Children whose parents are in prison remain one of the least visible groups in Europe, and for many of them, visiting a parent behind bars is an experience marked by fear, uncertainty and shame. This is why the CHILD TRUST project (Children visiting parents - Training EU prison staff), which Roda is implementing under the Erasmus+ programme, focuses on the people who are the first to welcome children into a prison: prison officers. On 28 and 29 May 2026, France hosted the fourth and final transnational training of the project, rounding off a series of meetings that over the past six months brought together professionals from four countries.
The closing training was hosted by the French partner organisation Relais Enfants Parents Île-de-France, which has been working for decades to keep children and their imprisoned parents connected. Before France, transnational trainings were held in Milan in November 2025, in Krakow in March 2026 and in Croatia on 23 and 24 April 2026, when participants from the partner countries visited Požega Penitentiary and took part in an expert programme in Zagreb. Each of these meetings was an opportunity to compare different prison systems and to reflect together on what actually helps children when they come to a prison.
Day one: difficult real-life situations brought to the stage
The first day of the training took place at IRTS Montrouge, an institute for social work training near Paris, and was designed as collective work on real situations from professional practice. Working in national groups, participants each described a demanding and complex situation they had encountered when receiving children and their parents, and analysed how everyone involved had reacted, from the child and the parent to the officers on duty. This approach put the knowledge prison officers already have at the centre of the training, rather than delivering it to them from the outside.
In the afternoon, actors from the French improvisation league performed these situations, and then, drawing on participants' comments and suggestions, played them again with a different outcome. Some of the prison officers joined the role-play themselves to try out different ways of communicating in sensitive moments. The discussions that followed were among the liveliest of the entire project. The experts who accompanied the work, representatives of the French prison administration and psychologists from Relais Enfants Parents, underlined something Roda has been repeating since the start of the project: empathy and security requirements are not at odds with each other. On the contrary, an empathetic approach helps difficult moments during meetings between children and their parents pass more smoothly and more safely.
Day two: what a prison that keeps children in mind looks like
Participants spent the second day at Fleury-Mérogis Prison, the largest prison in Europe. There they toured the spaces set aside for visiting children: play areas in the family waiting rooms and dedicated child-parent rooms used when a visit takes place in the presence of a third party, for instance with the support of Relais Enfants Parents or child protection services. These are spaces designed so that a child enters an environment that does not frighten them and that supports contact with their parent.
For participants from Croatia, Italy and Poland, this was a chance to see first-hand how families are received in the French system and to talk with prison staff and the institutional representatives who run these facilities.
What kind of training do Europe's prison officers need?
On the afternoon of the second day, at the CETOP prison staff training centre within Fleury-Mérogis, participants reviewed the results of a questionnaire on their expectations of the future European training programme. The conclusions were clear. Prison officers want training that starts from their own experience and includes testimonies, simulations, reflection on their own practice and exchange with colleagues from other countries. They also pointed out something that is often overlooked: without the active involvement of prison governors and heads of department, new practices remain a matter of individual goodwill and are hard to sustain in everyday work.
Two formats were proposed: in-person training lasting three to five days, or a hybrid model combining distance learning with face-to-face sessions. Participants also identified seven priority topics: the legal and institutional framework and children's rights; the needs and experiences of children with a parent in prison and the preservation of family ties; the role and professional boundaries of prison staff; professional attitudes and appropriate communication; the organisation of reception and the design of child-friendly spaces; security, prevention and handling of sensitive situations; and partnerships and networking around the child and the family.
Particular emphasis was placed on the idea that trained officers should become a source of support for their colleagues, through mentoring and peer support, so that knowledge spreads within the system rather than staying with a single cohort of trainees.
The lessons from all four transnational trainings now feed into the final phase of the project: the development of the CHILD TRUST European educational toolkit, which will contain materials, methodological guidance and tools for training prison officers in the partner countries and, in the longer term, more widely across Europe. For Roda, this continues the work we began with the national trainings at the Training Centre in Zagreb and at Lepoglava Penitentiary, with the same conviction we brought into the project: children whose parents are in prison have done nothing wrong, they have a right to their parents, and every visit that passes without fear or humiliation is a small but real contribution to their childhood.CHILD TRUST project wraps up its final transnational training in Paris
