ILLITERATE Wanganui prisoners will soon be helped to learn how to read by their own children.
The mentoring is part of an adult literacy project starting at Wanganui Prison by Massey University researchers, partnered by the Wanganui District Library.
Massey University project manager Niki Culligan said children would from September or October
go to the prison to spend one-on-one time with their fathers.
"We are encouraging reading between parent and child.
"We want the father and child to bond through literacy activities."
Research overseas had shown that fathers who were more bonded with their families were less likely to reoffend, she said.
"Children will spend quality time with the parent that they wouldn't normally get, and learn at the same time."
The programme is part of a larger project called "the literacy and employment project", that has been running in Wanganui for two and a-half years.
Ms Culligan said the project's objectives were to examine the learning needs of adults and look at what barriers they faced for their learning and employment.
The programme was currently being run through a local primary school and would transfer out to the prison later this year.
The Massey project team and Corrections Department were still working out a schedule for the educational and bonding visits.
The project would begin as a pilot because it had never been done before.
The research team was looking at offering the programme to Year One and Two students with fathers in prison.
At this stage, they were only considering the literacy programme for fathers at Wanganui Prison with children, but would develop the scheme if it proved successful, Ms Culligan said.
"We are piloting it at the Wanganui Prison, will work on it, and expand it to other prisons in the country."
The programme was initiated by Massey adult literacy researcher Dr Franco Vaccarino, whose research interests lay in family literacy projects.
Dr Vaccarino, who has had prior experience working in prison, will run workshops in the prison on how to share literacy activities.
His idea was developed at the end of last year. Till now the research team has been working on organising and gaining formal approvals.
Numbers of children participating were not known at this stage, Ms Culligan said.
