Women offenders: after the Corston Report - United Kingdom ...

Ev 38 Justice Committee: Evidence29 January 2013 Jacqueline McKenzie, Deborah Cowley, Rachel Halford and Sherry AshfieldThe other issue that we may not want to think about isthat not every woman who has children wants to retainor resume the role as mother and primary carer. Wehave to train our staff to be able to hear when womenare saying, “I may love my children but I may not wantto resume the role as primary carer with them.” In ourexperience, that is something that professionals findhugely difficult.Q185 Jeremy Corbyn: Can I ask, coming in on thisone—and thanks for the evidence you have given us—what is the view of all or any of you of how long amother should keep her child in prison where she has alonger sentence? I have met women in Holloway whoare extremely stressed at their children being takenaway from them or others that feel it is right becausethey do not want their child in its early years developingin a prison environment. Do you have views on this?This is for women who have substantial sentences.Sherry Ashfield: Again, I would like to see a systemwhere we can respond to the individual needs both ofthe mother and also of the child.Q186 Jeremy Corbyn: A flexible approach.Sherry Ashfield: Yes. That will depend a lot on thephysical location in which the children are livingwithin the prison conditions. Some of my colleaguesmay have more information on that.Rachel Halford: I would agree. It has to be flexible,absolutely. The location is really important. If you werehaving smaller custodial units or you look at some ofthe open prisons, then why couldn’t the children stayfor longer? But you have to look at the impact on thechild. Hence, I think the limit now is 18 months. Itis very difficult. I have worked with women who areserving longer sentences whose children have beentaken away at that 18‐month point, and actually forthe mothers, as traumatic as that has been, they havefelt that it has been for the best, not for them to beseparated because there was absolutely no way theywere going to be able to leave with their child, but fortheir child to be in a different environment, to be in anormal environment, they felt was better in the longterm for their child.Q187 Andy McDonald: Can I ask you about mentalhealth and accommodation issues? The recent criminaljustice joint thematic inspection of alternatives tocustody for women offenders examined the work ofprobation and community partners and found mentalhealth housing was generally poor. We have heardthat many women are released from prison and findthemselves homeless. You have touched upon some ofthese issues already, but what specific gaps are therecurrently in the provision of accommodation andmental healthcare for women offenders and those atrisk of offending?Rachel Halford: Accommodation is a no brainer.It goes without saying that there are hugeproblems with accommodation across the board.A fundamental need for anyone who is going to notreoffend and succeed when reintegrating back intosociety is accommodation; they need finance andaccommodation. Accommodation is really limited.There are six probation hostels for women in thecountry. There isn’t one in London, which is absolutelyinsane. Anyone in London who needs to go to somekind of accommodation, like probation, would have togo to Reading or Bedfordshire.As far as mental health accommodation is concerned,we are talking about supported accommodation and itis limited. I do not have a huge knowledge base. Myknowledge base on the availability is really small and Ibelieve that is because there is a limited availability onmental health supported accommodation. The supporthas been minimal across the board, but I have to saythat now we have the introduction of the personalitydisorder pathway. What comes with that is this—andit is fantastic because this is for women who havehigher mental health needs: there is an opportunityof working within the prisons, through the gate, intothe community, into accommodation and into theirown accommodation with specialist support. So thereis an opportunity of something new happening hereand it is a pathway—which is NOMS and nationalhealth—which is fantastic. We will wait to see whatthe outcomes are, but it is something that is happeningin the prisons and in the community, and we wouldhope that there would be increased provision withinthe community off the back of this.Deborah Cowley: One of the things about having afamily‐friendly prison would be that, if there wereproper engagement with family members wherepossible, in terms of sentence planning, it couldbe a huge advantage in relation to accommodationsubsequently. We have an example where a prisoner’smother was ignored when she moved to a differentprison, having had a very good relationship, and herdaughter was sent to a hostel next door to a men’s hostelwhere her whole behaviour was around inappropriatesexual relationships with men and she needed supportto stop that. Family members can be a really importantpart of that planning.Sherry Ashfield: One of the concerns I have is aboutlong‐term accommodation. While you are right thatthe hostels do an incredibly good job for women withvery complex needs and have a history of providingextremely good service provision for them, at somepoint they need to leave and then they move intoanother form of supported accommodation in thecommunity, but usually that is quite time limitedas well. I am quite interested to see where we go interms of the personality disorder agenda because weknow from working with women with disorderedpersonalities that they need a high level of stabilityover a very long period of time. So the accommodationthat we have is not great, it is in very low supply andalso it really is very time limited and very much gearedto specific points in someone’s sentence.Certainly, we have seen women who have ended upcoming back into the system maybe four years aftertheir index offence, and when we looked with themat what went wrong a lot of it was about transitionalperiods, moving from one form of accommodation intoanother. So when we are talking about accommodationwe need to think not just about what happens at thepoint at which a woman is released but actually beprojecting quite far forward and thinking, “Where willshe go next and have we all the things in place that weneed to?”