Elinor Mason, HMP Portland
Elinor Mason
Elinor has been a dedicated volunteer to the service at HMP Portland since she approached Barnardo’s wanting to gain more confidence and understanding of how families are affected by imprisonment. Elinor supports during the visits that take place, she has a calm, friendly nature with the children & young people that puts them at ease on arriving. She is curios, enthusiastic, reflective in her role and continuously demonstrates emotional intelligence when supporting families.
Elinor has also supported with the prisoner induction, often twice a week where she meets with new arrivals at the prison to talk about the services that Barnardo’s offer. When Covid–19 stopped the visits at the prison this was a particularly hard time for the children, families & offenders. Elinor recognised this and early on during lockdown she took it upon herself to make some ‘keeping in touch’ activity packs to support the children in playing with their Dad’s during video calls and in preparation for the visits when they return. Elinor put in a huge amount of time, detail and consideration to make the packs look inviting and eye catching. These packs have been shared with other services and have been a key innovative piece in the family video calls that take place.
Elinor has truly gone over & above in her role to make this exceptionally hard time as positive as possible to ensure that the children & families can use their video call time for some positive family experiences, which in turn will have a huge impact in not only strengthening the family relationship but as research informs, reducing the rate of reoffending
This year’s Regional Winners are:
- – Central – Aribah Mohamed
- – London – Siya Raicar
- – Northern England – Katie Parker
- – South East – Remi Burton
- – Scotland – Eve Ion