26th August 2016
Children of Prisoners: A guide for community health professionals
This comprehensive i-HOP guide is a resource for all community health professionals including midwives, health visitors, school nurses and many more. It aims to inform and help develop their work with the children and families of offenders.
It includes an introduction to children affected by parental imprisonment including who they are, the general impact of parental imprisonment and on under-fives, pregnant women in prison and how children experience the criminal justice system. The guide then looks at the Healthy Child Programme framework and how this links in to children affected by parental imprisonment.
There is then a section around developing good practice including subsections around awareness raising, challenging stigma, early intervention, confidentiality, assessments, understanding what is happening in the family, practicalities, talking about imprisonment with children and very young children, resilience, continuity of support, linking with local strategies and initiatives, multi-agency working and information sharing and safeguarding.
i-HOP Quality Statements and Toolkit
There is also a checklist for health professionals to use to better understand how to support these families as well as lists of frequently asked questions and resources for children, parents and professionals.
The i-HOP Quality Statements and Toolkit is a helpful resource for all professionals in universal, targeted, specialist and criminal justice services to assess and develop their practice with children of offenders. Produced by Research in Practice, the Toolkit was informed by research, policy and practice as well as practitioners and children and young people who have had a loved one involved in the Criminal Justice System. The Toolkit is structured by 8 Quality Statements for services to aspire to.
