WI members make prison journeys

Prime Minister Atlee, presiding over many a gathering in the room bearing his name in the House of Lords, must raise an eyebrow at some of the discussions it hosts in the twenty first century. Possibly not on his agenda was the visiting of  by ‘wrong-doers’ - folk held at Her Majesty's pleasure in their place of incarceration.

A few days ago, the WI, in partnership with Action for Prisoners' Families, hosted the launch of the report of The Women's Institute Visiting Prisons; a publication of accounts written by WI members who volunteered to visit inmates at prisons across England and Wales. Many people receive no visits or very few visits during their time in prison and this can be due to many factors including distance from the prison to family homes, cost of journeys, restrictions that surround visits, and  lack of co-ordination between prison authorities and the families to name but a few. In some prisons, inadequate or poor provision for children of all ages when taken to visit a parent can be a barrier to frequent visits, and some visits, although planned, may never come about. Accounts have also been written by WI members who were unable to make their planned journeys because of insurmountable travel difficulties, non-response from the person requesting the visit and prisoners being moved to different jails at a moment’s notice. One visit was halted as the visitor was in transit because the prisoner was being transferred to another prison there and then.

All of these journeys were undertaken, or not, to highlight the problems, difficulties, frustrations and stresses put upon a prisonler's family in their desire and endeavours to play a major part in the offender's rehabilitation.   None of the WI visitors had previously met the people they were visiting and some were subsequently unable to visit unless they gave their age and address. All were apprehensive but all  were pleased to have taken part in this project.

My round trip of 320 miles took ten minutes short of nine hours, cost around £121 and was achieved using buses, trains and boats. I have become a seasoned traveller in recent years but even so, this trip, which had to be undertaken in one day to avoid spending more money on accommodation, was no holiday jaunt. I was blessed with sunny weather, but in the dark and cold of mid winter it might have been a different matter. The family of the man I visited live even further away than I do, so their journey would include an additional 226 miles.

It is important to remember throughout this project that at the beginning and end of every visit, including those that did not come to pass, is a person. None of the prisoners taking part had received a visitor for a long time, if at all, during their sentence; they not not projects, but human beings whom society entrusts to the criminal justice system to correct and rehabilitate in order that they may play an active and responsible role in society. Surely society should practice what it preaches; that this is such a huge job should not deter from the mechanisms that will one day make the system a good one – one that works.

Reflections on a busy week

The Annual National Council meeting, the 54th of its kind, was a gathering of every Federation Chairman and Treasurer to discuss all things WI. One of the exciting issues raised was the fact that since the previous council meeting, 20,800 more women have become WI members and 114 new WIs have been established. Indeed, the WI has been inspiring women for 96 years now and no doubt continues to do so. The WI truly offers something for every woman. For many that can begin with new friendships and continues into learning new craft and cookery skills as well as taking part in the many campaigns instigated by members. Part of what makes the WI such a unique organisation is that it is member led at every level.

Early on Monday morning I set off to Manchester and the latest party conference, to chair another roundtable conversation with politicians and organisations with a major interest in the WI's Care not Custody campaign. This time the discussion focussed on how the idea of care is more than a wish and is now in some parts of the system and beginning to have an impact on those who come into the criminal justice system with mental health problems. We call it Keeping the Care not Custody Promise. Police, prison and several mental heath organisations attended as well as representatives from the health sector such as the NHS Confederation and Royal College of Nursing – the NHS has to be involved. So many people need to be understood, made well and diverted from a life of crime, which takes them through the revolving door of criminal justice.

We are involved in this issue because of a mandate that was formed from a resolution put forward by a WI after a suggestion from one of its members – a lady who was very familiar with mental health and the criminal justice system. I mention this because on Tuesday a day long consultation with federation representatives, known as the resolution shortlist selection meeting, took place. The resulting shortlist will be made known in a few days’ time. Watch this space.

Wednesday saw an external advisory meeting with the Equality and Human Rights Commission on what should be reported to CEDAW – The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women. Sadly, discrimination against women does still readily happen and most recently the WI has been concerned that there will be huge discrimination against women who experience domestic violence if the legal aid reforms, proposed by the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, become law. The WI has been privileged to hear the stories of some women who feel that without access to legal aid they would have had no choice but to stay in abusive situations that ultimately would have led to their deaths!

Again, we work on this issue by dint of mandates passed as long ago as the 1930s but also one passed in 1994.

The WI has always been there for women; it still is and it inspires.

The end of the week – for me, a year older and a family celebration.

Next week I'm off to the hills of Wales to meet with the Federations of Wales committee. Da Boh u.

Excellence in the Third Sector

We were just pipped at the post! The NFWI, working in partnership with the Prison Reform Trust, came second with a highly commended accolade in the category Charity Partnership at last night’s Third Sector Excellence Awards. I am immensely proud of this achievement and even more so of what the campaign has achieved in many areas; not least in the role it has played in helping to change the minds of so many when considering whether custody can truly work for those with mental illness.

The Health and Justice Secretaries made a promise in March of this year to put £5,000,000 into a 100 diversion schemes across the country by 2014 and we must make sure that this promise is kept, along with the other necessary changes demonstrated in the Bradley Report published in Dec 2010. This very topic was discussed around the table during the Labour Party Conference this week, with Lord Bradley commenting that it is a community issue and not a prison issue. Several MPs and professionals in the field such as the Prison Reform Trust, Prison Governors’ Association, Rethink Mental Illness, Mental Health NHS Conference, Centre for Mental Health, Prison Officers' Association and Turning Point certainly agreed, adding that the Health and Wellbeing Boards would play a critical role in any diversion scheme. A diverse range of organisations, some of which were present at the discussion, need to be part of any scheme to help those in need because of the complex needs of many individuals entering the system. Questions keep needing to be asked because the only way to achieve a result is to keep pestering those decision makers to always keep people in mind when making all of their complex decisions.

Whilst we’re remembering campaign asks from the past few years, the WI will not forget that the regulations for labelling meat products with their country of origin is still awaited. We now have mandatory labelling on meat – sheep, poultry, pork and goat; beef and veal are separate – within the next three years, but constituted products are not yet on the list. A briefing by Defra officials to the food industry this week gave the necessary information that will need to go on to labels, for example the size of space, the size of font and much more, and nutrition labelling issues were also explained as well as information on where and when Food Information Regulation takes over from Food Labelling Regulation. All this under the banner of ‘a regulation on the provision of food information to consumers’!

As another week comes to an end, the WI is on the move once again – this time to Bedfordshire, where the NFWI will hold its annual council meeting. The ANC, as it is known is a two-day gathering of chairmen and treasurers from all 69 federations where the policy, vision and action in the context of growing numbers of members and women wanting to become members is discussed throughout the weekend. The WI is here to inspire women and we are certainly doing that.

And thinking of women, at the awards ceremony last night I met the CEO of the Stroke Association who told me that more women than men experience strokes, and early recognition of symptoms and fast action can save a life. They are always looking for volunteer champions who will spread the word of FAST action.

Quite a week – here’s to the next!

Action for Prisoners' Families

Last week I took a journey to and from the Isle of Wight. My trip involved trains, boats and buses, but I managed to return in one day. While I was on the island I spent two hours with an inmate of Parkhurst Prison. It was the first time we had met and I was there in place of members of this man's family and friends who all live very far away on the mainland and the north of England. The cost of such a journey and the distance prohibit them visiting him on a frequent basis. As previously mentioned, my journey involved a range of public transport to reach the prison and I am used to travelling long distances – especially in my role as NFWI Chair – but many people are not as comfortable.

The visit was one of several undertaken by WI members as part of a project with Action for Prisoners’ Families. Members have volunteered to make journeys from their homes to a given prison to highlight the difficulties that can prevent prisoners from receiving visits. It is argued that visitors play a part in the rehabilitation that a prison sentence is supposed to provide, so highlighting how difficult these trips can sometimes be is an important consideration. Each participant will write a detailed account of their journey to make their visit, and all of the accounts will be compiled in a final report to be launched at the end of the year. The important thing to remember is that at the end of each journey is a person, and hopefully this report will go a long way in highlighting this very point.

Two news worthy events

On Monday I found myself at two events that were featured in the news. The first was the launch of Bowel Cancer Information; a service that provides helpful hints for spotting symptoms early, and raises awareness of a disease that kills many people. It was fronted by Lynn Faulds Wood who survived bowel cancer twenty years ago and eminent medical specialists at the launch urged the 40 leaders of the attending large organisations to pass on this message to their thousands of members. Visit their website at www.bowelcancer.tv.

The other was the launch of a report from the Make Justice Work Campaign entitled Community or Custody. The project, out of which came the report, was "considering the most effective sentences for the great number of low-level offenders who are currently filling our prisons to breaking point - and who leave prison only to offend again". The report concluded that intensive community sentences do have an important role to play in greatly reducing reoffending rates and play a major part in rehabilitation of offenders provided such schemes set necessary rigorous standards. This outcome mirrors the demand of the WI's Care not Custody campaign. A prison sentence, whether long or short, only serves as at least a holding measure in so many cases, or at worst, an intensification of the mental health and/or other problems that brought the individual into the criminal justice system in the first place.

At the launch I met a woman who was termed as a service user because of mental health issues and difficulties engendered in her childhood. Even though she worked hard and had risen to a high status in her professional life, "when it all got too much" she began to drink and this eventually this brought her to the notice of the criminal justice system. She told me "when it came to sentencing, I could have gone to prison. I was sentenced to an Intensive Alternative to Custody Order for 12 months. This meant I would be attending at least five appointments every week and that I would have some discipline to avoid returning to custody." She added that had she gone to prison, she knew she would not have coped and her entire family would have been torn apart. This is what happens to so many women who are sent to prison.

Sharing of information across agencies dealing with any one case also needs to be the norm. Last Friday I attended a seminar at Salford University at the Centre for Prison Studies where I learned that "information sharing is key to continuity of care". Concrete evidence of this has now been developed in a research project by the Offender Health Research Network and with proof of such initiatives working, surely this has to be replicated across the country. All of this, combined with the promise of that £5 million for 100 diversion schemes across the country revealed last March at the WI's Care not Custody reception by Secretary of State Andrew Lansley, surely send out a strong message to everyone involved: "please get on with it".

Queen of Craft & Care not Custody

I was interested to read Phoebe Frangoul's piece last week in The Fashion Schmooze about the launch of WI member Jazz Domino Holly's book, Queen of Craft. I first met Jazz some three years ago when she and I, with two other members and a journalist, visited HM Wandsworth Prison. This was at the beginning of what is now known as the WI's Care not Custody campaign, and we were shown around the prison and spoke with prison officers. After this, we visited The St Giles Centre; a charity which, amongst many things, sends people to meet ex-offenders at the prison gate at the time of their release. The operative words here are 'some' and ' few'.

Work on the Care not Custody campaign continues going strong with a variety of projects including WI members mentoring a few women in the Asha Centre in Worcestershire, and establishing a WI in a female prison.

Back to the Queen of Craft and Phoebe's comment that Jazz was instrumental in introducing the ‘new wave’ of WI groups found in London; in fact, the first of the new wave, which includes other major cities across the country, happened in September 2003 when the Fulham WI was formed. This month they are celebrating eight years – long may they continue! The Shoreditch Sisters WI emerged in September 2007 and there have been many others set up in those intervening years. Within London there are now 38 WIs – all welcoming women of any age.

Only last week two meetings were held for officers of the London WIs at the NFWI headquarters at 104 New Kings Road. It was a chance for some to learn about the London WIs Forum and where it could be found on the Moodle, the WI's prize-winning online learners' tool. The forum is specifically created for London WIs to make connections and to tell each other what they are doing. The meetings were also a great opportunity for fellow London WI members to swap hints and tips on good speakers and activities for meetings – there is always something new to learn from the WI!