Storybook Dads: Keeping Families in Touch

Sharon Berry is the Manager of Storybook Dads.

Storybook Dads, a registered charity, has had its headquarters in Dartmoor prison for three years and has been steadily expanding across the prison estate. It started in 2002 with one person, Sharon Berry, working on the project one day a week. She then set the scheme up as a charity and began fundraising in order to expand the scheme.

Storybook Dads has come a long way in three years; it now has four staff, one volunteer, several prisoner ‘editors' and has set up recording projects in over 30 other prisons. Although the charity title suggests that the service is only for male prisoners, the scheme now also includes women's prisons. Over 1,700 prisoners have taken part as the graph below indicates.

Although the concept of prisoners recording a story for their children is not a new one, Storybook Dads uses digital technology in an innovative way to enhance the stories, which results in a very special product.

Prisoners are recorded telling a story with the use of a microphone and a minidisk recorder. The story is downloaded onto a computer and any mistakes are edited out using digital audio software. Music and sound effects are added (from a database of many hundreds) and the final story is put onto a CD. The result is very professional and the children (and the parents) are always amazed at the results. Digital editing makes all the difference as this makes the stories come alive for the children.

The beauty of the scheme is that any prisoner can take part regardless of their reading ability. Even non-readers can participate by repeating the story one sentence at a time with a mentor. The mentor's voice can be edited out afterwards along with any mistakes and any unwanted noises that often occur in a prison environment (gates, keys etc).

The children love these stories because they can hear their parent's voice whenever they want and the feedback from prisoners and their families is overwhelming. The parents feel that they are doing something for their children and this goes a long way towards strengthening family ties. Storybook Dads can be a lifeline for families and plays a key role in helping to maintain the family unit during the period of separation.

Parents can take part on its simplest level (just reading a story) or embark on one of the other more ambitious aspects of the scheme such as writing a story and making a book to send out with the audio story. Creating and sending out a book helps prisoners with their literacy and IT skills and also enables them to assist with their children's literacy development.

A ten-minute story can take up to two or three hours to edit and selected prisoners at Dartmoor are trained in specialised digital audio editing. They work on the stories in one of the two editing suites that have been set up in the prison. If they wish they can also gain an OCN qualification in Sound and Audio Production.

The Awards

This highly innovative scheme won three awards in 2005:

The Butler Trust Award 2005

Project Manager and founder of the scheme, Sharon Berry, won a prestigious Butler Trust Development Award for 2005. This was presented by Princess Anne at St James' and endorsed by Terry Waite at HMP Dartmoor. The Butler Trust is an independent charity that recognises commitment, hard work and the innovations of those working in UK prisons.

Daisy and Tom Awards 2005

Action for Prisoners Families ‘Daisy and Tom Awards' rewards initiatives that improve family ties. Storybook Dads won a special award which was presented by Tim Waterstone.

The Home Office Justice Awards 2005

Sharon Berry was presented with The Home Office Justice Award for Outstanding Contribution for working with offenders. This was presented by Rt Hon Baroness Scotland.

The Families

I cannot overemphasise the important role that families play in helping to achieve effective rehabilitation and reduce re-offending. (Martin Narey, former Director General of the Prison Service in England and Wales).

The disruption of the prisoner's position within the family unit represents one of the most distressing aspects of imprisonment … Enabling prisoners, so far as possible, to stay in close and meaningful contact with the family is therefore an essential part of humane treatment. (Woolf Report 2001) Prisoners' children are often the forgotten victims of crime and can suffer a great deal from the forced separation. This can often lead to poor performance at school, feelings of isolation, confusion, shame and depression. This, in turn, can lead to increased disruption within the family and may fuel the conditions which could predispose the child to embark on criminal or self-destructive activities as they grow up. There is sound evidence that children who have a father with a criminal record are more likely to become offenders themselves.

Every year an estimated 150,000 children are separated from an imprisoned parent. According to the recent Green Paper, Every Child Matters, seven per cent of primary school children experience the imprisonment of a parent during their time in school. Figures from the Social Exclusion Unit (2002) show that almost half of all prisoners lose contact with their families while they are in custody.

Visiting can be difficult because of the distances involved; a third of all prisoners are held more than 50 miles from their home town and 13 per cent more than 100 miles away. For women in custody the corresponding figures are higher with half more than 50 miles and a third more than 100 miles away from home. One Home Office study found that only half the women who had lived with their children, or been in contact prior to imprisonment, had received a visit since going to jail. Just five per cent of women prisoners' children remain in their own home once their mother is incarcerated.

One survey found that 11 per cent of imprisoned mothers had one or more of their children taken into care, fostered or adopted. For children taken into care there is an increased likelihood of them becoming offenders themselves (a quarter of those in prison have been in care at some point).

The Benefits

When a parent sends out a CD of themselves reading a bedtime story he/she is able to fulfil a natural parental role from behind bars. It is something tangible that they can do for, and give to, their children, which is extremely important for their self-esteem and perceived value as a parent. Some prisoners, who had not been read to as a child, have understood the importance of reading and are committed to do so with their children on release.

The learning outcomes from the Storybook Dads project are myriad and far reaching. The reading of the story is at the heart of the experience and is the primary focus; however, the learning that takes place is immeasurable. Although most prisoners prefer to read a story from a book, some prisons (including Dartmoor) run creative writing schemes whereby the parents can write their own story. At Dartmoor they use graphics software to produce a book to accompany the audio story. The child can read along with the story and therefore the absent parent is still having an input into their child's literacy development.

Benefits for the prisoners include:

• Improved confidence and sense of achievement;
  
• understanding the importance of reading and storytelling for children's development and imagination;
  
• improvement in prisoners' self esteem and perception of themselves as a valued parent through doing something tangible for their child;
  
• in some cases the prisoner will be breaking new ground as far as their experiences of parenting are concerned because many prisoners were never read to as a child and have not read to their children before;
  
• prisoners feel happier because links with family are being maintained; and,
  
• participants may be encouraged to explore learning opportunities on offer in the prison for example, parenting, literacy or creative writing courses.

For those parents that participate in the story writing/book making workshops, benefits include:

• improved writing skills, improved IT skills; q greater understanding of what makes a children's story;
  
• substantial sense of achievement; and,
  
• experiencing peer support and working together as a group with common goals. Benefits for the children include: q the reduction in separation anxiety;
  
• more settled behaviour because they know they are important to the absent parent and that they are loved and missed;
  
• engaging with storytelling and imagination;
  
• empowerment; they can listen to the CD whenever they want, especially during times of loneliness or during feelings of abandonment; and,
  
• pride in the CD/book that has been created especially for them.

Fifty-eight per cent of prisoners re-offend within two years of release but research shows this is significantly reduced if prisoners keep in touch with their family while inside. The average cost of a prison sentence imposed at a crown court is roughly £30,500, made up of court and other legal costs. The costs of actually keeping prisoners within prison vary significantly, but average £37,500 per year. The benefits to the prisoners and their families cannot be over emphasised and since it is well documented that maintaining family ties helps to reduce re-offending, the benefits to society as a whole are inestimable.

Evaluation and Monitoring

The impact of participation on the family unit is evaluated by collecting as much feedback as possible from participating prisoners and their families. Comments from feedback forms are entered onto a database to be analysed. The positive comments are overwhelming and reiterate the positive impact this scheme has on family relationships.

Storybook Dads is also undertaking some case studies during the period of incarceration and after release to gauge the impact of the project on the likelihood of re-offending.

The Feedback

Examples from prisoners:

Excellent, my daughter stands in front of the stereo laughing at all the sound effects.

I was very happy with it and I felt like I was going to cry. It made me sad but happy.

I thought it was excellent and they done well to edit out all my mistakes!

It's good to give parents a chance to communicate more with their children, more privately.

They were both over the moon with the CD and couldn't work out how the sound effects had got there … they listen to the CD every bedtime and still love it.

My son was over the moon. His mother said he hasn't shut up about it since he received it. He loves it.

It's the most useful thing I've done since I've been in prison.

Examples from children:

I took it to school and all my class listened to it and they all wished that they had one.

It's daddy's special present for me. I listen to it every night.

I like all the animal noises in it. It makes us laugh.

I miss my dad. When I'm lonely I listen to the story and it makes me feel better.

I worry about dad in prison, but he sounds happy on the CD and that makes me feel happy too.

Daddy's done a CD for me which was The Frog Prince and he did Jack and the Beanstalk for my brother. They're both really good. He says he will do another one for us for Christmas.

The Expansion

The charity headquarters, co-ordinating and editing centre is run from Dartmoor prison. Since 2003 they have been offering their editing service to other prisons. Other prisons simply purchase the minidisk recorder and microphone (approx £200) and send their recordings to HMP Dartmoor, where the team edit them and send back the completed story on a CD. They have two editing suites comprising of six editing stations, four staff, one volunteer and, at any one time, six selected prisoners to edit all the stories that come in.

The editing service is free, other than £30 annual membership fee. The recording project is run by different departments in the member prisons including library, education, resettlement, chapel, officers, Writers in Residence or civilian volunteers.

Sometimes it is run solely for the chance for the prisoners to record a story for their children, thereby improving family ties. However, it is often linked to education and can be mapped across key skills or other literacy, IT or social and life skills courses. The scheme can be linked to other learning opportunities such as ‘Toe by Toe'.

In one female establishment drama sessions are delivered to help parents improve their ability to read characters with more expression. In addition, family link courses extend the story CDs by offering the women the opportunity to produce story sacks. In many prisons mums and dads are encouraged to write their own stories and if they wish, they can attend courses to develop the appropriate skills.

Obviously the charity headquarters at Dartmoor prison cannot be the editing centre for the whole prison estate. With this in mind Storybook Dads is helping other prisons to set up their own editing facility so that they can provide the service for their own prison population and perhaps even expand to provide a service for other prisons nearby. Storybook Dads advise on equipment, the logistics of running the scheme, security issues and provides training in digital audio editing to staff and/or prisoners. Ten of these editing centres have already been set up including two in Scotland. Their aim is to have this facility available to the majority of prisons by helping to set up more small editing centres.

The future

I do not believe that the public at large realises just how much it owes to the voluntary sector, for what it does in prison, both in terms of what the public purse would otherwise have to provide, or in terms of what would be removed from the treatment and conditions of prison. (The former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Lord David Ramsbotham.)

Although it is well documented that prisoners are less likely to re-offend if good family relationships are maintained throughout their sentence, there is no mainstream statutory support for families of prisoners. Responsibility for addressing these issues largely rests with charities, which depend on funding from charitable sources. Storybook Dads is funded by grants from charitable trusts.

However, Storybook Dads manager, Sharon Berry, who has raised over £275,000 since the scheme's inception is optimistic, ‘Our funders have been very generous. We have enough money to keep going for another three years. We achieved a great deal over the past three years and we can continue to do so over the next three. Storybook Dads will continue to grow throughout the prison estate as long as resources allow'.

With successive Governments' ‘tough on crime' policies, more offenders are being sent to prison and sent to prison for longer. With the current prison population at an all time high of approx 77,000 any project that can maintain family bonds thereby significantly reducing re-offending should be implemented as extensively as possible.

Please note: The Prison Service Web Team wish to make it clear that the views expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of HM Prison Service.