| About Family Care |
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The Family Life Ministries (FLM) seek to reach out to families of inmates in the following ways:
Each year, around Christmas, volunteers deliver gift hampers to family members of prisoners: food hampers for parents or siblings, a special gift for a husband or wife, toys for children. The highlight of the gift delivery is a card written by the inmate carrying heartfelt Christmas greetings. This is one opportunity for the inmate to express his love and gratitude to his family and serves to strengthen or rebuild family ties.
Wives’ and Mothers’ Support groups Often, when a loved one is imprisoned, wives and mothers isolate themselves from their friends and family because of a sense of shame and failure. They need a safe place where they can express their feelings without feeling judged, and where they can find friends who will empathize with them. The wives’ and mothers’ support groups provides such an avenue. Activities such as sewing and jewellery-making, and talks on various relevant topics help break the ice for these family members. At a deeper level, group counselling sessions help these ladies face difficult issues, and mutually support each other.
Children’s Activities and Programmes Prisoners’ children are often isolated from others because of the shame that their parents experience. They are also deprived of many things that other children enjoy because of poverty, and because their sole care-giver is too pre-occupied with their problems to pay attention to them. PFS organizes children’s parties and camps to provide fun-filled activities for prisoners’ children in the school holidays. These activities also provide a platform for caring volunteers to develop friendships with the children as well as their parents. Such friendships are invaluable in helping prisoners’ families cope with the prisoners’ absence as well as his eventual return to the family. In January 2010, FLM started a weekly children’s club. Named “Care Club”, the Saturday gathering conducts enrichment activities such as reading-for-fun, music, art, and dance. It is hoped that these activities will develop latent creative abilities in these children. The club has also engaged the help of volunteers who devoted time in helping the children with their school work.
Employment, Vocational Training, and Financial Assistance FLM assists inmates’ families in securing jobs. We also provide basic training in useful skills such as language proficiency, basic and intermediate computer skills, sewing, and jewellery-making. FLM also provides short-term financial aid to families that are struggling to make ends meet.
Home Visitation FLM staff and volunteers regularly visit inmates’ families to provide friendship, comfort, and counselling. Here, visitation is especially needful where family members are ill or bed-ridden. Visitation also enables FLM staff to ascertain the needs of family members.
Housed in the Family Centre in Maude Road, the Televisit Centre allows inmates’ family members to meet with the inmate via ‘skype’ facilities. Users of the facility are shown hospitality by friendly staff and volunteers, to make their visi as pleasant and enjoyable as possible.
Referrals to Family Service centres and Counselling Centres PFS partners with most of the major Christian Family Service and Counselling Centres to provide comprehensive services to prisoners’ families. FLM works in tandem with these centres where the centres provide professional counselling and social work services, while FLM maintains friendships with the families with a view to helping the families adjust to the inmates’ return to his family.
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