Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking, through community-based services, to help reunite mothers with their children after imprisonment.

Families, and children, can play a significant role in supporting an offender and positive family relationships are an important factor in reducing reoffending.

To improve the support for prisoners and their families we have:

• Funded a contract worth over £1.4m for Barnardo’s to operate the i-HOP service - an England wide one-stop information service for all professionals who come into contact with the children and families of offenders - to share evidence on practice and advise commissioners and practitioners on the options available to support the families of offenders.

• Given prison governors the budget and flexibility to spend their resources as they see fit to help prisoners establish or maintain important family and significant other ties in advance of their eventual release from prison.

• Awarded a new contract for family services across the female estate in October 2017, allowing women’s prisons to work closely with a single professional family services provider, to develop innovative services including those to support mothers in preparing for their release and reuniting with children.

  We are also investing £1million seed funding between 2015 and 2020 to help local areas develop improved, multi-agency approaches to female offenders and women who are at risk of offending. This approach aims to bring together and improve services at each stage of the criminal justice system and address a broad range of needs.

  Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) are required to deliver Through-the-Gate services to female prisoners to help them resettle in the community. These should be tailored to the particular needs of offenders.