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Waterside Press - Lucy Baldwin

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143 pages

English

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Description

A collection of poems and drawings by parents and children affected by imprisonment in the UK and abroad.

Sujets

Prison

Informations

Publié par	Waterside Press
Date de parution	01 mai 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781910979730
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0748€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Seen & Heard
100 Poems by Parents & Children Affected by Imprisonment
Edited by Lucy Baldwin & Ben Raikes
Copyright and publication details
Seen & Heard
100 Poems by Parents & Children Affected by Imprisonment
Edited by Lucy Baldwin & Ben Raikes
ISBN 978-1-909976-42-9 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-910979-73-0 (Epub ebook)
ISBN 978-1-910979-74-7 (Adobe ebook)
Copyright © 2019 This work is the copyright of the editors Lucy Baldwin and Ben Raikes. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by them in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the publishers to whom all such rights have been assigned worldwide.
Cover design © 2019 Waterside Press by www.gibgob.com
Printed in Poland by Bookpress.eu
Main UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QH . Tel: +44 (0)1323 521777; sales@gardners.com ; www.gardners.com
North American distribution Ingram Book Company, One Ingram Blvd, La Vergne, TN 37086, USA. Tel: (+1) 615 793 5000; inquiry@ingramcontent.com
Cataloguing-In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
Ebook Seen & Heard is available as an ebook and also to subscribers of Ebrary, Ebsco, Myilibrary and Dawsonera.
Published by
Waterside Press Ltd.
Sherfield Gables, Sherfield on Loddon, Hook, Hampshire, RG27 0JG.
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
Table of Contents
About the editors iv
The author of the Foreword iv
Acknowledgements vii
Dedication ix
Foreword by Diane Curry OBE xi
Introduction xv Poems Written by Mums In or After Prison 19 Poems Written by Children Who Have or Have Had a Parent in Prison 57 Poems Written by Dads In and After Prison 115 Group Poems 141
Some Useful Resources for Families Affected by Imprisonment 159
About the editors
Lucy Baldwin is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at De Montfort University Leicester. She is also a qualified Social Worker and Probation Officer having practised in her native North East. She convened the Women Family Crime and Justice Research Network at De Montfort and is the author of Mothering Justice: Working with Mothers in Criminal Justice Settings (Waterside Press, 2015). She specialises in research surrounding mothering in and after prison and families affected by imprisonment.
Ben Raikes is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Huddersfield University. He also works at the Centre for Applied Childhood, Youth and Family Research. Ben has experience as a social worker and probation officer. He runs writing groups in prisons and is a co-founder of the International Coalition for Children with Incarcerated Parents (INCCIP).
The author of the Foreword
Diane Curry OBE is the CEO of charity Partners of Prisoners and Families Support Group (POPS). She has vast experience of working within the voluntary sector and criminal justice system and is a qualified social worker. Diane received her OBE in 2006 for her pioneering work in this field including setting-up what became the Coalition for Racial Justice.
Libbie, aged 13.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost we would like to thank Lady Edwina Grosvenor for sponsoring us and then Waterside Press for turning this beautiful collection into a reality in print and virtual editions. Next and so very importantly our poetry contributors. They came from all over the UK (from many of our prisons, male and female), from Canada, Uganda, Washington and Ireland. We read, appreciated and are grateful for every single entry even though not all could be accommodated in these pages. We would especially like to thank those who facilitated the collection of our poems and worked with us the encourage contributors to send in their entries. In no particular order they are;
Sarah Burrows, Founder and Director of Children Heard and Seen (CHAS)
The CHAS team, namely Maria, James and Rod and of course the children and families
Dr Sinead O’Malley and the Mothers Project, Ireland (poems marked with an asterix) 1
Beverley Gilbert and CoHort 4
Dr Lorna Brooks from My Time
Charlotte Parsons of PACT at HMP Eastwood Park
Michaela Booth, Patient Engagement Lead (Health in Justice), Care UK Health Care
Vanessa Garrity and New Hall and Askham Grange Prisons and Mother and Baby Unit
Wells of Hope, Uganda
HMP Parc, Wales
USA Department of Corrections, Strength in Families program
California State Prison
Sandy Watson and Victoria Elsmore at HMP Oakwood
Anawim Women’s Centre, Birmingham
Inside Time prison newspaper, editorial and poetry team especially Dave Roberts
Hannah Shead and the team at Trevi House
Ashleigh House, Coolmine, Ireland
Sofia Buncy at Muslim Women in Prison
Kirsten Godfrey Restorative Justice project in San Francisco
It is not possible to list and give credit to every single individual who supported us including by repeating and re-tweeting our calls for submissions, but please know that without your help, and that of everyone already listed above, this book would not have been possible. We are grateful to and thank you all.
Last but most certainly not least, we would like to thank Bryan and Alex Gibson, for their endless patience, their willingness to take a chance on this book and their belief in our project.
Lucy & Ben
April 2019

1 . For information about the Mothers Project and access to her thesis please contact sinead.m.omalley@gmail.com
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the memory of all those who have lost their lives in prison and the children they left behind.
Luke, aged 12.
Foreword by Diane Curry OBE
I was delighted to be asked to write this foreword for this important book, important because it gives voice to those who often go unheard. Voices that are muffled or disguised in academic papers, policy documents or reports — whereas this book provides a rare opportunity for voices to he heard in their purest form, untampered, raw and powerful. Like those of parents or children like Jordan.
Jordan is eleven and is getting up for school today. It feels normal enough, his mum appears a bit more agitated than usual and Nana and his mum’s friend Jean are already at the house, which is a bit unusual, but he thinks nothing of it. He gets himself ready, kisses mum goodbye and sets off to school. On his way to school he thinks back to how mum held him for a while longer than she would usually, something wasn’t quite right, but he shrugs it off and continues on his journey.
When he returns, Nana and Jean are still in the house and that feeling of something being ‘not quite right’ comes over him again. Nana looks like she has been crying and he asks where mum is. Nana starts crying again and Jean tries to comfort him but all he wants to know is where mum is. He doesn’t hear the details, the words are not making any sense. But what he does hear is that mum has been to court and has been sent to prison.
Nobody knows where she will end up, when he will hear from her and for how long she will be away. His whole world has just been turned upside down. The sense of loss is acute, the feeling of anxiety, not only for himself but for his mum, is immense, and right here, right now, his life has changed forever.
This situation is experienced daily by children across the country (and other countries). We still don’t know the actual number of children who face this situation in the UK but the Ministry of Justice estimates it to be circa 200,000. In 2013 this figure was twice the number of children affected by divorce and two-and-a-half times the number of children in ‘care’.
Currently there is no routine identification or data collection process by local authorities, prisons, police departments or children’s services concerning children affected by parental imprisonment and there is no statutory requirement to ensure staff working in these sectors understand the impact of imprisonment on the families they provide services to. In essence, these children are not identified, not acknowledged, not supported and not prioritised.
Research has shown that the impact of parental imprisonment has a negative effect on children’s wellbeing, their increased risk of developing mental health issues, for their behaviour at home and in school to decline, and the potential for additional psychological trauma to manifest, if not identified and supported. 1
Children’s voices often go unnoticed, unheard and are mainly misunderstood. Adults tend to put their own interpretation on what they say, often missing the vital signs which also identify what is not being said. They are deeply affected when a parent is imprisoned yet they are overlooked at every stage of the criminal justice process and we miss an opportunity to reduce their trauma, understand their feelings and to provide them with the support they themselves identify they need.
Imprisoned parents often describe how the label of ‘prisoner’ can subsume their parental identity; the poems of the parents in this book show clearly that they are mothers and fathers before they are prisoners. Both children and parents have been given a voice in this book, providing powerful, emotive descriptions of their experiences.
The book, a collection of poems written by children and parents affected by imprisonment who are feeling the loss of a loved one, the pain of separation, goes some way to ensure that children whose plight is like Jordan’s are able to share their feelings relating to the imprisonment of a parent or other loved one.
If the aim of it is to give voice to those who have an experience to share then it will require more than the reader to glance over the written contributions, it will mean digesting and then acting upon the stories they share, in their own words, or their voice will remain unhea