WELCOME
A Message from Kate Paradine, Women in Prison (WIP)’s CEO: We are so pleased that we are able to share this new booklet as part of Women in Prison’s National Lottery funded Healthy Foundations project. We know that this has been the hardest of years for those in prison - in terms of physical and mental health. As a team we want to do all we can to help make sure that recovery from the pandemic marks a turning point for women in prison to help support each of you to focus on a healthy future in prison and in communities after release. The new Creating Community Connections project that we are running in partnership with Brighton Women’s Centre, Anawim, Together Women and Nelson Trust aims to connect every woman in prison to her local women’s centre. A new National Women’s Prisons Health and Social Care Review has been launched by the NHS and Prison Service, which will be asking you your views on what can improve on health and social care in prison - please look out for information about this so your voice can be heard. Please take care and keep in mind the beautiful words of the brilliant activist and author, Angela Davis (a favourite of the Women in Prison team) - “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Hello… And welcome to the WIP Health Magazine which has been put together by the Healthy Foundations team at Women in Prison. We hope you will find this magazine useful and informative. We also hope that it will help you feel a bit more in control of your health and inspire you to take care of your wellbeing. As there are so many things to cover under the umbrella of health, we have chosen to focus on some topics that have been suggested to us by the women we work with. 4 H E A LT H Y F O U N DAT I O N S
Thank you! We would like to say a warm thank you to all the women - across prisons and in the communitywho have helped with this magazine either through focus groups or direct contributions such as art or writing. Your ideas, advice and creativity have been crucial! We also want to extend a big thank you to the National Lottery Community Fund who funds our project, including the booklet you are holding in your hand.
…so who is WIP? Women in Prison (WIP) works in prisons and in the community to support women affected by the criminal justice system, as well as campaign for their rights.
…so what is Healthy Foundations? After the success of Women in Prison’s Health Matters project which ran from 2016-2019, we were successful in securing funding for a new three year health project. Women in Prison’s Healthy Foundations project began at the end of 2019 and is kindly funded by the National Lottery Community Fund. We want to empower and support women to have a better understanding of their health. With so many other things to keep us busy in life and worry about, our health is sometimes forgotten about, or ends up being at the bottom of our list. We want to change that by encouraging women to think about their health and wellbeing and give it the attention it deserves. Healthy Foundations aims to do this by providing health and wellbeing related advocacy, support, and advice, working Through-The-Gate (this means helping to prepare and support women on the day of their release from custody) and in the community with women in, or returning to, London. We also provide health information and education; giving the women we work with the resources to make their own decisions around their health and wellbeing. We work in a woman-centred, non-
