This morning I edited the documents I had been working on for Family Child. I added in a couple of sections to the sales pitch document following Eli’s suggestions, such as why it is so important that the programme was developed by prisoners. That, combined with typing out the national curriculum for Citizenship and PSHE so that it will be easier to work out which areas Family Child covers and which need to be taught separately, took up most of the morning.
Following another lunchtime sandwich (I have now nearly mastered the 6 ingredients thing!) I sat down to watch a couple of Safe Ground’s videos. First I watched Blinda, a 17 minute film produced in HMP Wandsworth in which prisoners make up the cast. It’s based loosely on Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Selfish Giant’ and is now used in Safe Ground’s Family Man programme nationally as part of the course. It’s incredibly well done and powerful too.
Next, I watched a film of the presentation which prisoners at Parc Prison, which is in Wales, put on for their family and friends at the end of the Family Man course. There are a couple of similarities between the two films: both featured something to do with ‘The Selfish Giant’ (the presentation involves a play by the prisoners which is similar to the story of ‘The Selfish Giant’), and both nearly had me in tears. When I had finished these films I tried to put on a third which is about drug use and aimed at primary school children, but the computer didn’t want to play it, so I can’t tell you much about it.
At about 3 o’clock I set about putting together the Family Child documents I had produced and the existing lesson plans into one lever arch file. This resulted in a couple of neat freak moments. Finding file dividers to match the right colour order was quite a challenge but I managed eventually, and then I realised that half the sheets were hole- punched in different places so they stuck out the top and bottom of the file. That required a bit of work too! So, after a longer time than it should have taken, there is now a big Family Child folder with everything Safe Ground has so far for the programme in it.
After that it was time to write my last blog, and sadly, that’s the end of my time at Safe Ground. I’ve really enjoyed everything I’ve done; finding out about how the criminal justice system works and how the government and Safe Ground interact, and gradually coming to understand more about the work of Safe Ground. I’ve really loved working on Family Child too and hopefully I’ve helped out a bit, even in a very small way. I’d like to thank Safe Ground for having me here over the past week, and I’ll definitely be staying in touch as we’ve planned an assembly at my school about Safe Ground for some time in the autumn.
Clementine Makower