Prison Advice and Care Trust (Pact)

Pact is a pioneering national charity that supports prisoners, people with convictions, and their children and families. We provide caring and life changing services at every stage of the criminal justice process: in court, in prison, on release, and in the community.

We are passionate about our vision of a society in which justice is understood as a process of restoration and healing, in which prisons are used sparingly and as places of learning and rehabilitation, and in which the innate dignity and worth of every human being is valued.

We deliver a range of relationship, parenting, social and emotional education courses in prisons, designed to support the rehabilitation of people in prison. With funding from the Foundation, our Building Bridges project seeks to enhance the accessibility of these courses for speakers of English as a second or additional language (ESL) in prison.

This includes through the development of a screening process to identify service users who speak ESL, development and testing of a suite of learning materials with and for people who speak ESL, and delivery of high-quality training to Pact staff members focused on how to support the family needs of prisoners who speak ESL.

We want to make our work accessible for everyone; we have evidence through our first year of research and changes that the work is important and not like anything they have done in the prison setting, and there is evidence to suggest that strong family ties support reducing recidivism rates. The aim is that more people are able to access the work and fully comprehend the meaning behind it before they are released, to support and maintain those family ties and support the wellbeing of the people we support in a custody setting.