SOME mothers are busily making festive decorations, others are crawling on all fours pretending to be donkeys with excited toddlers on their backs while in a quiet corner a few are giving their babies milk and as many cuddles as possible before an early surprise visit from Santa.

It may look like a normal play group but this is as near as the mothers inside HMP Low Newton in County Durham will get to spending Christmas with their families.

Emotions will be running high after the precious four hours together, predicts Gill Ismail, the only family engagement worker for the 350 inmates from the charity Nepacs which supports prisoners and their families, who are often the forgotten victims of crime.

More than 50 per cent of Low Newton inmates get no visitors at all, with many are frightened that if they reveal that they have children they could be taken into care. Nationally, 26 per cent of women in prison have no previous convictions – more than double the figure for men at 12 per cent.

“Christmas it’s harder for the mums than the children who can be distracted. The women feel it more, so many of them say they just want Christmas over with,” she said.

For one father whose wife was locked up this time last year, looking after their 17 and 18-year-old had forced him to grow up, he thought.

“If they had been two and three I would probably have had a breakdown as she did everything. I used to pay for it but she would buy all the presents, I was one of the kids as well. We weren’t sure if she was going to get a prison sentence but she cooked Christmas dinner two weeks early and froze it. So we sat and ate our ready meals on Christmas Day without her.

“My life has completely changed as I do everything now so it will probably be strange when she comes home, I have definitely grown up,” he explained at a regular informal support group meeting for prisoner families held at the Nepacs visitor centre, one of seven run by the charity across the region.

Ministry of Justice figures revealed that an offender is 39 per cent less likely to reoffend following release if they have maintained family ties during their sentence.

However, only nine per cent of children whose mothers are in prison are cared for by their fathers in her absence, according to national figures from the Prison Reform Trust with grandparents predominantly taking over the parenting role.

One woman was looking forward to retirement with her husband when they suddenly had to step in and care for their grandchildren aged two and 11 full-time.

“I never thought I would have to be visiting a women’s prison and my daughter would be separated from her children. If it wasn’t for the team at Nepacs I don’t know what I would have done, coming here is such a calming influence and the team has provided support to us all.

“Unless you’ve been in our situation you cannot understand. What has happened has happened, there’s no going round it. I was angry with her and she knew it - there was no point in bottling it all up and then saying “Do you know what you’ve done?”

"It has been horrendous but she is my daughter and I will always be proud of her.”