Dealt an ACE

An evaluation of a project delivered by Pact at HMP / YOI Brinsford

Dr Graham Durcan

Poor mental health is the norm, not the exception, among people in prison. People in prison often carry deep psychological wounds, rooted in adversity and trauma. Up to 90% of young people who have offended have experienced highly stressful, and potentially traumatic events during childhood, and are significantly more likely than their peers to have experienced four or more of these events. As well as supporting better mental health, dealing with childhood trauma also supports rehabilitation, as it helps to tackle the roots causes of the behaviour that leads people to become caught up in the criminal justice system.

Pact’s Dealt an ACE intervention was a novel, casework-based initiative designed to support young men in prison who have experienced significant trauma, known as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The project offered a programme of individual support and took place at HMP Brinsford Young Offenders Institute in Staffordshire over three years. The project was funded by The Eveson Trust, Sir Halley Stewart Trust, The Rayne Foundation and The Barrow Cadbury Trust and ended in May this year. 

Our evaluation finds that Dealt an ACE helped young men build resilience, improve wellbeing and self-esteem, cope more effectively with the symptoms of trauma and plan for the future. All of the young men we spoke to were very positive about the project and felt that they had benefitted from their engagement with it. For virtually all of these young men, ‘resilience’ was a new concept, and an empowering one, as was connecting traumatic experiences in their past with their present thought. The research also found that the project raised awareness among prison staff about the prevalence and impact of trauma in childhood on people’s mental health.   

Dealt an ACE offers promising evidence that targeted, trauma-informed support can make a positive difference in the lives of young men in custody. The report calls for the prison service and the NHS to prioritise trauma-informed work in prisons to improve mental health, by:

• Developing a programme of trauma-informed training for all those working in prison
• Improving access to therapies and peer support within prisons and supporting people with their transition on release
• Embedding trauma-informed principles across all aspects of prison life, including education, health care, and release planning.

The Dealt an ACE project was funded by The Eveson Trust, Sir Halley Stewart Trust, The Rayne Foundation, The Barrow Cadbury Trust, Grantham Yorke Trust, Michael Marsh Charitable Trust and the Edward and Dorothy Cadbury Charitable Trust.