‘ <i>At Least I Get to Visit Him, That's All That Matters</i> ’: Maintaining Contact With a Family Member in Prison, Developing a Child‐Centred Framework for Change

From its inception, this project was a partnership between academia and two voluntary sector organisations that support families experiencing imprisonment with the core project team being split between academic and practice-based partners (reflected in this article's authorship). An international stakeholder group was also convened to support the study across its duration and who supported the research team in the development of research questions, topic guides and participant materials, guided the interpretation of our findings, and provided input into our impact and dissemination strategy. This group met quarterly and included representation from voluntary sector and grassroots organisations, academics with experience of working with children, families and justice-involved populations, prison and probation service colleagues and creative practitioners. Aligned with this partnership approach, we established regular satellite check-ins with other voluntary sector organisations across the United Kingdom who support families experiencing imprisonment to embed relationality and feedback loops for actionable change. Five study participants were involved in the co-creation of comics, illustrated by Jack Brougham (see 'Materials and methods' section for further insight). Finally, during the analysis, dissemination and impact phases of the project, we worked with a youth board of children with experience of familial imprisonment (recruited through a partner organisation) to sense-check our findings and to develop a campaign video (an approach chosen by the board). The video was based on the analysis of project data and the youth board's own experiences. This process was held over 3 full-day sessions, co-facilitated by a locally based arts organisation and involved a range of creative activities. Participants were thanked for their time with gift vouchers. Both processes with young people (data collection and engagement activity) further informed our analysis and were fundamental to shaping our three Cs framework, a framework co-produced with our core voluntary sector partners and illustrated by Nifty Fox.