The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children have a right to the engagement of both parents in their education. But, approximately 200,000 children who are separated from an imprisoned parent, there are significant consequences for both adults and children.
A child’s chance of educational and social achievement are likely to be enhanced by the active involvement and engagement of both parents, but existing research had not considered the extent to which imprisoned fathers are informed about or are able to participate in the education of their children.
Dr Helen O’Keeffe, assistant head of primary education, was a teacher in a number of schools in Liverpool before joining Edge Hill University.
One school where she worked was fairly close to HMP Liverpool and a number of the children had a father in prison. During this time as a teacher, she became aware that there were no national or local policies or systems in place to support teachers and children in these circumstances.
She explained: “As a school we didn’t have anything in place to work with this group of children or their families. Schools have policies for children suffering from bereavement, Looked After Children and those with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities but nothing in place for those with a parent in prison and no parental involvement opportunities for their imprisoned father.
“When I came to work at Edge Hill I decided to focus my research on a child’s right to the involvement of their imprisoned father in their education. This is currently a hidden group of children within our education system and an area I feel requires significant research attention.”
Helen’s research involved speaking with mothers, prisoners currently serving in a UK prison and head teachers to discover the potential for imprisoned fathers to be fully involved in the education of their primary school aged children. She also aimed to discover if there was the potential for an interface between the education and criminal justice system in relation to the proposal and what the implications for education and penal policy were from the findings.
The interviews were held in prisons, visitor centres and participating primary schools.
“There were a number of recommendations from the research for everyone involved in the study,” Helen said. “Head teachers were doing all they could to support all children in their schools but often indicated they knew very little about the children of prisoners within their context. They were not always aware of them as a group or had not received any training in how to support them.”
The research also revealed that mothers were anxious about their reputation in the school community, pressure of needing to visit prison and often had financial concerns.
The fathers had a very clear vision of what involvement in their child’s education might look like and the concept of being a ‘good dad’ was very important to them. Helen discovered they all had quite a positive outlook about potential involvement and could see the benefits of being involved in the education of their child, both for them and their family connections.
As a result of the research, a number of recommendations have been made and a model developed for how dads can be more involved in their child’s education.
The study calls for a consistent policy nationally in relation to the children of prisoners. Helen said: “There needs to be one named person in schools who can support partners and children. They would have more training and knowledge and more insight into the needs of this group.”
“For example, Hidden Sentence Training (provided by the charity Action for Prisoners’ Families) does exist in a number of local authorities and a handful of schools are delivering it.”
In addition, the study suggests there’s a potential need for prisoner education, approaches to adapt to support fathers in this enhanced involvement, extension of the approach to family visit days and improving communication methods including e-mail a prisoner and skype facilities for communication with schools.
The next step for this work i s to put this training onto the agenda for initial teacher educators to ensure it features in teacher training courses. This will not only develop the knowledge and understanding of the next generation of teachers in working with children and families where one parent is in prison, but it also has the potential to help enhance a child’s chance of higher educational and social achievements.
