This is a guest post by Dr Anne-Marie Day.
The invisible "care bears"
A recently published paper highlights a number of challenges faced by Resettlement Officers (ROs) in English Young Offender’s Institutions (prisons). These challenges hinder ROs in their role to support children on release from custody into the community. Based on interviews with 10 ROs across two YOIs, the paper specifically focused on the rollout of Youth Justice Board’s ‘Constructive Resettlement’ approach within custody. The interviews with ROs highlighted a number of internal barriers faced within the prison environment that left them feeling isolated and invisible.
Resettlement Officers
ROs work within YOIs, the majority of whom are former uniformed prison officers who have moved to the resettlement role. It was evident that they both understood and cared deeply about their job, emphasising the importance of building relationships with the children on their caseload, and jointly working with them to achieve a range of goals to help prepare for release from custody and reintegration into the community.
Despite this, a range of significant barriers within YOIs were identified by the ROs that, they felt, impacted on their ability to effectively support children to prepare for release.
Invisible
ROs reported that they felt isolated and invisible within the prison estate, and felt that prison officers, and particularly, senior prison management did not recognise the importance of their role. Although the focus of Governors and senior prison management had been on unlocking children following the ongoing criticisms that they were held in their cells for too long (particularly since Covid), it was felt that as prisons returned to a ‘normal’ regime, there was still not enough focus given to the importance of resettlement:
‘It’s never been from management or from . . . certainly from higher management it’s never been seen as a priority. I don’t think this department, the Resettlement Department has ever been given the priority that it should have been’.
Others went a step further and felt ‘invisible’:
‘Well, I don’t think they even know that we’re a caseworker. To be fair, I think we are . . . we don’t exist. You know, that’s how bad it is’.
Through the roll-out of the Constructive Resettlement approach from 2018 onwards, both the Youth Justice Board (non-departmental Government body with oversight of the whole Youth Justice System in England and Wales) and Youth Custody Service (Government body with responsibility for managing the youth custodial estate in England and Wales) recognise the importance of effective resettlement support for children from the moment that their custodial sentence commences. The barriers experienced by ROs appeared to be linked, in part, to a prison officer culture that typically undervalues the contributions of non-uniformed staff and prioritises the control of behaviours over the care of children within custody. For example, ROs reported being regularly taken from their resettlement roles to cover staff shortages amongst the operational staff.
Care bears
The invisibility of their role filtered through to front line prison officers, with all ROs reporting that they were regularly mocked by uniformed staff who referred to them as the ‘cuddly ones’ and the ‘Care Bears’:
We’ve been called other things . . .‘here’s the cuddly ones’.
‘We’re referred to as care bears . . .. And I feel like I, I appreciate their role (wing staff) and the stuff that they’ve got to do. But then I sometimes don’t feel that that’s reciprocated’.
There was also a perception from uniformed prison officers, particularly wing staff that the caring roles within custody were ‘culturally unacceptable’ (Mills et al, 2012) and that they interfered with the smooth running of the prison regime:
‘It’s a very much of them and us situation. Yeah, it is a shame, I think, from things I’ve heard . . .. The wings think that we’re busybodies interfering, do-gooders and we’re just getting in the way of the regime’.
This is problematic as the Youth Custody Service (2023) states that its aim is to ‘create a safe, decent and nurturing environment that provides outstanding levels of care and support for all children in custody’, yet established prison officer cultures and practices appear to be hampering progress in this direction.
Concluding thoughts
The passion and care for the children came through strongly from all Resettlement Officers. However, it was apparent that they were working in a prison system facing crisis, among a general working population experiencing stress, burnout and compassion fatigue. There is much work that needs to be jointly completed by the Youth Custody Service and YOI governors to understand the impact of prison officer culture on the abilities of all staff to effectively care and support children within the custodial environment. It should be the responsibility of all staff within custody to effectively prepare and support children for their eventual release.
As long as the resettlement role remains an invisible and undervalued service within YOIs, it is highly likely that children will continue to face significant challenges when they are eventually released back into the community.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
