Pact is pleased to announce the opening of a brand new, purpose built Family and Visitors’ Centre at HMP Wormwood Scrubs. The centre will be officially opened by Crispin Blunt MP, Minister for Prisons, on 16th June 2011.
The current centre was opened in 1991 by The Bourne Trust (the former name for pact). Over the last two decades hundreds of thousands of people have come through the doors; in the last year alone we have supported over 36,000 visits by relatives and children of men held in the prison.
The children and families of prisoners often have multiple and complex needs. We believe that prison Visitors’ Centres have the unique potential to offer a safe, supportive space, and a gateway to specialist services, in addition to the essential role they play in supporting positive family visits, a key factor in reducing re-offending.
With this in mind, over the past five years we have worked in partnership with the Family Centre Trust and HMP Wormwood Scrubs to create a ‘next generation’ Family and Visitors’ Centre. The new building has been designed by PCKO Architects and was developed by the builders Osborne. It will meet the needs of the thousands of people who visit the prison each year, and allow specialist agencies to come in to support families in a confidential and informal setting. The overarching ambition is that the centre is used as a hub for developing effective partnership working between the prison, service providers based in the prison, and community-based agencies, to support the resettlement and rehabilitation of men leaving the prison, to give them the best chance of a fresh start.
The new centre has been generously funded by the Tudor Trust. On behalf of the tens of thousands of children and families who will benefit in the years to come, we would like to thank them for their generosity and commitment.
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