As part of its work to improve the services provided to families of people in prison, UpFamilies has produced the Training Course “Helping organizations build a better future for families affected by imprisonment”, and a Training Manual to accompany it. The topics covered by the course range from the needs and challenges of families affected by incarceration to the different aspects of creating and running services to meet these needs and to advocate for them.
This training initiative seeks to mobilize the community’s capacity to provide informal as well as formal support and assistance to families affected by imprisonment. Both products have been informed by the UpFamilies’ partners research on best practices, available services, gaps in service provision, and the consultation carried out with 30 stakeholders from families affected and service providers.
The Training Course and Manual aim to provide knowledge and promote exchange of ideas and perspectives on how professionals and volunteers from different organizations can identify the needs of families with incarcerated members at the local or national level, and address them in collaboration with other entities from the community and the justice system. Therefore, these products can be useful for different kinds of stakeholders that wish to help these families.
The Training Course provides community stakeholders not only with the e-learning content of each module, but also with the opportunity to explore these concepts in group sessions with other participants. The group activities promote the exchange of knowledge, perspective and experiences among participants, encouraging them to think about possible ways in which they could improve their support to these families. Through these activities, participants develop proposals in groups for the creation and running of tailored services, networks and alliances for the coordinated work between different agents, advocacy campaigns for awareness raising, among others.
The Manual has been primarily designed to be used complementarily with the training course developed by the UpFamilies’ project partners. It aims to guide the efforts of trainers and facilitators from the community who want to carry out training interventions for professionals, volunteers and other stakeholders to help provide better services, support and advocacy to these families. In addition, this Manual can also be used independently by any interested professional or volunteer who wishes to learn more about key issues related to families affected by imprisonment and about the ways in which the community’s service providers can organize and implement support services to these families.
Both the Training Course and Manual have been published online in six EU languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Greek and Romanian.
The UpFamilies project encourages interested trainers and facilitators to carry out training interventions with the different stakeholders in their communities using these resources, and to complement them with the use of the UpFamilies mobile app, the UpFamilies Roadmap, and other resources also available on the project’s website.