Helena Cabo: “Caring for family bonds is key to a healthier and more transformative prison process”

“When a family member goes to prison, the whole family serves the sentence”, explains Helena Cabo, founder of Projecte Nius, an association that works with art, education and mediation so that mothers, fathers and children can maintain quality bonds within and outside the prison sphere.

With five years of work behind it building experiences with parenting groups in prisons, the organisation promotes projects such as ‘Meraki’, which supports mothers and fathers deprived of liberty, families and professionals in the prison system so that they can maintain their bond with their sons and daughters inside the centres.

We speak with Helena Cabo, who points to the impact prison has on children, the need to humanise visiting spaces, and how art, play and family gatherings can make a reality that is often made invisible less burdensome.

What is Nius and what do you do as an association?
We are a non-profit association that has been working inside and outside the prison sphere since 2019. Through artistic and educational projects, and also through mediation, we foster healthy and respectful bonds between families, professionals and institutions.

Your work began with a musical show for babies.
We came from doing artistic projects for families. When we were producing Tunti-Tapau, an immersive show for babies, we wanted it to have special characteristics, both artistic and social. We worked on the artistic side with Eva Vázquez, a visual artist who is a reference for us. We based the whole set design on her work, but we also wanted the way it was built to have an added component, so that it was not just scenery for a show.

How did you get involved in the prison sphere?
We came into contact with prisons through the Parental Responsibility Groups, which are organised groups of fathers and mothers inside the centres. For a year, we went to two prisons: Brians 2, with a group of fathers; and the Barcelona Women’s Penitentiary Centre, where there is a department in which mothers live with their babies aged 0 to 3.

You soon began to build bonds.
Yes, there we began to weave and make part of the show’s set design with these fathers and mothers. And it was from there that we began to create bonds and see the need to open artistic and festive spaces inside the centres. Spaces that would make it possible to bring families together and create quality moments, just as happens outside prison, but inside. Over time, we have built up real expertise on how to work with such a special situation as being a father or mother inside prison, being the son or daughter of someone in prison, or accompanying a minor whose father or mother is imprisoned.

What happens to children and families when the father or mother goes to prison?
When a family member goes to prison, in some way the whole family serves the sentence. It is not only the person who enters the centre who does so; the whole family is affected by this situation, and that is something that needs a lot of work. People who have family bonds have a very important axis to nurture and maintain. Caring for these bonds is key to a healthier and more transformative prison process.

How are visits, private visits, phone calls… experienced?
When a family has someone in prison, they can go to see them once a week or once every fifteen days. They meet in communication spaces, in family private visits, and they can be with that person for approximately an hour and a quarter. Normally, this happens in a very small space, about three metres by three, with four chairs, a table and a toilet. It is under these conditions that family bonds have to be sustained.

Even though it is not easy at all.
It is very hard to maintain family bonds inside a prison. In children, we see that there is a lot of stigma, that school performance drops and self-esteem too. Anxiety disorders often appear, and the relationship with others, with the family and with the system also changes. There are also many difficult questions: what do you explain and what do you not explain at school? You have just visited someone and entered a prison. Now this is beginning to be worked on, but prisons, in principle, are not designed or prepared for minors to enter them.

You are working to change that.
We are precisely developing a project so that the whole journey a minor makes to visit a relative inside prison is kinder, more welcoming and more thought out around their needs. Because this has an impact on the child, and it then transfers to school, to performance, to relationships with classmates, to what they explain and what they do not explain. It also has to do with the prejudices we all have, with mistrust and with the difficulty we sometimes have in empathising with a family that is going through this process.

Prejudices about these families also need to be broken down.
We always try to make visible that they are families like any other. And, therefore, they also need art, education, sport and opportunities to live through this situation in a less traumatic way, especially for children.

You insist a lot that we must also look at incarcerated people as fathers and mothers, and not only through the crime.
Yes, because the crime has already been judged. There are already people who look at that person as an offender, and that work is already being done. They are serving a sentence, more or less fair, but it is already there. Society already takes care of looking at that side. But that person is not only an offender; they can also be a father, a mother, a grandfather, an aunt, someone who has family bonds.

Besides, we are not only talking about the person who is in prison.
Of course, there are minors in between, children and young people affected by this situation. Here we have a social responsibility: to make sure they live through such a complex situation with the least possible impact. In the same way that we guarantee, with greater or lesser success, systems that judge people who have committed a crime, we must also be able to sustain the fact that there are families and minors linked to these situations.

‘Meraki’, one of your projects, works to put the family at the centre.
‘Meraki’ is a very broad project, which takes many perspectives into account. We do sports activities, for example with the Barça Foundation, and also therapeutic groups so that fathers, mothers and families can work on the whole emotional side. We also develop family gatherings inside prison to foster encounter and create quality spaces, and we train professionals in the prison system, because there are often shortcomings when it comes to working on the family sphere and the needs of minors. In addition, we have carried out research with the University of Salamanca to see what impact these activities have inside prison.

In these gatherings you try to create a friendly space.
Yes. When we organise a party in prison, for example, we think of it as a party that could take place in any sports centre in any town in Catalonia. Prisons have spaces such as theatres or sports halls, and that is where we set it up. We look at what interests the sons and daughters have, what ages there are, what fathers and mothers like to play, what they like doing with the children, and from there we begin to design the party. There may be a psychomotor activity area, board games, reading, instruments, a band playing, a theatre performance or a participatory game.

The party is created together with the fathers and mothers. They decorate the spaces, decide what is done and what is not done, and the families arrive at the centre on a Saturday morning to enjoy, for two or three hours, a space that could be any sports hall.

It is about creating a family experience, not just a visit.
The idea is that, for a while, they forget they are in prison. That the children do not have the feeling of being in a prison. This is what a child needs: quality spaces designed for them. Not just a three-by-three room, with a table and four chairs, where even a drawing cannot be brought in.

What does art provide that other support tools do not?
Art is a universal language, where everyone can feel identified regardless of age or cultural and family references. It helps us connect with who we are and how we are. It also makes it possible to share a moment of calm and creativity, to do something together, to let mental activity settle and begin to use the hands and the body, whether dancing, singing or creating. It is something that unites us and connects us. Children understand this language very well. They feel free in it, they can experiment, learn and bond through an artistic activity.

And for adults?
For adults, this step towards art is also a step towards childhood. They also need to express themselves with the body, with imagination, with sounds, with representation. It can be reading a story, performing a play or any other form of expression. What matters is being able to represent your here and now with your adult of reference.

What impact does the project have on children and families?
They tell us that they are much calmer, that they return to the modules with more desire to be well. These spaces really do bring calm and serenity. Families also arrive home calmer. A mother who accompanied her children to see their father explained it to me very clearly. When they came out of a private visit, the children spent the whole journey back, an hour and a half, crying. By contrast, when they came out of a party, they came out of a party, and the whole journey was spent talking about what had happened, what they had done and what they wanted to do at the next gathering.

The complexity that is part of any family must also appear.
Here the impact is living a positive family experience. At these parties, as at any party, many things can happen: disagreements, arguments between siblings or with the partner, moments of every kind. Not all family gatherings are a bed of roses. But that is precisely what it is about: building your family and having opportunities to be in a kind and calm space, where you can live your family reality in a healthier way and with many more opportunities.

You are evaluating these impacts.
Yes, all this is what we are seeing in the evaluation we do before and after each activity, with incarcerated fathers and mothers, families, children and professionals. What emerges is the idea of calm. For example, a mother who saw her son inside prison told us that now she knew where he was, that she could see he was well, that he had good companions, that the officers treated him well and that the space was appropriate. She left much calmer.

Does this also happen with children?
Yes, it also happens with children. Sometimes they ask: Mum, where do you sleep? But suddenly that child can go in and see it. Many of the activities we do in the Mothers’ Department, in the women’s prison, we do inside the same module where the mothers live with the small children. This allows siblings to see where their mother and their little brother or sister live. And it changes the image they had of it.

What would need to change for the prison system to better guarantee children’s right to maintain a quality bond with their imprisoned father or mother?
There would need to be a deep belief, with budgets and political decisions, that the family is key throughout the prison process. The family is also part of a sentence and, therefore, it must be taken into account and cared for, by providing opportunities for healthy and rich bonds to exist and for these processes to reach a good outcome. When people leave prisons, they need a good network, somewhere to hold on to and from which to build something positive. If we care for childhood and families within the prison system, we all benefit. Socially, we are caring for everything that surrounds these families and these children.