Oral evidence: The right to family life: children whose mothers are in prison, HC 1610Wednesday 13 February 2019

Oral evidence, 13 February 2019.

Chair

Thank you very much for coming to give evidence to us. This is a private evidence session, so we are going to listen to you and learn from what you say, but we are not going to tell anybody else what you said. We are not going to mention your name. We are not going to quote anything you have said that could identify you, and I hope that helps you know that you can say whatever you want and still feel free to say it, because it is in confidence and you can trust us. We can all keep secrets here. We all will do that. You heard the previous evidence session. Witness A, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about the circumstances of Witness B’s mum being imprisoned?

Witness A

I am Witness B’s grandmother. Our circumstances are a little different in that I already had the children when Witness B’s mum went into prison. It was in the first few months of me having them. If I just give you a bit of background, my daughter, who is Witness B’s mum, had previously been a heroin addict, as had Witness B’s dad. When she got pregnant with Witness B she got herself clean. She then went on to have [xxx], Witness B’s brother, […]. She then split up from Witness B’s dad. The relationship there was not very good. He went into prison. He did not solve his drug problem and, to reiterate, he died […], so it is quite raw for Witness B still. My daughter remarried. She married someone and was doing really well. She had another child, [yyy], […]. Unfortunately, the marriage did not work out. They had moved out to a village. There were some debt problems. Things did not work out. […]. It is a very complicated story. However, in the end, she had a complete mental breakdown. She got to the point where she did not feel she could look after the children. She had tendencies, being an addict. For addicts, when times are hard, it is the comfort blanket they always go back to. That was starting to come in. She had some severe mental health issues that came up, to the point where she handed the children over to their respective fathers and tried to commit suicide. That was when I came in. I got a phone call from a social worker who was at the hospital with my daughter. Witness B and [xxx] had been handed to their father; [yyy] had been handed to his. Things went from bad to worse with her mental health. Over the next eight-week period she lost the house. Things just went from bad to worse. They were trying to section her, so she left to go and stay with a cousin in […], to see if she could sort her life out, get herself better and start to provide a life that was just for her and the children. She met a man while she was up there who was of a similar background to her. Witness B’s dad was not really in a fit state to be looking after them. He had health problems and everything. […] social services finally listened to me and gave me the children. It was still with a view to their mother sorting herself out and the family being reunited. Then, within a couple of months, we got the call. She and her boyfriend had been involved in […]. It went to court. We never thought for one minute that she would get a custodial sentence. […] I had to explain that to Witness B and [xxx]. I had always kept a healthy relationship with both mother and dad. I felt that for their well-being they ought to have contact with the parents. There was a lot of stuff they did not need to see, but it was still mum and dad, and they ought to have that contact with them. There were phone calls every night and visits when possible. That suddenly stopped and mother was put into […] prison in […], which meant that there would be no consideration of where the people who needed to see her, being her children, could see her. We went to visit her once in the time she was in prison, because I am a kinship carer. I have no legal guardianship of Witness B and [xxx]. It is a family decision that they stay with us. Therefore, I get no help at all. We get no financial help. The only support that I got from social services was right at the beginning. They said, “The children are safe”, and suddenly backed off. Children Heard and Seen has been the support for me and the children. Because my husband and I work and we are not on benefits, we are entitled to no help in getting the children to visit her. We could only do it once because it was a lot of money for the train fare to […]. Even when you get to […], they do not tell you, but it is then £10 for a taxi to get to [the prison], because it is in the middle of nowhere.

Chair

Where do you live?

Witness A

I live in [in the East Midlands]. The Welsh Assembly, however, paid for her boyfriend to go and visit her, even though he later went to prison himself for an attack on his mum. They are still together. She is doing a lot better. She lives in […]. The most traumatic time of me having the children was the 14 months that she was in prison because there were no phone calls, or maybe a phone call once a week. There was only the one contact. The contact that we constantly tried to keep was all taken away. I wish, like previous people have said, that the children had been taken into some consideration regarding the sentencing—where she was going to go, who was having the children and what support there was for them. It is okay saying that I am their grandparent, and I would not have it any other way. Another decision would never have been made. They were coming to me, end of, but it affected my life a lot. My children had all left home. I had retrained for a new job. I was being a community organiser. I was coming to work in London. I had this great new career, and I saw this all happening and had to put a hold on that. I now work lunchtimes as a cook to do school hours and to look after the children. I would not have it any other way, but more support would have been really helpful, especially at the time. As well as being their mother, she is my daughter. She got a custodial sentence the first time. Why did he walk away and not her? Why did people pay for him to go and see her and not the children? How should we treat the children and maintain their welfare? It was very complicated, but I wish there had been more support, more thought. Instead of Children Heard and Seen picking up the pieces, there should have been more support there from the start.

Chair

Witness B, tell us about when you heard that your mum was going to prison. How old were you then? Did you have any idea of what it was going to mean for you?

Witness B

No, not really. I was […].

Chair

You did not really know that it was going to mean that she was a long way away from you.

Witness B

No.

Fiona Bruce

Witness B, I know it is difficult. When your mum was sent to prison at that point, did you know before that day or on that day that she might be going to prison? Did you expect that to happen?

Witness B

No.

Fiona Bruce

It was not something that you thought would happen. Did you have any chance to speak with anyone on that day, either at the court or someone who would speak for you at the court, about what would happen when your mum was sentenced on that day?

Witness B

No, I did not.

Fiona Bruce

No one spoke on your behalf about what would happen to you when and if your mum went to prison.

Witness B

No.

Fiona Bruce

Witness A, you said that the judge was aware that Witness B’s mum had children.

Witness A

I presume so. I was not at the court. I just got a phone call from the court usher. I had had a phone call before, because my daughter had given her my phone number. She phoned me before to say it was going on and then just afterwards to say it was a 14-month custodial sentence, which even she was shocked about.

Fiona Bruce

It sounds like you are not but are you aware, for the record, of whether the judge took into account at all the fact that there were children in the family?

Witness A

I believe not.

Fiona Bruce

It did not affect the sentencing. It was not taken into consideration in any way.

Witness A

No.

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon

Witness A has answered some of the questions already about what support you had from social services, and it sounds as if there was nothing at all.

Witness A

There was some, mainly because of Witness B’s father. [xxx] school and Witness B’s school at the time were excellent and gave us support but, as far as social services was concerned, the criteria for the children being safe were that they were clean, at school and fed. As long as they were safe, that was about it. Once they were with me, they just backed off completely. There were concerns when they were with their father, but they just backed off. I was suddenly left with two children to bring up again, 30 years on. Can I just say something? I have the thoughts of [xxx], who was […]. He did not want to be here today. He did not feel he could, but I have had several chats with [xxx], because of my coming here, about how he felt at the time. I have a little statement from him.

Chair

Would you like to read it out? We would be very pleased to hear it.

Witness A

[xxx] said, “I was worried about my mum when she was sent to prison. I did not know that it was going to happen. My dad had been to prison but that was not so bad as he could look after himself. I had seen things about prison and thought my mum may be upset and crying, and people may bully her. I had no way of knowing. When she did phone it was a long time. I worried a lot. I felt angry. Although I knew my mum was ill and I had to live with my grandparents, I now realised that this could be for a long time. It upset me most at night. I cried in the dark because I could not hear her voice. Just to say she was okay, and say goodnight and she loved me, and I could say I loved her, was all I needed. “I know she did wrong and that if you do bad things you need to be punished, but I felt that I was being punished and it did not seem fair. I had done nothing wrong. I could only go and see her once because she was so far away and it cost too much money. When I did see her, I was scared of seeing what she would look like. I did not want to touch her in case she was hurt or started to cry. I did not know what to do. The visit was good but seemed to be over really quickly. I cried leaving her but I felt better after I talked and finally did hug her. I wish that I could have seen her more and heard her voice more. It felt very lonely. I found it hard for my friends to know where she was”.

Chair

How old was he?

Witness A

He is now […]. He was […] at the time, but we had a conversation and there was some thinking back about how he felt at the time. It resonated with what Georgia said about children going to see them. You feel shell-shocked when you walk in that room. Half the visit was taken up with them not really knowing what to do, what to say, how to behave, so it would have been nice for that to have been longer and more often. We were unfortunate.

Chair

If you can, thank him very much for giving that statement through you to us. It is very helpful, particularly the point about him feeling he was being punished when he had not done anything wrong.

Witness A

He did feel he was being punished.

Baroness Hamwee

Witness B, we have heard that you visited your mother once. That is right, is it not? You talked to her on the phone once a week. When you visited, what did it feel like for you?

Witness B

It was all right.

Baroness Hamwee

Was that because your grandmother was there?

Witness B

Yes.

Baroness Hamwee

Were you able to stay in touch in any other way?

Witness B

No. She wrote letters. That was about it. She just told us how much she missed us and things.

Baroness Hamwee

And you wrote back, with a bit of help.

Witness B

Yes.

Baroness Hamwee

Did you talk to your brother about it?

Witness B

Yes.

Ms Karen Buck

It is quite a hard question to answer, particularly for Witness B. Going through the experience is bad enough, but do you have any thoughts about what the impact has been for you in the long term?

Witness B

I suppose, when I found out she went into prison, my behaviour changed. I started acting up. When she got out it was all right because I got to speak to her every day, but then I do not really know.

Ms Karen Buck

You were acting up. Presumably, you were trying to deal with lots of different kinds of emotions and lots of hard feelings, which you were struggling to manage.

Witness B

Yes. I started being naughty.

Chair

Was that at school or at home?

Witness B

It was at school.

Chair

Did the school punish you or did they help you?

Witness B

They punished me.

Chair

What did they do? Did they take you out of class or put you in detention?

Witness B

All of the above.

Chair

Basically, your mum was punished by being put in prison, and you were punished by detention, by being sent out of the class. Were you excluded at all?

Witness B

Yes.

Ms Karen Buck

It is part of the same question. Did they understand? Did they work with you to try to deal with some of those problems? It is a very hard thing for you to go through. Were they sympathetic?

Witness A

No.

Ms Karen Buck

You did not feel so, either.

Witness A

No. Witness B still has issues at school. She is still getting excluded. She is still getting isolation. I have no problem with her at all at home. She is an absolute treasure at home. With authority and things, she seems to really struggle. [xxx] is a different matter. [xxx] school has been so supportive, and dealt well with Witness B, but Witness B was only at that school for a few months before going on to secondary school, on top of everything else that was going on. The school decided it ought to be on a need-to-know basis. Not everyone in the school knows Witness B’s story, or knew Witness B’s story, so they did not recognise that maybe her acting up was a reaction to something. There was a bit of other people saying things, wasn’t there, Witness B?

Witness B

Yes.

Ms Karen Buck

They were saying things to you about your mum. Yes; kids can be pretty cruel, can they not? Witness A, you did not feel that, if you talked to the school, it would be able to help.

Witness A

No, they were just interested in the discipline and the other children. It is a different environment from primary school. It is not as pastoral as primary school. Children Heard and Seen, and Sarah here, have stepped in to take up that mantle and have got Witness B a mentor. Somebody else should maybe have been thinking about and providing that. I can be a mentor for Witness B but sometimes she looks at me and I am constantly lecturing, because we are trying to break cycles here. It is hard. When you think that you have been unfairly treated by society, by authority, it is very easy to want to fight back against that, not listen to authority and not want to listen to authority. We are trying to break those cycles and saying, “There are people here who give support. There are people in authority who are prepared to listen. You do have a say in how you feel”. That is what we are here to promote, to break those cycles and to say, “Let us step in and help these children who are going through all this stuff that is no fault of their own”.

Ms Karen Buck

That is exactly right. What could we do differently, right from the really big stuff? Should Witness B’s mum have been in prison in the first place?

Witness A

I do not think so. This is going to sound awful, but I think it had a lot to do with her being English in north Wales. It was a very small Welsh-speaking community. I do not know whether it was more because he knew what was going on. He had been in trouble before, yet he walked out of the court.

Chair

It was not that he pleaded guilty and she pleaded not guilty.

Witness A

No, they both pleaded guilty to exactly the same offence, but he walked away from the court and she got a 14-month custodial sentence. Even the court usher who phoned me was quite incredulous as to what had happened and why it had happened. There was a lot of social media about it as well.

Chair

How many years ago was this?

Witness A

It was three years ago.

Chair

Which court was it?

Witness B

It was in Wales.

Witness A

[…]

Witness B

[…].

Witness A

[…]

Chair

Could you let us know when you get home? We would like to look into that because there is a real issue about sentencing here. You heard us talk earlier about sentencing of women who have children. We are looking at sentencing of mothers in this context. We would like to look at this. Was it a jury or a magistrates’ court?

Witness A

[…]

Chair

[…]

Witness A

[…]

Chair

Okay, we will get on to them and find out what actually happened. They will have reports that were given to the court for sentencing. We will want to look at what was in his report and what was in her report, and what actually happened. It might give you, as well as us, a bit of insight.

Witness A

I have what the newspapers were reporting at the time. I have her version of events, his version of events and everything, but it would be nice to know why that decision was made for such a custodial sentence. She had not even been in Wales that long.

Chair

We will find out. Remind me how long the sentence was.

Witness A

It was 14 months.

Chair

Does that not have to be a crown court?

Witness A

[…]

Chair

We will get to the bottom of it and we will get the papers, one way or another. Sorry, Karen was in the middle of asking you questions when I butted in.

Ms Karen Buck

Flowing on from that, if the two of you—answer this separately, if you can—were standing next to Witness B’s mum as the judge was making the sentence and you had the chance to say something, what would you say?

Witness A

I would say that this woman needs rehabilitation. She does not need prison. She needs help. I do not know whether a background report had been done, but it should have been quite obvious to anybody that she had mental health issues. She has since been diagnosed with adult ADHD; she takes anti-psychotic drugs. I do not know, if that was taken into consideration, why you would then not have some sort of rehabilitation going on. I could not see how the prison sentence was benefiting anyone.

Ms Karen Buck

Witness B, from where you are now, if you had the chance and Harriet was the judge, what would you say?

Chair

Imagine that Witness A, your grandmother, is your mum. Imagine you are standing next to her in court and I am saying, “Right, I am going to pass a sentence of 17 months on your mum, but I want to hear from you, first, Witness B, whether that is a good idea, whether it is okay and what impact it would have on you”.

Witness B

If it was just me there, they would not know that she had two other kids. If [yyy and xxx] were there, maybe they would think about it differently, because they would know that she had more than one kid and that she would like to see them.

Chair

You think the judge should have had in mind all of you kids, not just you, and the impact.

Witness B

Yes. It affected all of us, not just me.

Chair

That was because of the separation, effectively, and the bullying and unfairness at school.

Witness B

Yes.

Witness A

[yyy] is on the autistic scale, so he found things difficult to understand. [yyy] has several things. She had two children living with me and a child with her ex-husband, and the phone call money that she got worked out as £2 a week. She got £6 a week and she had to buy everything with that: her toiletries, tea, coffee—everything she needed. It left £2 for a phone call. It was like being in a telephone box with the money just going and going and going. Phoning them and then phoning him on a mobile took it in one go. That was why the phone call was only once a week. If she lost privileges, they lost a phone call to their mum.

Chair

It is a bit of an odd concept that children being able to receive a phone call from their mum is somehow a privilege, which should then be used as a punishment. You have the punishment of the sending to prison, but then you punish the children, even while the mother is in prison, by denying the phone calls.

Witness A

Yes, exactly. You cannot even say, “She will phone on this day at this time”, in case there is a lockdown.

Witness B

It is like we are getting punished for her choices.

Witness A

Yes. Like [xxx] said, he cried himself to sleep at night because he did not know whether that phone call was coming. He would be expecting it and sitting by the phone hoping, and then the phone call did not come. As for their relationship with their father, […], he would phone at 6 pm every night no matter what, no matter how bad he felt, unless he was in a way where he sounded ill. Then he would not phone, but to know that that was coming made it a much healthier relationship for them. To not be able to know that with their mum was just horrendous.

Chair

I am really sorry, Witness B, to hear about your dad’s passing away. Please accept my sympathies. It is very sad to hear that.

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon

Witness B, when you changed school, was there any teacher within the school you felt you could trust and you could talk to when things were getting really bad for you? Was there anybody within the school?

Chair

Do you mean the secondary school?

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon

Yes, when you changed school.

Witness B

Yes, but she left.

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon

Did she leave soon after you got there, or after a year or so?

Witness B

It was two years.

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon

Is that when things started getting really bad for you in school, because you did not have somebody like her?

Witness B

Yes.

Chair

We heard from Georgia. You heard us talking to Georgia about how her relationship with authority has been twisted up with this because of what authority did to her mum. Has it affected you, Witness B, in how you think of people in charge, because you felt they did something that hurt you, which was sending your mum to prison?

Witness B

Yes, kind of. It is a little unfair because her boyfriend did not get a sentence and my mum did.

Chair

Then it made you feel you could not trust the authorities because they would do things that seemed uneven.

Witness B

Yes, unfair.

Baroness Hamwee

Can I ask a slightly different question? Sarah has been sitting with you, and we heard from Lina and Georgia about the help from that organisation. I have not picked up whether you have a relationship with Children Heard and Seen. If you have, I wondered how that came about and how you got in touch with them.

Witness A

It was the lady at the school. When she first got to secondary school, there was a teacher there who was quite good. The first one left quite soon. That is the trouble. They get people in but people change jobs. She finds it very difficult to keep constantly trusting people. It was one teacher who put us in touch with Children Heard and Seen. Yes, we have an excellent relationship with them. Yes, they are wonderful, not only in providing a mentor for Witness B—and we have evenings—but the support for me is just amazing. I do not know what I would do without it. I have now met other grandparents who are bringing up their grandchildren. We have been on days out; we have been treated and made to feel like we can be normal sometimes. They set up a writing group in […] that was supposed to be for the children, and they said, “Let us do it for the adults and we will take the kids off to do something”. They have given me space to be a bit more me again, because it was a point in my life, as it is with a lot of grandparents, where your children have gone and this is when you can start thinking about you. That is suddenly all taken away, so for somebody to say, “Let us go and do this; let us give you some time to be you; here are other people who are in the same boat”, has just been amazing.

Chair

But for a small charitable organisation, you would have had nothing.

Witness A

There would have been nothing.

Chair

There would have been absolutely nothing for either Witness B or you.

Witness A

No.

Chair

You have been extremely helpful in your evidence and that will very much reinforce what we have heard already on the public record from Georgia and Lina. A lot of people do not realise what actually goes on, so you have done us a good public service by coming along.

Witness A

There are a lot of grandparents like me who are doing the job that foster carers would be doing, which would cost the state a hell of a lot of money. We get no help or support at all. It would have been nice to be able to say, “It is not me who needs to go and visit her. Her children need to go and visit”. They should have been priority for someone saying, “We will pay towards the cost of you going to see her”, even to go to the family days or whatever, but we could not have that because we work. Because we were not on benefits, we were not entitled to it. We were treated like we were the parents, but I am not her parent. I am her grandparent. The foster children get more rights than they do and it is not fair. We should be treated the same because we are doing the same job but saving the state a hell of a lot of money.

Chair

Thank you very, very much indeed for your evidence. We are going to carry on with our meeting, but you can go now.

Witness A

Thank you.

Chair

I know you have been offered a trip back to the House of Commons. If you want to see us doing our business at any other time, you can come and see us, debating Brexit probably.

Witness A

We would love that. Thanks for your time.

Chair

Thank you so much. Thank you, Children Heard and Seen. Oral evidence: The right to family life: children whose mothers are in prison 2