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As one of the UK's leading children's charities, Barnardo's works directly with 248,000 children, young people, parents and carers every year. They run over 996 vital services across the UK, including counselling for children who have been abused, fostering and adoption services, vocational training and disability inclusion groups.

As prison populations around the world expand, increasing numbers of children are affected by parental imprisonment. However, as the work of Barnardo’s Parenting Matters Project illustrates, with support imprisonment can provide an opportunity for prisoners to re-think their roles and responsibilities as parents.This briefing report outlines the work of Barnardo’s ‘Parenting Matters’ Prison Development Work and is based on the findings of an evaluation conducted in 2005. This evaluation (Barnardo’s, 2005) explored the impact of the Parenting Matters Project on participant’s capacity to parent and the contribution parenting work makes to the resettlement process for prisoners. Read the report here.