Families Are Part of the Solution: How POPS is Putting Family at the Heart of Rehabilitation

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In 1988, Farida Anderson MBE placed an advert in her local newspaper. She was struggling to find support while her husband was in custody, and she suspected she was not alone. She was right. What began as a self-help group became a registered charity the following year, and today POPS employs 115 paid staff and is commissioned by UK HM Prison and Probation Service to deliver a wide range of services across prisons and communities throughout England. 

The organisation's core conviction has never changed: that families are not a peripheral concern in corrections, but a central one. UK Ministry of Justice research shows reoffending rates are 39 per cent lower for prisoners who receive family visits and maintain positive family relationships. Lord Farmer's commissioned review described family ties as a "golden thread" that should run through all prison policy. POPS has spent more than three decades turning that evidence into practice. 

Could you introduce POPS and explain why supporting the families of people in custody is such a vital and often overlooked dimension of effective correctional practice? 

In 2025, across the full breadth of its services, POPS provided support to 196,742 individuals impacted by the criminal justice system, of whom 37,686 were children under the age of 17. The scale of that figure reflects a reality that correctional systems worldwide are still too slow to act on: that when someone goes to prison, an entire family is affected. 

POPS delivers family support services at 16 prisons across England, alongside community-based resettlement support, gender-specific services for women, and training for statutory and non-statutory professionals working with children and families affected by the justice system. Family support, as POPS is clear to argue, is too often treated as a peripheral welfare add-on rather than as core to effective correctional practice. The evidence says otherwise. When families are supported, resettlement outcomes improve for everyone. 

POPS was founded by families and remains a user-led organisation. How does this foundation in lived experience shape the way you design and deliver your services? 

The founder's own experience of isolation and stigma when her husband was sentenced remains the lens through which POPS designs everything it does. Lived experience is not a tagline at POPS. It is constitutive of who the organisation is. Twelve per cent of POPS' current staff team have personally experienced supporting a loved one through a custodial sentence. That shared understanding builds a culture of trust in which prisoners and their families feel comfortable disclosing the challenges they are facing in ways they often would not with statutory services. 

Families are actively involved in shaping services, policy positions, and public advocacy through POPS' Family Information Network and family and service user forums at each of its prison and community locations. POPS sits on a range of local and national advisory bodies, including UK HM Prison and Probation Service working groups, HM Inspection of Prisons' Thematic Review Board, and the Parole Board Working Group, ensuring the Think Family perspective is embedded into national standards and frameworks. 

Research shows that strong family ties are linked to lower reoffending rates. What does your Think Family model look like in practice, and how does it shift the way prisons approach family engagement? 

In practice, Think Family means family engagement runs through all of POPS' work, not as a separate strand but as an organising principle. At each of the 16 prisons where POPS operates, it carries out a Think Family assessment of the environment, involving prison staff, POPS staff, and family members in a walkthrough of the establishment from the point visitors arrive to the visit hall. Each establishment is unique, and the assessment looks at the visit experience through both a family lens and a prison perspective, identifying ways to reduce anxiety, ensure a dignified and productive visit experience, and meet the support needs of prisoners and families. 

The practical outputs of this work are telling. They include Popsicle the Penguin, a uniquely designed signage, sticker, and information booklet system that softens the often stark environment for children visiting. Lanyards, ear defenders, and fidget toys are available for adults and children with neurodivergent conditions. Table-top activity boxes enable children to interact with their parent or relative during visits. Homework clubs allow prisoners to retain involvement in their children's education. Photos and cakes are provided to mark birthdays and family celebrations. 

Each of these practical adaptations reflects a deeper conviction: that families who are supported, equipped, and empowered are partners in rehabilitation, not simply individuals who happen to be part of the process. 

How do you ensure your services are genuinely inclusive and responsive to each group's specific needs? 

POPS builds dedicated, needs-led, and inclusive services rather than a one-size-fits-all offer, and it does so by grounding its work in research, lived experience, and active participation in national and international policy development. 

Its membership of Children of Prisoners Europe ensures children's rights under Article 9 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are upheld in its work. Child-centred materials, including the Visiting Dad booklets and the child-friendly version of the Safeguarding Policy, were developed from learning gained through POPS' participation in the pan-European COPE research. Gender-specific services for women, including the Farida Women's Centre, a dedicated, women-only, trauma-informed safe space, were developed from the findings of the UK Corston Report 2007. 

POPS has a long history of recognising and raising the issues of minoritised communities, establishing the Black Prisoner Support Group as far back as 1992 and contributing to the Lammy Review, the Young Review, and the Zahid Mubarek Trust's research into ethnic minority prisoners' experiences. Information is available in multiple languages, imagery is inclusive and non-biased, and staff and trustees undertake regular training to ensure cultural awareness and responsiveness is embedded across the whole organisation. 

As an ICPA member, POPS brings a distinctive family-centred perspective to global corrections. What do you believe the international corrections community most needs to understand about the role families play in rehabilitation and reintegration? 

The single most important shift the international corrections community can make, in POPS' view, is to recognise that positive and robust family relationships can be the key to rehabilitation and successful reintegration, and to see families as part of the solution rather than part of the problem. 

Rehabilitation can commence from the moment of entry into custody, not be confined to the weeks immediately before release. Families and positive relationship networks are a significant factor in that process. Prisoners who maintain stable social relationships, receive regular visits, and sustain family contact are often more settled, more motivated to engage with programmes and their sentence plan, and better able to maintain their health and wellbeing. 

Families can also be a practical asset to prison staff. They are often early alerts to safeguarding concerns, a source of significant information about a prisoner's physical and mental health, and an encouragement to achieving educational and employability milestones. Where release is imminent, involving family members in release planning produces richer, more holistic outcomes. 

Yet families themselves are often the collateral damage of a sentence: isolated, stigmatised, and left to navigate an unfamiliar system with little or no support. POPS' message to the global corrections community is clear: to enable positive family networks to be maintained, families must be viewed with dignity and respect, and have access to non-judgmental emotional and practical support that equips and empowers them to build resilience and thrive, not merely survive. Investing in family-facing services with the same level of significance as education and employability programmes is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite for truly effective rehabilitation.