Hidden depths in StandOut-lite
Our co-founder Penny Parker recently joined a StandOut workshop in HMP Wandsworth and reflects how, even in a shorter version of our full programme, the men found a safe space to be vulnerable.
We’re delighted that the team is back in prison running small group workshops - a kind of StandOut-lite.
And our delight is matched by the enthusiasm of participants. As if emerging blinking into the sunlight, they are fully embracing having time to work in a group and to focus on something positive that involves planning for the future.
What was especially interesting when I joined a session last week was that in short personal presentations each one shared deeply personal thoughts, experiences and ideas. And it struck me that, perhaps even more so than when we were running the full 12 day StandOut programme pre-Covid19, that the pandemic had inflicted yet more trauma and had brought difficult stuff to the surface for all of them.
The themes of these soul-baring presentations were childhood trauma, abandonment by fathers, damaged relationships and a deep yearning to make good and to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself. Both in their own desire not to return to prison, and more powerfully in the common commitment to ensuring that, as fathers, they will break the generational damage of offending that is so often passed, like a faulty gene, down the family line.
They surprised me with the intensity of their feelings and their openness and it transpired they surprised themselves. Reflections at the end were that in four short days StandOut had created a safe space, and how good it was, with that safety, to express feelings. They also reflected how courageous their fellow participants had each been in doing so in a space and place that doesn’t lend itself to openness and soul-baring.
It reminded us that getting a job - often the key motivation behind joining a StandOut course - can have a significant impact on the likelihood of reoffending, but that there is often work to do to find stability and peace after the trauma of prison.
That work has only been exacerbated by the extraordinary restrictions on life in prison over the past year and a half.