MAKING SENSE OF THE IMPACT OF IMPRISONMENT ON CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

The damage caused to children and families when a parent is sentenced to imprisonment has been the subject of research for several decades, with increased outputs in the last ten years. This commentary will draw together the eight publications that I have submitted for my PhD by publication and confirm the contribution to knowledge they have made. All publications relate to different aspects of the impact of imprisonment on children and families. My publications are set out in Table 1 below. The commentary will begin by setting out the issues facing children and families impacted by parental imprisonment drawing on recent and seminal literature. The emphasis of the literature reviewed will be on the impact of sentencing mothers to imprisonment since five out of my eight publications focus specifically on imprisoned mothers. It will then apply Ashworth’s Lifeworld fractions framework (Ashworth, 2016) to use as a lens through which to understand and enrich the qualitative data contained in my publications. This framework contends that any lived experience can be explored by dividing it into eight different fractions: Embodiment; Selfhood; Sociality; Temporality; Spatiality; Discourse; Project and Moodedness. This commentary will demonstrate my contribution to knowledge in relation to each of these fractions and explore how they inter-relate. It will also show how the findings link to existing literature. It will conclude that any intervention for children and families impacted by parental imprisonment that is going to be truly beneficial and holistic needs to address all these eight fractions. This commentary will therefore not only set out my contribution to knowledge but will also constitute a contribution to knowledge in its own right.