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Welsh prisoners will be able to attend a children’s parents’ evening next month – when it is held behind bars.

More than 100 teachers and parents from 30 schools across Wales and as far away as Bristol are due to attend the ground-breaking event at Parc Prison, Bridgend , with pupils.

Teachers will tell inmates how their children are doing at school

Parc’s head of family interventions, Corin Morgan-Armstrong, said the unique scheme is aimed at reducing re-offending by improving fathers’ relationships with their children and ensuring children of prisoners get the support they need in school.

Prisoners will be able to talk to their children’s teachers and see their schoolwork together.

“The premise is the same as any parent teacher evening and it works really well,” said Mr Morgan-Armstrong.

“The teachers bring the school work in, mums and carers bring the children in.

“We have our biggest-ever parents’ evening coming up in three weeks with more than 100 pupils, teachers and children.”

The scheme is among a raft of family interventions spearheaded by the jail which have attracted international attention.

Mr Morgan-Armstrong said building father-child relationships was a ‘huge motivation’ for prisoners to stop cycles of re-offending.

“It’s really important to get families together like this. It goes on for a whole afternoon and we call it “Children’s Showcase”. We will try to make sure the children leave feeling full of enthusiasm and praise and feeling confident about themselves.

“The kids will go up in front of parents and teachers and the dads also get certificates (for their work on the prison’s Family Interventions Unit). We make sure the kids will see everyone clapping their fathers so they see something good about them as opposed to everything else they have hard about him.

“Confidence is one of the greatest gifts you can have in life and with these kids it has been stopped because of circumstance.”

He said that because some families don’t tell schools a pupil has a parent inside, many are unaware and unable to offer support.

“Thirty plus schools from South Wales are coming to the parents’ evening. In one school in Swansea 14% of pupils have a father in prison. When you start looking at the impact of that and the social cost it is massive,” he added.

“If we are not talking to schools we are missing a trick. What we are doing is low cost and any prison could do it."

Prison staff were aware of which schools have pupils with fathers behind bars because some visit in school uniform, Mr Morgan-Armstrong also pointed out.

“Links have been made with schools. A lot of the schools had no understanding of a parent being inside and we have had some amazing success stories with pupils who were truanting or felt isolated and didn’t feel they could tell anybody about their parent being inside.”