Our project

What is it?

It WAS a regional project funded both by the Home Office and by HM Treasury under its Invest to Save Budget, sponsored by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS). It is NOW a project with an expanded geographical remit and focussing on working to improve partnership working and delivery of children and family services to offenders' families. It is now joint funded by DCSF and NOMS.

The mission statement of the project was:

"To provide evidence of the longer term impact and benefit of supporting offenders to maintain and strengthen their relationships with their children and families. To demonstrate the cost benefits of investing in family support services as a resource in the process of rehabilitation, crime reduction and creating safer communities".

The project aimed to develop a sustainable regional partnership model to achieve its mission:

"To provide a partnership structure and environment to design and deliver collaborative projects that will develop new capabilities, service or business operations in the West Midlands Region that maintain and strengthen offenders relationships with their children and families".

We worked with prisons to improve the services that families receive,specifically focussing on arrangements for visiting. We also worked closely with a group of community based organisations, including local authorities, whose services are relevant to prisoners' families. We striveed to make the link between these mainstream service providers and offenders' families and to demonstrate how they can be coordinated to improve the outcomes experienced.

You can download the project's 2009 report here

< Back to home page