Maternal Resilience

[ Silence ] >> Beyond the Stonewall's advisory collective, acknowledges the one jury people of the cooler nations, on whose unceded lands which we record on today. We respectfully acknowledge their ancestors and elders, past and present, and the traditional custodians and their ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia. [ Music ] >> I wanted to do it for a couple of reasons, but I really wanted to prove to my son, you know, good things can come out of bad situations, and if you commit your mind to something, you can achieve almost anything despite your circumstances. [ Music ] >> According to data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 7% of those who are incarcerated in Australian prisons are women. But while this number may seem small to some, over the past decade, the population of detained women has increased by 64%. In addition, recent figures from the Australian National University has revealed that 80% of these women are mothers. And the biggest concern that these mothers have is for their children, namely who will be responsible for the care of the child on the outside, and how will incarceration affect this relationship with their children. In this episode, we'll be having a conversation with Steph, who spent seven years in prison. We will address the various challenges she encountered during this period. And these challenges include coming to terms of her sentence and trying to balance her parental responsibilities while in prison. So, Steph, can you tell the listeners a bit about yourself? How did you become the person you are today? >> Look, I went to prison and I was really unwell. I probably didn't realize how unwell I was until some time passed and I had some time to reflect on things. I started to work on myself and get a bit better. But prison really changed my life in many ways. >> Going to prison is never a good circumstance. And we can all understand that. You or a mother when you went to prison. >> My child was five when I went to prison. >> How did it feel that enormity of knowing that was going to happen and that was going to be your life for the next seven years? >> So, I'd always hoped that I wouldn't end up in prison and certainly for as long as I did. But it was a massive shock to me and a huge reality check that really I wasn't prepared for nor was my family. >> How did this impact your whole family? Obviously, it impacted your child. Was there anyone else in your family that it impacted? >> Yeah. >> My son and I, I was a single mom before I went to prison. And my son and I lived alone together and we hadn't spent a night apart. My mom had said to me a couple of months before I went in, you know, if you end up going in, of course I'll look after your son. I guess I'm really lucky and grateful that I did have somebody to look after him. Yeah, I basically went to work. It's one day and never came home. So it was a huge shock for my child but also for my family. >> Yeah, it would have been and obviously not a lot of women, but there's a good portion or significant amount of women who do go to prison and don't have that support on the outside for their child. Sometimes they might be able to give it to friends, but sometimes kids get in up in the foster care system too. >> Yeah, it's very heartbreaking seeing all the the moms and the women in prison. It's just something that you have to take in your stride. You know, there aren't really any services or social workers or anybody to assist you with grieving the loss of your child. I was extremely lucky. My mom was committed to maintaining the relationship between my son and I. So she used to bring him to the maximum security facility that I was at. And they would have a four hour mother and children only visit every Sunday. Yeah, my mom would bring him to see me every Sunday for the first two and a half years that I was in prison. >> And was that a contact visit like you're a ladder? >> Yeah, it's something that's pretty unique, I guess, in the way that only the women system have it. But it's just children and their mothers. We would see it, we would play games, we would cuddle, we would read books. And just that one-on-one bond time is just so special. >> And speaking of those visitation days, how did that impact you? Did you find some challenges with that? >> It was really hard because, of course, in a maximum security, the officers are monitoring and surveilling sort of everything you're doing. That was difficult. But when it was time to leave, my son would never want to go home. And he used to cling to me. The officers would sort of have to pull him off me and then take him to the door where my mum was waiting sort of five meters away. It was heart-wrenching. Afterwards, I would just walk back to my cell and just try and hold the all the emotion in and just try and make it back to my cell so I could be alone and cry. >> Yeah, that must have been just really tough. >> It was really, really tough, but also it's one of those bittersweet, like so worth it. And I knew that we had to go through that to keep our, you know, to maintain that close relationship and bond that a mother and child have. >> And COVID would have affected that too then, wouldn't it? >> Oh my goodness, yeah. By the time COVID came round, I was at a minimum security facility and I had just begun having residential visits with my son and being eligible to go home and have family ties permits. And I think I'd had maybe two residential visits and I'd gone home for the first time in three and a half years. Then, yeah, COVID hit and all that got cancelled indefinitely. I think there was a period for eight months straight that I wasn't allowed to have any contact with my son other than phone and zooms. Certainly, we weren't allowed to see each other face to face at all and that was really difficult. It created just a little bit of distance between us. >> Did you notice a shift in your child? >> Yeah, so when we eventually were allowed to have contact visits again, we just didn't know how to be because we hadn't been together for so long but then there was this, you know, you're allowed to be in the same room but you can't touch. I felt the distance between us. >> So, going back, you've just entered prison or been in there for a couple of years. Was there any support programs to help you? Number one deal with the fact that you were in prison and being away from your child? >> There are very little limited services for people in prison in general but certainly by the way of counselling services, there's trauma counselling or drug and alcohol counselling. No, none of it's targeted specifically towards, you know, dealing with parenting or the loss of being a parent and the struggles you experience. >> What are our programs that focus on motherhood? >> I think there's two or three programs I can think of during my whole sentence that were offered the Triple P parenting program and there's tuning into teens or tuning into kids. Those programs do help. There's sort of short courses, maybe a five or six week program. If we were eligible for the program, certainly everyone participated in it. It was good just to be able to talk about parenting, talk about the challenges that we may face when we go home and but it was more generalized parenting advice rather than being a parent from prison. >> When they talk about challenges that you might face when you go home, did you find yourself applying those? >> I'd like to say yes, but reality is, when you come home, you try and juggle all the balls. There's so many things that you need to get your head around when you come home. You just try your best at everything, but I think I'm coming back down to earth and I'm getting a better grip on life work. I'd like to say I do apply them. I try my best anyway. >> Obviously, there were programs there, but what about the connections that you formed with the other women there? Was that really helpful and supportive? >> Yeah, it was. I used to always say that you don't make friends in prison and I take that back because I've made some really special, strong connections and relationships with women in there and all the women really have at the end of the day is each other. We used to lean on each other a lot and nine times out of ten if somebody else was going through something, one of us had been through it before and we could talk each other through it. >> Did you find that sometimes the women would stick together, that the mothers would stick together? >> Yeah, I guess so. When I was at the minimum security facility, we were able to have our children come and stay with us on the school holidays. The other women got to know our children as well. They would be able to come into the compound, play sport with us, go for a walk with us. Everybody got to see a different side of each other. That maternal side of the woman that you are, it gets hidden, you've sort of got to try and push that to the side. But when your children are there and everyone's seeing you, you connect on a different level, I think, as mothers. Yeah, and you probably have your guard up as well when you're in there, you're not, you can't really fully relax and be yourself. Did you find fit those feelings or was it something like this was nothing what I was expecting? Yeah, you see so many TV shows, but I had no idea what to expect. My reality was I had some pretty horrible run-ins with some pretty horrible women, especially at the beginning of my sentence. When you've got something to lose, other people have something to hang over your head. Yeah, somebody did something pretty horrible to me, and I had a school holiday visit with my son coming up, and this woman she knew that, so she held it against me because she knew I wouldn't do anything because I wouldn't risk losing that visit with my son. Very passive aggressive in certain ways. Yeah, it's hard to know who to trust in prison. It takes your long time, a really long time, to work out who you can trust, who's going to stand next to you, who's going to stand behind you, and who's going to, you know, try and trip you up. Maybe that makes an explanation why to sort of the mothers sort of stuck together because they know what's at stake and how important is to lose those visitations, lose those rights to their access to their childs. That doesn't make sense in a grand scheme of things. Yeah, and the mothers did, like, there's just a, I guess, a mutual respect. Not all the women in prison are mothers, but you can certainly tell the ones that are and the ones that want to be. I know they've got programs for mothers in there who've got, well, younger children, like infants, and up until school age. I know it in Queensland. It's called the Mums and Bubs program and in Victoria living with mum. Yeah, living with mum or yet, Mums and Bubs here. So I know about this program, but can you tell listeners about it? What does it entail? If your child is five or under and you meet certain criteria, you can apply to have your child come and live with you and reside in custody with you. A lot of people might think, oh my goodness, you can't keep children in prison, but if there's no one else suitable to look after that child, children are better off with their mums and the other women are very protective of the children that live within the prison. It sort of brings everybody a bit closer together and helps us focus on what's really important in life too. Yeah, and this is really important because it sort of works on a theory called the internal working model, that really important stage of forming attachments. So that's why they put these programs in there and again, it's not only for forming attachments, but it's again to help those mothers who don't have those carers on the outside. So they don't, the child doesn't end up in the foster system or, but they've done studies on this. So they found that the children who were housed with their mothers in prison exhibited fewer behavioral problems and they also were less likely to suffer from serious long-term emotional difficulties. For any listener that sits there and goes, oh well, I can't believe the child's in prison. It's actually a beneficial program for these children and also for their mothers because I found out that I'm probably the women who are housed with these children are significantly less likely to be reincarnated in the future. Yeah, I have a couple of friends that had their children in custody with them and I was a carer for two of the moms while I was there and that the program, the children in the prison, it just creates a better environment for everybody overall. Now speaking of people on the outside who support your child and you said your mother helped support your child more on the outside, was there any special services provided to her or any assistance during that time? It was really difficult for my mum at first so my mum basically left me in the courtroom and when collected my son. Mum ended up finding out about a grandparents line and a Facebook group for grandparents and they shared information on that. There were two programs offered within the prison. One was called Shine for Kids and they would run art activities at some of the mother and children visits and they would also try and help with transport and run school, holiday programs. The other program was run by a prison network and they used to come and pick my son up once a month and give my mum a break and they would drive him in and they'd bring him in for the mother and children's visit so that was really good. My mum got one day off a month. Well that must have been a great relief for her just to have her Sunday with its Sundays. Yeah, Sundays once a month because my mum used to drop my son off to spend four hours with me but then she would have to spend four hours and hour and a half away from where she lived and try and fill that time in so it was good that she got a break once a month. And then so I guess going back to the whole COVID conversation with the systems put in place for I mean you had to have Zoom calls, the facility have that available at that time so all the mothers could actually access their child for a Zoom. So I think that's a real positive of COVID and we've got to look at the positives and negatives even in everything. Before COVID we weren't allowed to have Zoom visits with our families. There was a pilot program one run once through VACRO but that finished. Out of COVID we were allowed to have I think three zooms a week with our friends and family and the zooms have continued on in the system now. So for people that can't spend hours in the car and bringing people in and and have small children or elderly parents at home that aren't able to come in, Zoom visits were a real positive. The prisons did get with the program pretty quick during COVID and all of a sudden we had tablets that we were allowed to access. We still supervised in a visit centre and they were all scheduled in but yeah it was certainly a positive out of COVID. Well that's amazing especially for again you got to think about the logistics for the person bringing the child they got to take off that day. They've got to sometimes they might have to take off work, the travel expenses, the cost. Then having to sit there and wait around is a sort of an easy way to manage that way. It is and women that didn't necessarily have a lot of contact with their children because they may live three, four, five hours away. They were all of a sudden able to have contacts with their children and of course friends and family as well. Well did you notice a shift in that as well in them? Yeah I did. People that didn't normally get visits much at all if any were all of a sudden you know having communication with loved ones it was great. And now that's stayed hasn't it? Yeah it's stayed. Zoom's have been cut down at the time that you're allowed to have on Zoom's has been restricted a bit now but yeah Zoom's certainly run within all the prison systems now. It's great. That's so amazing. Did you notice has visitations cut down like in person visitations cut down because of the Zoom now or is it pretty much the same? It's hard for me to judge because at the beginning of COVID the prison systems were so full but before COVID the prisons were really full. And during COVID you know judges and prosecution everybody changed the way that they looked at things you know did people necessarily need to be kept in prison and being incarcerated and a lot of people are on community orders now which is which is fantastic but prison numbers in Victoria are certainly much lower than they used to be. Yeah yeah I've noticed that. So touching on what we had spoken about before how coming home was hard. What specific challenges did you face coming back and you know becoming a full-time parent again? For me I came to live with my mother and my son and well I hadn't lived with my mum for nearly 20 years or so coming into my mum's home and she'd been the parent. I came home to return to be the parent to be the mum. My mum has always told me you're the mum you're the mother you need to take over but that's been a real challenge. I guess a little bit confusing for my son as well. Grandma was being the parent she was in charge and now mum's trying to be the parent and she's trying to be in charge and it's it's confusing for everyone and it's been I'd say the most challenging thing about coming home or one of the most challenging things about coming home. We have different ideals and certainly yeah we parent really differently and my mum still tries to parent me and then I'm trying to parent my son at the same time yeah and he's probably seeing you being parented by your mum. Yeah I always say she's the boss of me but I'm the boss of you. All right well at least you've got that established. Yeah. Yeah. What other challenge did you face not only being a mum but just in in general? I wanted to try and do everything I wanted to try and prove that I was okay and that I could do everything all at once and I think I was so well adjusted to being in prison because I'd spent so many years in there. That was my comfort zone that was my comfortable place so all of a sudden you know I had to learn how to be myself and it sounds ridiculous but I would get anxiety just going to the supermarket and the shops because you just not used to it. Nothing can prepare you for those small challenges that you know make no logical sense to you but you feel so overwhelmed by the smallest things. It's a sensory overload that you're not used to and at first prison is really difficult to get used to and get your head around but after a while you adapt and then that's all you know. So when you come home you've got to you've got to flip that and do it in reverse. So yeah I just found trying to reconnect with everybody, re-establish myself, work out who I am, what I want to be in the community. It's been a lot. Yeah it would be like trying to reinvent yourself. Yeah I guess so. Look I think I worked out who I am while I was in prison. Now I just have to try and put things in place so that I can be the person that I know I am and that I want to be out here but you constantly feel like you've got to prove yourself to everybody and that can get a bit exhausting. So was there something surprising that you learned about yourself while you were incarcerated? I learnt so much about myself but I think a lot of people would come especially women would come to prison and you know maybe for a couple of months or a couple of years and they would say to me wow you're so strong you're so brave you're so resilient you know how do you do it and I just think it's amazing what you can do when you have to do it. Like you've got no choice. I sat and I cried and I was unhappy for the first 18 months or year or so but I got to a point where you know I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and I knew that there was a better way to live and I just had to sort of get my head around it and put in positive actions so that I could be in a better place. I guess you just you really dug deep and found I guess strength you never thought you had. Yeah yeah. So then with this strength and this knowledge that you have now what advice would you give to mothers who are navigating or do navigate challenges in prison? Yeah being a mom in prison and being separated from your child is probably one of the most gut-wrenching heart-breaking experiences and part of you know being in prison but just persevere. I used to see a lot of women that would purposely disconnect from you know their family or the outside because it was just simply too painful for them you know they didn't they didn't want to go to the phone and make phone calls home they didn't want to have visits because seeing their kids in a jumpsuit in a maximum security facility was too hard for them or too hard for their children but I think that connection is certainly important don't give up on being a mom you know. Well thanks thanks for that so you are a graduate now of the Inside Out program we had Dr. Marietta Martinovic on our very first pilot episode who introduced that Inside Out program and you completed that correct? I did I think being part of Inside Out was a real game changer for me it got me thinking again it got my sleepy brain awake again and I felt like I could actually achieve things so I yeah I did Inside Out and then I joined the the think tank within the prison the women's system and I'm still part of well I'm part of the external beeswax think tank now and has been inside out are you thinking about did you study in there or you think about going back to study again one day or I'd sort of given up on myself and my ability to study you know I'd studied when I finished year 12 and I you know I went to uni and then that was it but when I studied in prison it actually got me excited and it helped me realize that I do have a brain and I can still use it and I can use it for good things after a little while yeah I went on to do some distance education and I actually completed a post-grad while I was incarcerated. Wow that's one achievement yeah you must be proud hey I am proud but I really wanted I wanted to do it for a couple of reasons but I really wanted to prove to my son you know good things can come out of bad situations and if you commit your mind to something you can achieve almost anything despite your circumstances. Wow I also wanted to make my mum proud again yeah all right Steph we'll wrap it up there but as always on this podcast and in Inside Out we're gonna leave on a word so this word can and I know you've done this many times but this word can be describing how you felt how you feel now or how you feel about the future but my word and you mentioned it before is connection and just how important connection is to everyone connection is for a mother to her child I think connection in general is just such a vital thing that sometimes we forget about and we draw form so thank you for providing me with your story and letting me connect to you today so I really appreciate your time. Thanks Nicola. I think my word for today is emotional thinking about my time in prison my journey my family's journey and all the journey's involved it brings up so much so much emotion for me my child was five when I went to prison and 12 when I came home and I just hope that everything I did over those years and everything my mum did and and and the help from all those services you know I hope that we have protected him emotionally enough but reality is you know we were we were separated and I wasn't there for him every time that he fell over and hurt his knee so I just yeah it's my words emotional. I really appreciate that and I really appreciate you opening up and your time thank you for being our guest and letting us explore what it's like for mothers in the system I really appreciate everything that you shared and what you've experienced and how you've grown as a person and who you are now and I'd just like to thank listeners for training in again I have links for the statistics provided in the description links for mums and bubs and living with mum program and obviously links for these work so thank you once again and we'll see you next time. you