All research and evidence on NICCO is reviewed using a Quality Assessment Tool (QAT) developed by the University of Huddersfield and Barnardo's.
Research and evidence is assessed in four key areas: Methodological Quality, Child-Centredness, Relevance to Policy and Strategy, and Relevance to Practice with offender's children. This ensures that items on the NICCO website are as useful as possible to academics, practitioners, commissioners and other professionals. For more information about the development of the QAT or to review research in order to list it on NICCO, please see the QAT webpage where you can download the Tool, Guidebook and a short step-by-step 'How To' document. Please contact us to submit quality assessed research on to NICCO.
Click on the icons to see a full list of items which have been awarded a standard icon or icon+ (for items which have scored particularly highly) in each key area:
Results 19 - 24 of 38
This report provides an overview of the commissioning and provider landscape in regards to services that work with offenders and their families, along with ideas for improvement.
The executive summary presents key findings around the impact of imprisonment on families and the strategic responses to these families needs, as well as summing up the family services landscape and current commissioning practice. Evidence on outcomes and best practice on commissioning family services and in family service provision is also summarised. Volume one of the full report covers in detail the policy context, the service provider and commissioning landscapes (including reference to Barnardo's i-HOP on p.31), offenders and families' perspectives and the evidence on outcomes. Volume two of the full report covers best practice in commissioning and service provision.
See all three parts of Parenting and relationship support programmes for offenders and their families below:
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This study investigates whether the caring responsibilities of a defendant mother are treated as personal mitigation to reduce sentence length in England and Wales.
The peer-reviewed research uses a combination of textual analysis of secondary data (transcripts of Crown Court sentencing remarks) and interview data. The research found that there is inconsistency in the application of personal mitigation to sentencing due to the exercise of judicial discretion. Judges with a greater understanding of the impact of prison on women are more likely to order pre-sentence reports, and if a judge has a pre-sentence report the defendant's motherhood has a greater likelihood of mitigating the sentence.
For open access to the article see Mitigating Motherhood below:
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You will need access to Taylor & Francis Online Journals to read the full article.
This peer-reviewed paper reports on research into supervised play visits to fathers at HMP Leeds. The study took place in light of the fact that visiting a prison can be traumatic for children and having an imprisoned parent can lead to negative outcomes for them. Further, positive experiences of visits as a means of maintaining family ties can limit those negative outcomes. Data was collated from various methods to ensure validity. The research shows that play visits do produce positive outcomes for children and are effective in maintaining and strengthening family ties. These effects may be stronger when compared to standard prison visits, but further research is needed to confirm this.
See 'It was just like we were a family again' below:
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This report includes a call for action from Parliament to select a Minister to take account for children who have a parent in prison.
It firstly outlines key research into the benefits and challenges of children visiting loved ones in prisons and their experiences of this including travel, prison rules, finances and environment. The report also contains information obtained by Barnardo's through a freedom of information request: that 506,694 visits were made by children to public prisons in 2013. The document then goes on to highlight the importance of improving the experiences of children who have a parent in prison and to call on the Secretary of State for Justice to appoint a Minister to take responsibility for developing a national plan to protect the children of prisoners, with a focus on improving prison visits and the identification of such children at the point of sentencing. The end of the report includes a note about Barnardo's work with children affected by parental imprisonment, capacity to train professionals and the i-HOP information hub on offenders' families.
See Just Visiting below:
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This chapter of Crime and Justice: a Review of Research written by top researchers in the field starts on the premise that there is little known about whether parental imprisonment causes problems (known as risk factors) such as anti-social behaviour, offending, mental health problems, drug abuse, school failure and unemployment.
This peer-reviewed research looks at parental imprisonment being the cause of these poor outcomes because of the strain of parent/child separation, stigma etc and also the differences between children's reactions based on parents sentence length, which parent is imprisoned and the social context. Various studies looking at parental imprisonment are discussed and summarised. The researchers conclude that children of prisoners have about three times the risk for antisocial behavior compared to their peers, and twice the risk of mental health problems. Furthermore, the researchers state that whilst few studies investigate the relationship between parental imprisonment and child drinking, drug, education, and employment outcomes (and those that do are based on unrepresentative samples, meaning that results should be treated with caution) - studies to date suggest that parental imprisonment is a risk factor for school failure, drug abuse and unemployment. However, parental imprisonment was not consistently associated with drinking problems. The research recommends children's protection from harmful effects of parental imprisonment by the use of family friendly prison practices, financial assistance, parenting programmes and sentences which are less stigmatising given social context.
Please download the effects of parental imprisonment on children below:
Although this peer reviewed research is written about children and families in the US it can be learned from by readers everywhere.
There has been a dramatic rise in rates of imprisonment over the past 20 years and the children of these imprisoned people have become an increasing area of interest. However, these children are only a subgroup of children which child protection agencies encounter as having parents involved in the criminal justice system (CJS). The National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being statistics show that primary caregivers of one in three children in in-home settings have been arrested, but are not currently imprisoned. These households are likely to have higher levels of substance abuse, domestic violence and extreme poverty than households where care-givers have never been arrested. This research agrees with the special considerations when working with families with a parent in prison, but argues that child welfare should not overlook opportunities to improve outcomes related to the safety, permanency, and well-being of children whose parents are involved in the CJS at other points.
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