Last month, COPE member Pact secured ALP (Accrediting Learning Professionally) accreditation with Skills for Justice for three of their prison-based relationship and parenting programmes (Building Stronger Families, Building Bridges and Time to Connect). Pact is now a Skills for Justice Approved Awards Centre. For more information: http://www.prisonadvice.org.uk/news/prison-relationship-education-parenting-courses-now-accredited-skills-justice
CEO, Andy Keen-Downs, said:
“I’m incredibly proud of Pact’s services team for having secured this badge of quality for some of our tried and tested programmes. Pact’s programmes put theory into practice, and combine international know-how and evidence in what works in relationship and parenting education with a desistance-based approach to interventions work to reduce the risk of re-offending. We applauded Dame Sally Coates’ recommendations to include parenting and relationship education in offender learning provision, and we hope that these accredited programmes will soon be able to make a difference for many more people than ever before.”
Building Stronger Families and Building Bridges are based on the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Programme (PREP), developed by Professor Scott Stanley with Professor Howard Markman and Associate Professor Galena Rhoades from the University of Denver, and adapted by Pact for delivery in UK prisons. Their couples programme, Building Stronger Families, is already approved by the Ministry of Justice as an effective regime intervention and both programmes have been delivered extensively in adult prisons and YOIs. Time to Connect was developed following Pact’s merger with the charity Kids VIP, and draws both on their work in the field of supporting positive parenting with prisoners’ families, and Pact’s three-year Play in Prisons programme.
Pact also delivers the Within My Reach programme and FLiP (Family Literacy in Prisons), which was developed in partnership with Professor Cathy Nutbrown, Head of the School of Education at the University of Sheffield.