At a Sydney correctional centre, this prison chaplain is helping make the Christmas season as meaningful as possible.
as not all prisoners are able to receive visitors.
The hallways of Dillwynia Women's Correctional Centre, where hundreds of women will spend Christmas without their families. She says December is "probably the hardest part of the year" for a Christian prison chaplain but, she immediately adds, it's "a privilege and an honour to be there … to be able to support the women."Prison chaplains in Australia date all the way back to the First Fleet and, like the makeup of the country itself, the role has changed dramatically over the centuries.
"Along the way, I get to learn about other faiths … There is great joy sitting in this mix on a daily basis." For Ms Groot, a typical week can include helping with programs that encourage a positive lifestyle, spending time conversing with the women and running services on Sunday. Sometimes she facilitates live-streamed funerals or runs memorial services.
"So I think we forget that the women who are incarcerated ― they're someone's daughter, someone's mother, someone's sister. And I think we're very quick to just look at why they are there, as opposed to who they are as a person," she says.
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