'At Least I Get to Visit Him, That's All That Matters': Maintaining Contact With a Family Member in Prison,...

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

Drawing on serial longitudinal interviews and the curation of creative methods with 19 children and young people (age 7-16) who have a family member in prison across Northern England and Scotland, the aim of this study was to explore the impact of familial imprisonment on children and young people's health and wellbeing, and to utilise our findings to develop a rights-based framework for prison social visits.

Reflexive thematic analysis identified three intersecting themes: (1) navigating complex, adult systems; (2) distress, grief and trauma; (3) acceptance, normalisation and coping mechanisms. In this paper, we illustrate how these themes were harnessed to co-produce a child-centred framework for social visits based on children and young people's priorities for change, a framework we articulate as 'The Three Cs'.

Contact, which strengthens family ties and protects health and wellbeing, requires approaches which are child-centred, consistent and compassionate. Crucial to this are enhancements to prison officer mandatory training on family ties and the impact of family imprisonment as well as exploration of how to harness existing support pathways designed for vulnerable children and young people to ensure that those experiencing familial justice-involvement do not fall through gaps in service provision.

From its inception, this project was a partnership between academia and two voluntary sector organisations that support families experiencing imprisonment with the core project team being split between academic and practice-based partners (reflected in this article's authorship). An international stakeholder group was also convened to support the study across its duration and who supported the research team in the development of research questions, topic guides and participant materials, guided the interpretation of our findings, and provided input into our impact and dissemination strategy. This group met quarterly and included representation from voluntary sector and grassroots organisations, academics with experience of working with children, families and justice-involved populations, prison and probation service colleagues and creative practitioners. Aligned with this partnership approach, we established regular satellite check-ins with other voluntary sector organisations across the United Kingdom who support families experiencing imprisonment to embed relationality and feedback loops for actionable change. Five study participants were involved in the co-creation of comics, illustrated by Jack Brougham (see 'Materials and methods' section for further insight). Finally, during the analysis, dissemination and impact phases of the project, we worked with a youth board of children with experience of familial imprisonment (recruited through a partner organisation) to sense-check our findings and to develop a campaign video (an approach chosen by the board). The video was based on the analysis of project data and the youth board's own experiences. This process was held over 3 full-day sessions, co-facilitated by a locally based arts organisation and involved a range of creative activities. Participants were thanked for their time with gift vouchers. Both processes with young people (data collection and engagement activity) further informed our analysis and were fundamental to shaping our three Cs framework, a framework co-produced with our core voluntary sector partners and illustrated by Nifty Fox.