Ms Heather O'Shea:

The Barnardos service supporting Traveller women in the prison system was established to provide intensive family support in partnership with the Traveller Justice Initiative and the National Traveller Women’s Forum. This followed a study carried out by the National Traveller Women's Forum in 2020 that highlighted a need for an enhanced programme of structured and intensive family support for Traveller mothers in the criminal justice system and their families.

The overall aim of the service is to work both collaboratively and individually with Traveller mothers in the criminal justice system and to support them in learning about the importance of their role as a mother, even when their children are not in their care. We aim to build and maintain positive communication and relationships with Traveller mothers and their children and families. We support them to meaningfully reflect on their own past traumas, adversities and past decision-making and the impact this has had on their children’s well-being and development. For a lot of these women, this is the first opportunity they have had to reflect in that way. We work to enhance their parenting skills and support these mothers to positively participate in their children’s lives.

Through focusing on the parent child relationship for these mothers and their children, we hope to offer more hope and possibilities, reduce the risk of re-offending for these mothers and positively influence trends of intergenerational offending. Just this week, one of the mammies turned around who would not have had a relationship with her children and said she feels mother-like. It was just after an access call with her child and for her, this was huge.

The service is funded through the Department of Justice with additional funding secured through the St. Stephen's Green Trust. The service began operating in February 2024, beginning with Traveller mothers who are already incarcerated in the Dóchas Centre. The service continues to provide support to Traveller mothers and their families upon release from prison. The Traveller mothers in the Dóchas Centre receive both individual one-to-one intensive family support and an opportunity to engage in group work sessions each week. To date, 22 Traveller mothers have had meaningful engagement with the service.

We incorporate the Barnardos informed approach and it underpins the nature of the work carried out. Both evidence-based programmes and tailor-made supports are provided to meet the identified needs of Traveller mothers, their children and families. All of the mothers engaging with the service present with concurrent and complex needs. In the course of both the group work and individual work, these mothers speak of their significant experience of domestic violence, addiction, mental health challenges and often a history of childhood trauma themselves. For the women, it gives them an opportunity to have that peer support in a group work setting because we are very conscious that having that conversation in a group facilitated by professionals is great but there can be a feeling of isolation in the aftermath of that. We have created a great community and the peer support piece follows on from that.

Ninety percent of the Traveller mothers who presented for group work in February had a history of alcohol or substance misuse. Eighty-three percent of women have described incidences of domestic violence as a characteristic of their previous or current relationships, and for the majority of these mothers this is not their first time in prison or their first offence.

Initially, there was a barrier to receiving referrals from the Traveller families themselves in the community. It was observed this was predominantly due to a lack of trust for external services due to poor past experiences with professionals. We have heard from a lot of family members they themselves had a poor experience of care as a child and returning back to their family in the Travelling community. The parent-child relationship is central to all of our work. At the point of engagement with the service, many mothers had little to no contact with their children at all.

Seventy-one percent of Traveller mothers who have engaged with this service have at least one child in the care of Tusla. Some were unaware of exactly where their children were and they struggled to identify with their role as a parent. They had little to no sense of the importance of their role as a parent and did not understand the importance of this role with their children. They showed no awareness of their rights to have any involvement regarding their children's lives or even any information in relation to them. We experienced that across the board with a lot of the women we came in contact with. Initially, we referred to them as mammies and for them that was huge. First, they were a Traveller, they were in prison and they were in addiction whereas we initially greeted them into the group as a mother, and for a lot of them, that was the first time that had happened in a long time.

Group work sessions include an element of reflection and discussion regarding the mother's past decision-making in relation their parenting. That did take some time but we are now at a point with a lot of the women who have been engaging over the past couple of months where they have very open communication within the group and with professionals to say that was wrong or that they can see it now but back then they did not, depending on the situation they were in at the time. That has been a huge learning for ourselves as professionals but also for the group. The individual work can include both tailor-made supports and Barnardos' evidence-based parenting programmes.

In the early stages of engagement, an assessment of need is completed with each mother and an individualised family support plan is developed. Mothers learn self-care and self-regulation techniques and their parenting role and basic parenting skills are explored before participating in more intense, parenting-based discussions, reflecting on the impact their past decision making has had on their children and their role as mothers. That was a huge learning for the mothers themselves to understand the children still want a relationship with them. It might not be in a caring role but it is still very important.

Most Traveller mothers who engaged in group work sessions have improved communication with their children and participated in their lives, including increased visits with their children and, for one mother, having her children returned to her care upon release. To date, we have supported 22 Traveller mothers with a potential positive impact for more than 40 children and three unborn babies. To reiterate what Ms Costello said, we have been able to do this much with just myself as one project worker. If we were able to go further, we could reach a lot more families.