'Divided Households': Developing a Co-Produced, Child-Centred, Rights-Based Framework for Prison Social Visits, 2022-2023

Familial imprisonment is one of ten recognised Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), with established long-term impacts to health, care and wellbeing. Where safe and appropriate, the right of a child to protect and maintain family life is enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Despite this, families face many barriers in maintaining contact with and/or visiting a family member in prison, and children and young people's experiences of doing so, in their own words, are less widely reported.

These data were generated as part of a two-year ESRC-funded research project during which qualitative longitudinal interviews were conducted with 19 children and young people (age 7-17) in North East England and Scotland (10 girls, 9 boys). The aim of this study was to explore how family imprisonment impacts on children and young people’s mental health, emotional wellbeing and familial relationships, and to utilise findings to develop a rights-based framework for prison social visits.

All three interviews incorporated visual, creative activities. The first interview focused on the practicalities of visiting a family member in prison; the second interview focused more on the children themselves and their wellbeing; and the third and final interview focused on children and young people’s priorities for change. In this final session, participants created a child or young person who was experiencing familial imprisonment and explored the impact using narrative story telling.

We took a reflexive approach to thematic analysis to ensure that a collaborative coding approach was used to analyse data. All transcripts were double coded with weekly analysis meetings held to continually revisit and reinterpret, using Miroboards to document discussions and analytical insights. Finally, we worked with a sub-set of participants and a professional sketch artist to co-create comics based on the character creation activity carried out during interview three.