Family days
Family days
Spurgeons' Prisoner and Family Support Services provide help with family day prison visits, which enables us to support and provide help for families of prisoners.
Help with family prison visits for families
Our family days typically involve activities which dads and their children can take part in together, enabling the child to enjoy valuable moments with their parent that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
It is now estimated that over 310,000 children are affected by parental imprisonment. When a family member goes to prison, in many ways, the whole family also serves the sentence.
These visits are very important to me and my family. The freedom we have together, away from other prisoners is the main reason. (It) helps to bond with your children on a better level.
Making family visits to prison less daunting
Having a father in prison can be traumatic for children; the pain of separation and the anxiety involved in visits to a building with uniformed officers and tight security can be a huge burden. With this in mind, help with prison visits for families is extremely important.
It's also hard for the parent in prison - often they don't see their children grow up and find it really challenging to reintegrate back into the family upon their release. At our Prisoner and Family Support Services, we want to provide a warm welcome and a safe and homely space in which visiting families can relax.
There is no designated seating for the dads during our family days. Unlike normal family prison visits, they can move around the space and engage with their children and families, building important and positive reconnections.
We provide a range of stations for families to use, such as face painting, fancy dress, and families get a mealtime together offering a rare opportunity for them to come together authentically as a family.