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

62 Women offenders: after the Corston Reportthe rapport with my son is not good. It could have been made better if I had beenmaybe closer and visits would have been easier to access me.” 316Furthermore, some women do not want their children visiting a prison environment, orare unable to find anyone prepared to bring their children to visit. 317 Other issues include:the unsuitability of visiting times, for example, as a result of: conflict with school-hours;being too early for families who have to travel long distances; high demand for weekendvisits; and being too short for meaningful interaction; the expense of telephone calls; andthe costs of travelling to visits. 318158. Regimes can also interfere with family relationships. For example, for foreign nationalwomen, time differences can be prohibitive, and for women whose children are involvedwith social services, they need to make contact in normal working hours rather than duringevening association. 319 The Corston Report emphasised the importance of cooperationbetween local social care, health services, prisons and criminal justice. We heard thatmeaningful cooperation between prisons and local services has started to take place but notnoticeably specifically in relation to women’s prisons, despite arguably greater need as aresult of the distance that women are held away from their home communities and theimpact of women’s imprisonment on fragmenting the family when they are sole carers. 320The Transforming Rehabilitation reforms might accelerate progress as they aim topromote closer engagement with local services from the beginning of a sentence.159. Deborah Cowley gave us her view of what a family friendly prison would comprise:family would not have far to travel; family would know from the beginning where to goand what to expect, including knowing that they were able to ask for help, for example,beginning with court-based information services; visiting would be easier and morefrequent, including for children in care who get few accompanied visits. For example, onebarrier to visits is that children have to be accompanied by an adult up to the age of 18. 321160. Nick Hardwick and Eoin McLennan Murray agreed that more emphasis should beplaced on enabling women to maintain contact with their families, for example, throughmore “imaginative visit arrangements”, video-calls, secure emails, more frequent homeleave, and teaching parenting skills. 322 Mr Hardwick gave the example of Hydebank Woodin Northern Ireland which allowed families to have extended (six-hour) unsupervised visitsin a separate unit, where they could cook and share a meal together for example. 323 Whilesome prisons have specialist family centres, extended children’s visits, supervised playareas, and dedicated family support workers, such provision is inconsistent across thefemale estate. 324 Action for Prisoners’ Families noted that as prison governors receive no316 Q 56317 Q 150, Ev w19, Ev w48318 Ev w19, Ev w21, Ev 95, Q 230 [Mr Eoin McLennan Murray]319 Ev w19320 Q 169321 Q 180 [Ms Cowley], Ev 95322 Qq 239–240. See also Ev w32323 Q 239324 Ev 95