I attended the OU online seminar ‘Silenced and shamed: The impact of parental imprisonment’ the other day. My reason was twofold really: to learn something about research methodology (for my final assignment with The Open University) but also to find out more about the issues families, children and young people face when a parent, sibling or other family member is in prison.
I guess for me it was a chance to look at the other side of the coin, given that my volunteer role at Open SU supports students in secure environments to achieve greater academic success.
It got me thinking about them and wondering whether any students that we have supported have children on the outside. It seems that public discourse suggests that children and young people who do have a parent in prison are less likely to succeed at school, and also more likely to come into contact with the criminal justice system in some way or another at some point in their lives. For various reasons. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know. I’m not an expert in that field.
But maybe, just maybe, those students that we support are actually showing their families that things don’t have to follow that pattern. And demonstrating that, perhaps with the right support, people can overcome social disadvantages to some extent.
And maybe they are giving a message to their families that says: “Yes, I made mistakes. But I’m trying to do better now so you don’t follow in my footsteps.”
Of course, I’m just speculating here and could be completely misguided. And I have no idea about the circumstances of those students we support. But I’d like to think that their efforts benefit not just themselves but the families of which they are a part.
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