Mothers and Babies in Prison: 3 yr report, July 2011

This report describes the process undertaken and the results of the work conducted by Family Help Trust at Christchurch Women's prison from 2008 to 2011 with Mothers who have been able to keep their infants with them in prison. The leglislation enabling children up to the age of 2yrs to stay with their mothers was activated in September 2001, once the units had been toddler proofed.

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Best Practice Guidelines for Home Visiting Family Support, December 2007

Family Help Trust and Family Support Services Whanganui Trust, both Jigsaw affiliates, have developed a set of Best Practice Guidelines for Home Visiting Family Support that could be a useful tool for agencies with similar service types.

These processes produced rich data that show that best practice requires more than knowledge and technique. Equally important is the social worker’s ability to:

- know and use the self, and
- build and sustain effective social work relationships with clients

The guidelines tease out the detail of how the self and the relationship, and social work values, knowledge and skills work together to help families change and the implications for management of providing a service in which the social worker’s self and their relationship with the client are primary tools.

The analysis finds that best practice also requires mastery of:

- cycles of assessment, planning and review that connect strongly with a family’s own goals and ways of resolving difficulties, and that work to encourage, support and maintain momentum
- values and principles that are well integrated into agency function and individual practice so that the ethical, relationship and safety dilemmas that arise daily can be negotiated with the family in a respectful and effective way

Download and read the full report » (PDF, 895KB)