On the 8th October, UpFamilies’ Spanish partner Fundación Diagrama held a national seminar to disseminate ‘Support services for families of people in prison’, as part of the ‘UpFamilies’ project, coordinated by Diagrama and co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. The event included speakers with experience in the penitentiary field, who highlighted the needs of families of people in prison, the challenges they face and the care and support services available to them.
The conference was opened by Raquel Jiménez, Director of the Corporate Development Area of Fundación Diagrama. Alfonso Andreo, Project Manager of Diagrama's Research and Development Department, then presented the results of the UpFamilies project, which include several digital resources: a Roadmap on existing support services for affected families, an app for families to search for and connect with these services in their area, and a course to encourage organisations to acquire skills in order to offer services tailored to these families. These results are available here.
The second presentation was given by Rodrigo Carcedo, Professor of the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Salamanca, director of the Psychological Care Unit for Sons and Daughters of Prisoners and their Families (HIPRIFAM) and family therapist, who focused on the study produced at the university on the needs of the children of prisoners and the daily work carried out free of charge and at a national level by HIPRIFAM to attend to them.
Subsequently, Graziano Pellegrino, coordinator of the ‘Padres y Madres sin Barreras´ programme of the Hestia Association and lecturer at the Faculty of Education of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, addressed the promotion of positive parenting and family relationships both inside and outside prison. In this sense, he explained the functioning of the programme of which he is the coordinator and which can be replicated in other prisons that wish to do so.
For his part, José Ramón López, coordinator of Penitentiary Institutions and Addictions Programmes at Fundación Diagrama, focused his speech on Diagrama’s Helianthus Project, which includes among its programmes a support programme for the families of people with an addiction and/or dual pathology.
Finally, Luis Verdú and Esperanza Sánchez, both Social Work professionals in the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions, reflected on the daily work in penitentiary centres and the role of social work in it, as well as the future of the intervention of professionals from penitentiary institutions with relatives of people in prison through the Alianzas programme.
The seminar concluded with the words of Natalia García, coordinator of the Research and Development Department of Fundación Diagrama, who highlighted the joint work between entities to open doors to more comprehensive and effective solutions: ‘At Fundación Diagrama we will continue to dedicate our efforts to promote and develop projects focused on the families of people in prison, maintaining our commitment to networking and with an international outlook that allows us to learn and incorporate best practices’.
The recording of this event is available on Fundación Diagrama's Youtube channel.