Northern Ireland sought to overcome this challenge by providing additional opportunities to parent via increased telephone contact and special family friendly visits. Using a combination of in-depth interviews and observations, how fathers and their families responded to this increased contact is explored, as well as the extent to which this increased contact facilitated the acquisition of the parenting skills being taught on the programme. It is argued that while prison based parenting programmes can improve parenting skills and father-child relationships, their potential long-term effectiveness may be limited by wider prison policies, procedures and practices surrounding prison visitation, telephone access and the progression of fathers following the completion of such programmes. Recommendations and suggestions for future practice are offered.

KEYWORDS:

• Parenting
• services
• behaviour

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

David Hayes is a senior lecturer in social work at Queen’s University Belfast. He specialises in childhood adversity, child wellbeing, child protection and children’s experiences of the criminal justice system

Michelle Butler is a lecturer in criminology at Queen’s University Belfast. She specialises in prison research, parental imprisonment, criminological psychology, restorative justice and penal reform. (Twitter: @MichelleBQUB)

John Devaney is a senior lecturer in social work at Queen’s University Belfast. He specialises in child abuse and neglect, family relationships, impact of childhood adversity across the lifespan and developing child welfare policy. (Twitter: @Jdev65)

Andrew Percy is a senior lecturer in criminology at Queen’s University Belfast. He specialises in the alcohol and drug use of young people, research design and measurement as well as evaluative research.

ORCID

David Hayes http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7053-9069

Michelle Butler http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6983-6215

John Devaney http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8300-8339

Andrew Percy http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4156-1536

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Barnardo’s Northern Ireland under Grant number R2173SSP.