1.
*There are 14 women's prisons in England.
*There are 7 mother and baby units.
*Around 55% of women in prison have a child under 16, 33% a child under 5 and 20% are lone parents.
*The specialist medical services provided for the women include breast and cervical screening, family planning and sexual health services.
* Every woman who is known to be pregnant will be consistently medically assessed and monitored, just as in the community.
*There are currently seven Mother and Baby Units. 2 of them allow mothers to keep their babies with up to the age of 9 months. 4 of them accommodate babies with their mothers up to the age of 18 months.
** Each application for admission is assessed on an individual basis by a multi-disciplinary-team, whose focus will be the best interests of the child.
*Children are allowed to visit their mothers in prison in the same way as other visitors. In some instances, prisoners are allowed extended, more relaxed visits with their children or can get permission to visit their children where they are living.
**If a friend, who would not normally qualify for travelling expenses from the Assisted Prisons Visits Unit, brings the children to the prisoner, then they would be able to have their travel expenses reimbursed.
2. *Currently, there are over 80 places for mothers and babies in prisons across the UK
(This was a pdf that was 38 pages long but thought it may be useful to print out certain excerpts from pages 12-25 more most interesting) These are chapters on pregnancy, mothers and baby units, and separation. The above excerpt is from the separation chapter).
http://maternityaction.org.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/prisonsreport.pdfVanessa
According to HMPS, it is policy to facilitate a mother leaving prison with her child, if at all
possible, thereby avoiding any separation. For example, a woman serving a four year sentence
who enters prison with her baby can probably expect to be paroled when her baby
is 18 months old, if she meets the conditions for parole. However, under existing policies,
some mothers do have to be separated from their babies while in prison.
Wow it seems as though Europe really understands the importance of keeping children and their mothers together! It is really interesting to see how far behind we are and I don't even know if we are behind or our social system just does'nt think we should allow mothers and their children to be together. Although, I do have some mixed feelings on that. If it is imparative that the mother be in jail because of her crime or she is endangering her child, then I can understand the rules here in the States. If the mother is in for more petty crimes, then I do not see why we have not adopted some of Europe's models? Great research-very interesting :)
ReplyDeleteThanks again for posting this, I have been to a prison in England where this happens and it is amazing to see how it changes the atmosphere of the prison and how mcuh positive attention the child receives.
ReplyDelete