It's not easy being a prison dad - especially with Christmas looming. STEPHEN LEWIS reports.

CHANCES are that if there is anyone you're going to feel sorry for this Christmas, it won't be one of the inmates at Her Majesty's Prison Wolds. Or any other prison, for that matter.

After all, these men made their choices and are paying the price. If they're spending a miserable Christmas behind bars, missing home and family, then they have only themselves to blame.

The same cannot be said of their families, however. This Christmas, around 125,000 children in the UK will be missing a mum or dad who is in prison. And it certainly isn't the children's fault.

Sandy Watson understands the anguish many prisoners and their families endure. As parenting and family learning co-ordinator at HMP Wolds, near Market Weighton, she has helped hundreds of prisoners get to grips with being a dad in prison. And Christmas is the worst time.

"There was one man who rang home on Christmas Day, and it ended up with the whole family in tears," she recalls. "He said: 'Was it worth it? It is Christmas Day and I have just put the phone down and the whole family are in tears because I'm not there. I've got four kids on the phone crying and I've just spoiled it for them. What am I supposed to do?'"

It's not an easy question. In an attempt to find an answer, Sandy has spent the past three years working with inmates at HMP Wolds and with Sheron Rice of Care For The Family. The result of those three years of interviews and discussions is Daddy's Working Away, a 'guide to being a dad in prison' which combines moving first hand testimony from prisoners and their families with straight-talking advice on how to cope and how to hold the family together.

The sad truth is that often a prison spell can see the end of a relationship - difficult enough at the best of times, heartbreaking when there are children involved. Trying to help prisoners and their families work through the problems and retain a sense of family is vital, Sandy says - and not only for the sake of the children, although that's hugely important.

"The evidence shows that if you can keep the family together, the inmate is less likely to re-offend," she says. "So if we can keep families together we're doing a great service, for their relationships and for society."

Daddy's Working Away has been supplied to every prison in the UK, for use by prisoners themselves and professionals working in prisons.

And it seems to be striking a chord, Sandy says. One prisoner at HMP Wolds, after reading a section of the book, was puzzled. "He came to the family learning session, read the book, and then said: 'Is this about me?'" she recalls. "He could identify with something one of the other inmates had written so much that he thought it must have been about him."

Updated: 12:23 Wednesday, December 10, 2003