Designing better support for people with experience of care and women’s prison

The model has been co-designed by women with lived experience of care and custody alongside practitioners and leaders across prisons, probation, local authorities and community organisations. It aims to create more joined-up support, helping women navigate custody and release with the relationships, stability and practical support they need to thrive.

Our impact

Care-experienced people are significantly overrepresented in the women's prison estate. Around 31% of women in prison have experience of the care system, compared with around 2% of the general population (Women in Prison, 2023). 

The experiences of care-experienced women are often shaped by multiple and overlapping inequalities, including poverty, racism, neurodivergence, gender-based violence and insecure immigration status. Many women leave prison without the family networks and support systems that others can rely on, increasing the risk of isolation, poor outcomes and reoffending.

Women with care experience often tell us that support can feel fragmented, confusing and difficult to navigate. Different services may be working with the same person, but not always working together.

Connections was designed to address this challenge.

Building on learning from the Always Hope model, which supports care-experienced young men in prison, Connections creates a more coordinated approach that brings together prison, probation, local authority and community-based support around each woman.

The Connections model 

The model is built around four key elements:

Our approach

Connections was co-designed by three groups working together throughout the process.

• The Lived Experience Design Team - a group of care-experienced women at HMP Foston Hall used their experiences, insights and ideas to lead the design of the model and shape the changes they wanted to see.
   
• The Design Team - a group of practitioners from prison, probation, children's social care, women's centres, mental health services and the voluntary sector worked together to design and test new approaches.
   
• The Steering Group - leaders from HMPPS, local authorities, charities, national organisations and lived experience panels provided strategic oversight and helped create the conditions for long-term change.

The design process was guided by six core principles:

1. We are led by women with lived experience and value their insight, strength and leadership.
    
2. We take a trauma-informed, anti-racist and gender-responsive approach in everything we do.
    
3. We recognise power, reflect on it and work to share it fairly.
    
4. We design to challenge inequality and reduce harm, not reproduce it.
    
5. We build on existing strengths in people, relationships and communities.
    
6. We learn through testing, reflection and continuous improvement.

A message from our lived experience co-design team:

Why this matters

We are women and people who’ve been in care and in prison.
We’ve been let down by systems that don’t always work together — or work for us.

We’ve been through trauma, loss and big changes.
These things didn’t just hurt — they happened in systems that failed to protect us and sometimes caused more harm.

Some of us don’t have family we can rely on.
Some of us can’t see our children.
Some of us don’t know where we’ll live after prison.
Some of us don’t know who to turn to for help.

But we are not just what’s happened to us.
We are strong. We are creative. We look after each other.
We know our own lives better than anyone else.

That’s why we’re not just asking for better support —
We’re working together to build it. 

- From the Lived Experience Design Team

What’s next?

Connections was co-designed between September 2025 and May 2026.

The model will now be prototyped at HMP Foston Hall from June 2026 to May 2027. We are delighted to have secured funding for a dedicated Care Experience Specialist, hosted by Anawim Women’s Centre in Birmingham, to support delivery of the prototype.

Through the prototype phase, we will test the model in practice, learn what works, and explore how the approach could be sustained and spread more widely.

If you would like to see a plain text version of any of these documents please email sophie.todd@innovationunit.org 

A poem from our co-design team

This poem was written by a member of the Lived Experience Design Team and reflects the vision that sits at the heart of Connections.

Care experienced
Locked up inside
Going out of our minds

Got no support
We all need help
Can’t do this on our own

We asked for help
For too long
Now we take a stand

Rising up, building on each other
People take time to talk
But talk they do

About their feelings, their hopes
Holding one another
Through good and bad

Talk, listen
To our views, our past
See who we really are

We are not our past
Our future awaits
Beyond the locked gates