For Fangers Pårørende (FFP), our Norwegian member, is an organisation working with friends and families of prisoners. FFP provides support to these groups through the sharing of information, counselling, and increasing young people’s involvement in advocacy. Earlier this year, the organisation launched an exhibition this year that showcased photographs taken by children of prisoners who were able to go into a prison and document life on the inside. This photography project included basic photography training and a lesson on editing and perfecting the pictures once they were taken. This allowed children to see where their parents were living and to relieve them of some of the fears they had where their parent had been living.
In November, FFP will be attending a regional conference, held by the Department of Health, on vulnerable children, their coping strategies how to best handle the issues. They will be giving a presentation and the photography exhibition will be displayed. They hope to have children represented as well.
The organisation has minority projects that aim to reach out to people of ethnic minority backgrounds who have imprisoned family members. The aim is to provide appropriate, adapted information and psychosocial support. FFP collaborates with other organisations to spread the word about this project. The organisation also visits women’s prisons to speak about FFP’s work and to reach out to imprisoned mothers. They also carry out this awareness raising work in men’s prisons but are currently specifically pushing for outreach in women’s prisons as a priority.
This is a year full of seminars and workshops for the Norwegian organisation which has plans for a full-day workshop with Norwegian prison Children’s Officers and will give their annual lecture at the Correctional Services’ Staff Academy. They were invited to speak at a seminar organised by the Labour Party in Norway and held a conference for prison staff in May.
For more infromation, see: www.ffp.no