By Simitie Lavaly | Project Leader
In the last six months, the number of infants incarcerated with their mothers in the Freetown Female Correctional Centre (FFCC) has risen from three to nine. It is often in the child’s best interests to remain with their detained mother when they lack adequate alternative options. However, young children place an additional burden on the scarce resources of the Sierra Leone Correctional Service often leaving mothers without the resources to adequately meet their needs.
During AdvocAid’s regular monitoring of the FFCC, the mothers told our Programme Officer that they needed help taking care of their children. In April, AdvocAid delivered welfare packages specifically for the needs of these mothers. In addition to soap, detergent, and other toiletries, we provided the mothers with re-usable nappies for their children. The women were particularly grateful for the nappies. Single-use nappies would leave them dependent on regular donations from outside the Correctional Centre, but with re-usable nappies the women were able to look after their children independently.
Regular monitoring of detention facilities means that AdvocAid can respond to the individual needs of women and girls in detention. Our Social Work Volunteer has been visiting Aminata*, a 15-year-old girl serving her sentence in the ‘Approved School’, a detention centre for juvenile convicts. She would be in the third year of Junior Secondary School, and is due to sit her Basic Education Certificate Examinations in June this year. However, her detention has interrupted her education. Her most pressing need was for text books to enable her to prepare for two exams in Religious and Moral Education and Home Economics. AdvocAid was able to provide these resources so that Aminata could continue her studies and will be able to sit her exams in June.
We can only support the rights of women and girls in detention with your support. Thanks to you, our donors, we can help mothers and infants to live with dignity in detention and ensure that girls like Aminata can still receive an education while serving a sentence. These activities make prison a less traumatic experience and enable reintegration upon release.
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*Names have been changed to protect the individuals’ identities
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