Children Heard and Seen

Ross Hextall

Invisible Harms and Hierarchies of Shame: The distinct challenges faced by children with a parent in prison for sexual offences

Click here to read the full report Existing research on prisoners shows that there is a clear hierarchy of offences that determine how society establishes their moral culpability. Within this hierarchy, sex offenders face an increased risk of stigmatisation in comparison with other offences. However, no research has ever been done to explore how this […]

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Giving Evidence at the Human Rights Select Committee 2021

Over the last twelve months, children and families impacted by parental imprisonment have faced unprecedented challenges flowing from a lack of meaningful contact with their imprisoned parent. Families have reported that this has manifested in a deterioration of children’s mental health that has severe knock on effects on education, eating, sleeping, emotions and behaviour. The disruptions

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2020 Newsletter and Highlights

Children Heard and Seen was set up in June 2014 to mitigate the effects of parental imprisonment on children, young people and their families. This year has raised unprecedented challenges for our organisation and the families that we support. However, our ability to quickly adapt service provisions at the beginning of lockdown and beyond has allowed us to celebrate great success. From using online support to drastically extend the reach of our work, to moving in to an exciting new office space and being honoured with an award by the Criminal Justice Alliance, we are incredibly proud of the work we have done this year in supporting families impacted by parental imprisonment. In 2020, we supported 225 children impacted by parental imprisonment.

To keep you up to date with all of the exciting things going on at Children Heard and Seen, we’ve put together a Newsletter with all of the highlights of the last 6 months.

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Evaluation of ‘Family Contact’ in the IMB 2019-2020 Prison Reports

This report seeks to analyse the findings of the most recent set of Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) annual reports to analyse and evaluate the consistency, or lack thereof, of the experiences of children and families with a parent currently serving a sentence in a UK prison. The report shines a light on the most egregious

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