Kate Fraser
When Safety and Connection Collide: Risk, Relationship, and Voice in Women’s Secure Settings
Workshop Abstract
Women in secure settings often present with complex histories of trauma, abuse, and relational harm. As a result, relational practice—building trust, fostering safety, and supporting voice—is central to meaningful engagement. However, practitioners operate within systems that prioritise risk management, accountability, and public protection. These dual imperatives can come into sharp conflict, particularly in moments of disclosure, boundary negotiation, and escalating concern.
This workshop critically explores the tension between care and control in work with women in custody, including those who have sexually harmed. It will consider how gendered pathways, trauma, and experiences of shame and betrayal shape women’s responses to authority, trust, and information-sharing. It will also examine how risk-focused cultures can unintentionally reproduce relational harms or lead to defensive practice.
Using interactive, case-based discussion, participants will be invited to engage with complex, real-world dilemmas where there is no clear “right” answer. The session will support reflection on how practitioner values, anxiety, and organisational context influence decision-making, and what it means to work relationally within constrained environments.
The workshop aims to move beyond “either/or” thinking, offering a more nuanced approach to holding risk, relationship, and voice together in practice. Participants will leave with practical strategies to navigate these tensions while maintaining both safety and relational integrity.
About the Speaker
Kate has worked with Women in Prison since 2009 in various roles including frontline programmes and was integral to setting up the WomenMATTA centre in Manchester. Since then she has undertaken work across a number of different initiatives both in community and custody. Her role now centres on co-production which is where her passion lies, ensuring that women’s voices are heard both within Women in Prison’s national magazine, Still I Rise, and more widely at strategic and operational levels.