So I've been volunteering with a family learning programme at HMP Holloway in Resettlement every couple of weeks. Yesterday, I was there assisting the women in making books for their kids, nieces, nephews...
They had started them the previous week (I hadn't been there) and so this time some of the women arrived with things they'd prepared during the week to laminate in this session. As the children of these women are of mixed ages and interests, there was a mixture of educational books; simple alphabet, counting and vocabulary books decorated with pictures of characters from kids TV. One woman had, with her nail scissors, painstakingly cut out and stuck down dozens of tiny shapes for counting. Others had opted for kind of memory books for their kids; they had brought photographs of memorable outings or school pictures, favourite places, treasured holidays and had stuck them on paper and written captions. One YO (who was serving a sentence for her involvement in the August riots) made a gorgeous wee book of things that she likes to do for her son and things she'd like to do in the future, stories, drawings, puzzles and illustrations. She was extremely careful to make sure that all the spellings were correct (continuously asking me to confirm what she already knew, but hey) and had clearly put a lot of thought into it.
Another woman had prepared material for THREE books during the week in her cell and was keen to have it all laminated. She was quite determined and slightly manic in her insistance on laminating anything that wasn't nailed down. Unfortunately, due to funding constraints the number of laminating pouches was limited and so it was necessary to ask her to edit a bit. She mainly wanted to protect the pictures of her two kids, so I began to fit them into pouches: (something you might not know about me, but in my former life as an English Language teacher, I was obsessed with lamination, so at this point I was in heaven!) What was really interesting was the feeling of people desperately trying to be on their best behaviour. This woman I sensed would, in a different situation, have kicked off at not being allowed to laminate everything she wanted and yet here she was clearly aware of being seen to be reasonable and cooperative. She even offered to ask her Mum to take some pouches from her work (in the NHS) to reimburse us next time: robbing Peter to pay Paul kind of defeated the object, so it was declined in the genuinely giving spirit it which it was offered! Despite her best efforts, she was easily frustrated by things which presented even the slightest difficulty and so I had to give her a lot of support. She wanted to make a mood calendar but couldn't concentrate long enough to make sure that the grid had even spaces. She was on the verge of giving up, so I sat with her and showed her how to measure it with a ruler and divide the rows and columns of the grid evenly. She kept saying how grateful she was to my colleague that we come to the prison and provide this opportunity for the women to do things for their kids. No doubt she is grateful, as they all are: for women, incarceration hits hard. Many of the women I have met through these afternoon sessions are in the process of having their kids adopted, at best they are being cared for by a grandparent and on rare occasions, their father. One woman who put her head through the door to see what we were doing, said that she has grandchildren who have never seen her and so signed up for a later date. Having a space where they can come and make things for the important kids in their lives and, more significantly, talk about them, is extremely powerful considering that for most of the women, being able to be with their children is the only thing that is driving them forward to get out of prison and on the straight and narrow.
The woman with the three books had made a mistake: she had had me laminate a page which she hadn't meant to so that her child could write the answers in. Although I was secretly happy that we would save on laminating pouches if she wanted to go this way, I pointed out to her that actually this was better as her child could write things in the gaps and then wipe them away. The woman thought about this for a while and a little later, she said, "Oh! I get you now! Sorry, I didn't understand what you meant, but he can wipe it off if he makes a mistake." She seemed really pleased with this idea and it only struck me why later that evening: everything underneath remains protected, but you can wipe the slate clean. You make a mistake and you wipe it clean.
They had started them the previous week (I hadn't been there) and so this time some of the women arrived with things they'd prepared during the week to laminate in this session. As the children of these women are of mixed ages and interests, there was a mixture of educational books; simple alphabet, counting and vocabulary books decorated with pictures of characters from kids TV. One woman had, with her nail scissors, painstakingly cut out and stuck down dozens of tiny shapes for counting. Others had opted for kind of memory books for their kids; they had brought photographs of memorable outings or school pictures, favourite places, treasured holidays and had stuck them on paper and written captions. One YO (who was serving a sentence for her involvement in the August riots) made a gorgeous wee book of things that she likes to do for her son and things she'd like to do in the future, stories, drawings, puzzles and illustrations. She was extremely careful to make sure that all the spellings were correct (continuously asking me to confirm what she already knew, but hey) and had clearly put a lot of thought into it.
Another woman had prepared material for THREE books during the week in her cell and was keen to have it all laminated. She was quite determined and slightly manic in her insistance on laminating anything that wasn't nailed down. Unfortunately, due to funding constraints the number of laminating pouches was limited and so it was necessary to ask her to edit a bit. She mainly wanted to protect the pictures of her two kids, so I began to fit them into pouches: (something you might not know about me, but in my former life as an English Language teacher, I was obsessed with lamination, so at this point I was in heaven!) What was really interesting was the feeling of people desperately trying to be on their best behaviour. This woman I sensed would, in a different situation, have kicked off at not being allowed to laminate everything she wanted and yet here she was clearly aware of being seen to be reasonable and cooperative. She even offered to ask her Mum to take some pouches from her work (in the NHS) to reimburse us next time: robbing Peter to pay Paul kind of defeated the object, so it was declined in the genuinely giving spirit it which it was offered! Despite her best efforts, she was easily frustrated by things which presented even the slightest difficulty and so I had to give her a lot of support. She wanted to make a mood calendar but couldn't concentrate long enough to make sure that the grid had even spaces. She was on the verge of giving up, so I sat with her and showed her how to measure it with a ruler and divide the rows and columns of the grid evenly. She kept saying how grateful she was to my colleague that we come to the prison and provide this opportunity for the women to do things for their kids. No doubt she is grateful, as they all are: for women, incarceration hits hard. Many of the women I have met through these afternoon sessions are in the process of having their kids adopted, at best they are being cared for by a grandparent and on rare occasions, their father. One woman who put her head through the door to see what we were doing, said that she has grandchildren who have never seen her and so signed up for a later date. Having a space where they can come and make things for the important kids in their lives and, more significantly, talk about them, is extremely powerful considering that for most of the women, being able to be with their children is the only thing that is driving them forward to get out of prison and on the straight and narrow.
The woman with the three books had made a mistake: she had had me laminate a page which she hadn't meant to so that her child could write the answers in. Although I was secretly happy that we would save on laminating pouches if she wanted to go this way, I pointed out to her that actually this was better as her child could write things in the gaps and then wipe them away. The woman thought about this for a while and a little later, she said, "Oh! I get you now! Sorry, I didn't understand what you meant, but he can wipe it off if he makes a mistake." She seemed really pleased with this idea and it only struck me why later that evening: everything underneath remains protected, but you can wipe the slate clean. You make a mistake and you wipe it clean.
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