From Prison to Purpose

Transcript of conversation with Rhia Canady published 22 July 2026

Transcript prepared by JAS Virtual Services.

You can listen to the conversation here or watch it here

Today we’re meeting with Rhia Canady. Rhia is the founder of Fly Girl Foundation. She’s also a mother, a chef, and a caterer, and she’s going to tell us all about that.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:01:05 - 00:01:11]

Great to meet you, Rhia. Glad you could join us today. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to be in the position that you are in now?

Rhia Canady [00:01:13 - 00:02:02]

Yeah, so, my name’s Rhia. Like we just said. In 2023, I went to prison for concern in supply of Class A drugs and possession with intent to supply times 2. I spent 11 months in prison and served 6 months on tag and a further 18 months on licence. That was the first time I’d ever been to prison. And that came after, I would say, maybe a decade’s worth of trauma, like built-up trauma that I’d been through. My daughter’s father was killed through a knife crime attack in 2020. And I was left to be a single mother, widowed mother, partner. And she was only 2 and a half at the time. So it was a pretty tricky time trying to navigate everything. I’m an only child as well.

So I felt quite alone at that time. I do have great parents, but sometimes when we’re going through things, the people that are or should be the closest to us are the people that we probably stay away from at times. So yeah, in 2023, I was arrested on the 6th of April. It was the day before Good Friday, Easter bank holiday weekend. And I spent 6 days in Patchway Police Station. That’s because of the bank holidays. So I was arrested on the Thursday, transported to court, or I was charged and then transported to court on the Saturday, but no prisons in the UK were accepting women over the bank holiday.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

So I was placed back in Patchway for a further approximately 4 days. I arrived at Eastwood Park Prison Tuesday evening. I’m not sure the date. I think it was around the 13th, the 10th or 12th at that point, where I spent the next 10 months on remand. And then I was sentenced in the November after pleading guilty, which took me quite a long time to decide if I was pleading guilty or not because I didn’t feel that I was guilty of the charges brought before me. I was definitely guilty of having something in my possession, whether it was to supply or no, I would probably still argue to this day, but given the quantity of the amount of drugs, I felt like I had to accept the charges brought before me because my daughter was alone in the world at that point and she needed a mum.

So I pled guilty and I wrote a letter to the judge explaining to him how I think I had got before him at 32, having never been arrested before, never even been in any trouble before. And I was quite fortunate that the judge listened to my letter and heard what I had to say. And he told me that if I was ever before him again, it would be a very different circumstances. And I’d been preparing for like an 8-year sentence at that point. And that’s what my barristers told me to prepare yourself for, that kind of mark and that kind of sentence. And in my head I’m thinking, like, my daughter’s, she’s now 5 at the time when I was being sentenced. 8 years, that’s a long time.

That’s a lot of time I would be missing out on. But again, I was quite lucky and the judge gave me a 5-year sentence reduced to 2 years, 4 months, which meant I went back to prison for approximately 13 days and then I was returned home. I returned home on tag. During my tag time, I think that’s when I probably struggled the most. I think the sort of person I am, and can’t speak for everybody, but I know a lot of women that we wear masks a lot of the time. And when I went to prison, I didn’t know what to expect. I’d only ever seen prisons on the TV and films and things. I’d never been inside a prison unless it was for a visit.

And that’s completely different as to actually being inside the prison, being a prisoner. And I didn’t feel that I belonged there. I guess a lot of women feel like they don’t belong there, but the sort of women I was amongst, I didn’t feel that this was a life that I could continue with or even want to be around. Like, I couldn’t even understand at that point how I got there. So I feel like the work began in prison. Because I started to do a lot of reflecting, understanding, trying to understand where things had gone wrong for me, what I could have done differently. But then when I came out on tag, I think we all have like an idea of what life’s like, what life will be like for us when we step out of the gate. And I was in complete and utter shock. I thought I was going to jump back into life, go straight back to work, do everything that I’d been doing before.

But actually, I was trying to navigate even walking up and down the stairs after 8 o’clock at night. And I can go to the fridge anytime I want, and I can just go outside. So yeah, I think the work began on myself whilst I was on tag. And then I ran a small catering company, before I went to prison and also that was like my bread and butter. When I got out of prison, I picked that up straight away. And it was within, I was limited on time because I was on tag. I had a 7 o’clock curfew. So I had to try and find a way to make some money to keep the household afloat, but still within my restrictions.

So I picked back up my catering business and a company I’d worked with inside Eastwood Park reached out to me, they’re called RIFT Social Enterprise, reached out to me and asked me if I would be interested in doing an interview around what it’s like to be self-employed as a woman coming out of prison, which I was more than happy to do. So I went to London, it was quite professional. We had the famous photographer Miss Anne Harriman came and took the photos, and it was in Camden Market. It was a great day, and I told my story there.

And people kept saying to me, oh, we think you’d be great at lived experience work. And I didn’t really even know what that was at the time. It’s not a world I was really used to. And then just through networking, I received an email to say, an organisation called the Triangle Trust were looking for trustees, people of lived experience. It would be working on a grants board, looking at grants for organisations that support women and young girls. When I was around 15, I worked on a grants panel as a young representative. So I knew quite a lot about grants, so I applied, and again, that lived experience word had come up, and I was sent to London to this really fancy building.

And I still had a tag on my foot at the time, so it was all quite daunting for me. It was all, I was pushing myself into a new space, but I still wasn’t really sure why I was doing it at the time. Anyway, I went to London. Met the ladies, they were absolutely lovely, and I got the role. And within a few months, because that was like the June, and I came off tag at the end, mid-June, by the November, they’d sent me an invite to come to the House of Lords for an evening in honour of their 75th anniversary. And I couldn’t believe that I was being invited to the House of Lords. I think I was definitely suffering from imposter syndrome. And still unsure, but I felt like I was at a bit of a crossroads. If I didn’t dive into it, who knows what life might be like? So I went, went along and I felt like a small fish in the sea.

I was very overwhelmed. There was lots of what I thought were professionals, people asking me what do I do for a living and what have I been doing for the last few years and what would I say? My partner was killed and I’ve been to prison, I’ve just come off tag and now I’m in the House of Lords. None of it, no matter how I played it in my head, nothing sounded right. So I kind of just lingered in the background a bit. Yeah, I kind of just lingered in the background. And then a young girl took the microphone and gave a speech, and she looked quite similar to me and her story sounded quite similar to mine, and suddenly I was like really engaged in the room.

And she has her own lived experience, but now runs an organisation that helps young girls who may be care experienced or school exclusion on the pipeline of being involved with the criminal justice system. And that sparked something in me, I instantly wanted to have a conversation with this lady when she finished giving her talk. And then I came back to Bristol and just started working nonstop, putting ideas down and networking. And then the idea of Fly Girl Foundation came where I felt like I could help women who may have been through some kind of disadvantage, whatever that looks like, because looking back and reflecting on my life, I could see multiple points where some kind of support or intervention I would’ve really benefited from. And had I have had that, I may not have gone to prison.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:10:58 - 00:11:29]

Yeah, I mean, Rhia, it’s an amazing journey. I wonder if we could just go back a bit because there’s so much that you’ve had to say that I think listeners will be really interested to hear more about. I was thinking about, you know, you said, to be going to prison for the first time at 32 is quite unusual, isn’t it? Quite often people have been to prison previously. Do you know, it sounds like that 10-year period up to going to prison sounded like you’d had so much to deal with. I think you said your partner was murdered.

Rhia Canady [00:11:29 - 00:11:49]

My partner was murdered. That was 2022 in lockdown. I can’t even really explain the effect that it had on me. I went into like an autopilot. I had like a checklist. Everything needed to be done. I had to make sure that my daughter was taken care of. She was 2 and a half at the time. I had to make sure the house was clean and tidy. I had to make sure the washing was done. I had to do everything. And the trial for his murder, I needed some kind of, I guess, babysitter support to be able to look after my daughter whilst I was at court and not be ringing me or texting me to say, when are you coming back? Blah, blah, blah.

So the first day of the trial was my daughter’s first day of full-time nursery. She’d never been to nursery before, but I took her to nursery on the first day of the trial, waved her goodbye whilst I then attended court to find out how her father had been killed. And I think trying to process what you see at court and then coming home to be a mum, there’s no way to describe it. It’s borderline impossible. You have to find some kind of coping mechanism to get through it. And mine was going to the place where my daughter’s father was killed. There’s a mural on the wall there, and I would go there at any given option I could, weekends, I would be there from maybe 7 o’clock in the evening till 5, 6 o’clock in the morning.

And there would be friends that would gather there, we would drink, and I would just sit at the mural all the time. And I guess that was my way of coping, but it was a, it was nothing but self-destruct. But I would make sure that I was up, ready to do whatever it is I needed to do for my daughter the following day. And that’s when I probably talk about the mask that we wear sometimes, because if you would’ve asked anybody that was around me at that time, they would’ve told you that Rhia’s fine, Rhia’s coping, Rhia’s doing really well, and Rhia’s working, and Namaya’s doing great. And yeah, but inside I was completely crumbling.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:13:45 - 00:14:06]

Well, I was just thinking about that day of court, because actually a lot of parents, a lot of mums find it really difficult taking their kids to nursery for the first time and just coping with that in the day, that can leave you a bit emotionally dysregulated. So to then think about having to go off to court to deal with something so painful, that must have really led to an overwhelm, I imagine.

Rhia Canady [00:14:07 - 00:15:03]

I was really lucky because the nursery that my daughter went to, we’d never been there before, but I, you have like an interview beforehand to meet the teacher and all this stuff. And I explained why we were coming to the nursery, why she was coming, what it is I’ve got to go and do, and what it is I need from the nursery, because it needs to be a place that my daughter feels comfortable. She feels safe enough for me to leave her for maximum 6 to 8 weeks, 8 o’clock in the morning till pretty much 5 at night. The teachers, I couldn’t thank them enough. They didn’t charge me for the service. They said, there’s no way we’re going to charge you to leave your daughter here for that time and have that stress of having to worry how you’re going to pay for it as well as going to court and they allowed me even extra time after the court to continue to have her there until we had to work out how we were going to resolve paying for it and things.

But that was just nothing but kindness from them. So they were amazing. They were amazing. I’m always grateful that they were amazing because they made a harder time a lot easier without having to have the burden or the worry of Is she okay? Or the nursery’s calling me, I might need to leave. But yeah, most parents’ first day is taking pictures, waving them off and smiling, and going home and looking at the phone to make sure everything’s okay. Whereas she was off on a new adventure and I was off on something completely different. Yeah.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:15:38 - 00:15:50]

So lovely though to hear that, about people doing something good within those moments, but, you know, obviously a very difficult time. And what was it like when you were in prison? How did you find that going in at 32?

Rhia Canady [00:15:51 - 00:16:28]

I think at first, like, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I think there’s a lot of women in there that are battling their own traumas. You see a lot of self-harm in women’s prison, a lot of mentally unwell people. And I just felt I was quite angry. I was angry at myself for a long time because I thought, how have you got here? How have you got here? You’ve gone from never being arrested to looking at potentially 8 to 10 years in prison. And I was furious, but I had to survive because you’re literally on your own in prison. You’ve got nothing.

And where I came in over a bank holiday period, I had like no canteen for 2 weeks, and that was a big struggle. I couldn’t phone home and it, like, you get your £2 credit when you go in, but then I’d missed 2 canteen sheets, so I couldn’t top up the phone. I couldn’t phone home. I couldn’t speak to my daughter for about 10 days. I thought I was going to get judge in chambers. And for people that don’t know what judge in chambers is, that’s when you can apply to the court to say why you think you should get bail, why you should be released from prison. And I’ve helped friends get judge in chambers before I’d gone to prison, I’d helped several people in my life get judged in chambers, and I thought, if I provide my mum and my friends with the correct information, they can give it to the solicitors, and Rhia, within 7 to 8 days, you’ll be home.

Nope. The judge just kept saying that there was a concern for my safety, and that stuck with me for a while because I couldn’t understand, like, why they kept saying there was a concern for my safety. I’m in here on a drugs charge. I’m not in here with violence. I’m not in here for anything else. I’m in here for a drugs charge. And I feel more unsafe in this place because look at the environment. That was it. No judge chambers. They said there was another chance to get judge chambers. I said, I don’t want it. I don’t want to go for it anymore because I’m almost comfortable here now. So if I leave, all that time that I’ve been here won’t be counted. And if I get found guilty, then I’d have to come back. So it was, it’s awful. Prison’s awful.

I’m never gonna tell you that it’s nice, because it’s not, there’s nothing nice about it. But when you’re there, you build relationships, friends. I was lucky I had a good friendship circle in there. And you build, like, well, I feel like people that get through the prison system quite easily are people that build a solid routine. I found a job quite quickly. I was a gym orderly. Meant I was out myself all the time, training in the gym, keeping my mind busy, keeping my body active. Otherwise, you’d be behind your door all day just sitting on a bed.

So it was for me, it was like trying to find routine and structure with a little bit of normality. And I would know exactly what I’m doing, like every hour until it’s banged up. And then that’s another day off the list. So it was awful. But I like to think that I’m somebody that will always try and make the best out of a bad situation. And I definitely think that’s what I did with prison.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:19:08 - 00:19:10]

And who looked after your daughter while you were in prison?

Rhia Canady [00:19:11 - 00:19:12]

She stayed with my mum and dad.

David Jones [00:19:13 - 00:19:35]

I mean, you’ve given a brilliant account of your journey already, Rhia. But I was wondering about your time in Eastwood Park, because on your website there’s a lovely picture of you, back in the gym standing behind a table, obviously at some event. What was that like as an experience for you?

Rhia Canady [00:19:36 - 00:20:19]

So that was the first time I’d gone back into Eastwood Park after leaving, and that was approximately, that was the March, and I came out the previous December. So say 15 months after I’d left. And again, like I said, when I stepped out the gate, I stepped out the gate thinking, I got this. I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m going home to my life and blah, blah, blah. And when I was invited back into the prison, I thought, yeah, this would be great. And I know what I’m doing and I’m not gonna feel like overwhelmed or anything because this is a place that I don’t like, I don’t wanna be, that I’m here under different circumstances. I can leave this time.

But actually, I think it was, there’s certain things that trigger you, smells. And then I can remember, so that event was a resettlement event where the girls, the prisoners can come to each stall and find out what sort of work you do and you can sign up clients. There was lots of different stalls there, but I had my Fly Girl stall there. And when the girls came round and I looked at them, And some of them I knew from my sentence. Some of them were still there. Some of them had come back. Some really excited to see me. Some avoided me because they didn’t feel like they wanted to speak, or I don’t know, for whatever reason.

That’s fine. But actually, it’s sad to say that the girls all look really, really unwell. They all look quite unwell. They don’t have much colour in their skin. And there’s almost like this, this like green sense, this green tone to the skin. And yeah, they just don’t look that well. And that made me quite sad because I’ve got another picture of myself as a prisoner stood in the prison. And when I look at that picture, compare it to the picture of me in the gym, I also look unwell and I also have that, green tone and sadness in me.

And I think at that moment I realised maybe why I was in Eastwood Park at the time and how far I’ve come, how far I’d come at that point. And it just made me, gave me a little bit more fuel for my work. I wanted to help the girls get to where I’ve got, and I try and do it from a place of encouragement. You never want to, it’s never like to brag like, oh, look at me, I went to prison and now I do this. I want everybody to feel uplifted and empowered. And since that event in Eastwood Park, I’ve probably been back maybe 20, 30 times. I’ve given talks there. I’m part of the in-reach team.

I walk up and down the wings and meet with girls and have discussions and help with prison pickups and release plans. And I try and be there at the start of the journey and helping hand all the way through until the girls don’t need me anymore, or they want to come and work with us or whatever it may be. So I think that first time in Eastwood Park was like a shock, but a wake-up reminded me who I am, how I got here, why I do what I do. But it also, it was like a bit of a sadness, sad feeling as well.

Photo by Serrah Galos on Unsplash

David Jones [00:22:48 - 00:23:31]

Yeah, I bet. Really quite a powerful experience going back into Eastwood Park, I imagine. I’ve been to Eastwood Park and it, I mean, getting in there as a civilian rather than as a potential prisoner is a strange experience because it’s like going up to a house, knocking on the door, and not knowing if there’s anyone inside because that’s just the nature of the way it’s built. Thanks for that description. And what you’ve been describing, Rhia, it sounds as if you met a lot of positivity in your journey, you know, including up to your trip to the House of Lords, were there any major kind of stumbling blocks on the way?

Rhia Canady [00:23:32 - 00:24:51]

So I guess one of the major things I had over my head was even after I came out of prison, I had a POCA hearing pending, which is a Proceeds of Crime Act, and it’s where the courts, after you’ve been sentenced, they’ll come to you with financial evidence to say, we believe you have made this from criminal activity and whilst I was in prison, when they arrested me, they’d seized my car at the point of arrest and hadn’t returned it, were keeping it until this POCA hearing had commenced. And my barrister was not very supportive of me during my whole entire interactions with him, from the prison engagement to me getting sentenced. He didn’t turn up on my sentencing day. He sent somebody else last minute, which was a blessing because he, the person he sent, really listened to me and fought for me. And he’d only had an hour with me before. But he was around for my POCA hearing and he kept telling me that I could not change the evidence before me. Now, I’m not asking to change the evidence.

What I’m gonna do is prove that your evidence is nonsense. And he wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t listen at all. My solicitor was saying that she can only go by the instructions of the barrister, and I’m saying that’s fine, but what I’m gonna do is create a document to show that these figures they’ve given are complete nonsense. And she sent me an 800-page financial document that I had to go through and argue that I do not have £64,000 hidden or in my bank or wherever it may be. Because I did not. I did not. I was a single mum. I didn’t, I did not have £64,000. I managed to bring it all together, the document. And it was things on this document were like transactions for like £12 from lots of different people.

And that’s because I sold roast dinners, like I told you at the start. So that’s what these £12 were coming in at all the time from different people. So what I did was just gathered a few character statements from my business, asked people to say that they buy food. I didn’t tell them what it was for because who wants to say that? I just need a bit of proof to show that I haven’t been making all this money from selling drugs. So I got them to write like why they like buying from my business and how long they reckon they’ve been buying and roughly what they spend each time. Collected quite a few of those. Anything I could find to prove this document was nonsense, I did. And on my evidence, I got it down to £2,200 that I couldn’t explain.

And my solicitor put the document through for me, and the judge gave them an hour to decide whether they were accepting my document, the prosecution, or he was gonna throw the whole case out of court. Either way, I was gonna be happy. I just needed to know which way it was gonna go, and they decided to accept my document. I won the case. I ended up having to pay, £600. I think it was around £600, £660 because they’d already seized 1,400 and something from my house at the time of arrest. They took that into account. I paid £660.

They returned me my car. So I think that was probably one of the biggest hurdles I probably faced navigating the legal system. And I’m not legally trained, but it was just something fuelling me that I could not accept that you were telling me that I’d made this money when I absolutely have not. They were bringing me financial information from 12 years prior, but my case was only a 6, you’re talking about a 6-week period here from 2023, and but you’re going all the way back to 2012. Why is that? And I had to fight it. And my barrister actually phoned me after because he didn’t turn up, he just appeared on video link. And while I was driving home, he said, today must be your lucky day. And I said to him, it’s not my lucky day.

This is what happens when you believe in yourself and you fight for what it is that you believe in. And if I would have listened to you, I’d be paying money back for the rest of my days or going back to prison for 28 days. So let’s just say I won’t be using that legal team ever again.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:28:07 - 00:28:08]

Well, hopefully you won’t have to.

Rhia Canady [00:28:08 - 00:28:09]

Yeah, I won’t need them.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:28:10 - 00:28:30]

I was thinking, I was listening to you when you said about being tagged, and I wondered if you could say a little bit about that experience, because I think that’s one of those punishments that people can, you know, general public might not see as such a big deal. But I suppose your reference to it made it sound like actually it wasn’t very nice to be on a tag, and I wondered if you could say something about that experience.

Rhia Canady [00:28:32 - 00:29:09]

Yeah, I think being on tag is, I’m a single mum, so my house is just me and my child 24/7. So being on tag is quite, it’s quite lonely. ‘Cause she’s got activities, she’s got whatever she’s doing, and then you’re just here. And I think when we come out of prison, sometimes we think that there’s going to be a lot of people around us supporting us. They want to see us, but it’s actually not like that at all. I know that not from my own experiences, but from my clients talking to them. That’s how they feel too. You’re quite restricted.

Again, I had a 5-year-old. And I was on tag during spring and early summer. Winter wasn’t so difficult because it gets dark quite early, so people tend to be at home chilling out by 5, 6 o’clock. But summertime, she might be out playing because we’ve got a green where we live, and I can’t go out to tell her she’s got to come in. I have to like shout from the doorstep. And yeah, I know I committed a crime. But actually, tag is quite difficult, especially when you’re trying to be a parent. And I can remember it being her birthday, doing like a family meal.

I had to leave the meal an hour early to make sure that I’m home. So yeah, there’s lots of things that you miss out on or you have to work around. And also I had faulty equipment for quite some time, and that’s something that I don’t actually believe is taken that serious. But again, I could not go back to prison for this faulty equipment. So I started recording it and sending it to my probation officer at whatever time it’s going off, because I was telling her, look, the tag box is ringing at 3 o’clock in the morning. It’s waking me and my daughter up, and they’re saying I’m not in the house, and I’ve got to read the serial number to them and all these things when I am in the house. But this is happening like 2, 3 times a night consistently. And people will tell the probation this, but they don’t always believe them.

They don’t always, who knows? I couldn’t take the risk, so I just record it. It’s timestamped, and I would send it at the time it’s going off, 3 o’clock in the morning with time. And I was lucky, I had a lovely probation officer. She got them to come out and change the equipment, and they told me that tag equipment works on like umbrella signal. So if you’ve got the tag box on the floor, it will not pick up, and you, you’ve got an upstairs and downstairs. It will not pick up you upstairs because it works on an umbrella, so more signals underneath. No one explained that to me before. That’s not in the little handbook that they gave you.

So I was having to like run up and down the stairs at 3 o’clock in the morning to prove that I was in until these people explained, and then they put the tag box upstairs. But I’d already been going through 3 months of running up and down the stairs at 3, 4 o’clock in the morning. My daughter was getting quite panicky thinking, why are they ringing you all the time? Are you going to go back to working away? Because that’s what we called it. And it’s a lot of pressure. Yes, I handled it. And I know some people might think, part of the consequences, I guess. But it’s added trauma. It’s not just that your tag box is ringing at 3 o’clock in the morning and you’ve got to say that you’re in. If you don’t answer that tag box ringing at 3 o’clock in the morning, that could be the difference between you laying in your bed that night, the next night, or laying in the bed in the cells that night. And that’s all that was constantly on my brain. I cannot get recalled. I cannot get recalled. I cannot get recalled.

David Jones [00:32:14 - 00:32:50]

Thank you, Rhia. That’s a brilliant description of something which I think most people don’t know anything about really. I wonder, I mean, I’m struck by your positivity about your whole situation and the journey you’ve travelled. And I think that must have a lot to do with the way that things have turned out for you and also the way in which you seem to take problems face on and deal with them and find a way of working around them rather than being overwhelmed by them and complaining about them.

Rhia Canady [00:32:51 - 00:33:23]

I’m definitely problem solution. That’s how my brain works. I get a problem and I don’t, I try not to worry about it because I was told something in prison one time by a gym staff, a PEI, and I was moaning that day that my canteen had arrived and it was wrong. They hadn’t brought me any yogurts. And I was fuming. And it’s in prison, the little things really get to you. And I lived quite healthy in prison. I didn’t eat the prison food because I worked, so I would buy things off the canteen and cook.

If they didn’t bring me something, I would get, I’d be quite annoyed. Because it’s not like you could just go to the shop and buy it yourself. You’ve got to wait till next week. And I’d gone into the gym to work and I think Mr. Evans and Mr. Cross, they could tell that Rhia’s unhappy. What’s wrong, Rhia? And I said, they haven’t brought my yogurts again. I’m fuming, blah, blah, blah.

And they were like, one of them said, listen, don’t give energy to things that you can’t change. Go do some squats, you’ll feel fine. And when I got back to my room, I felt fine. And the canteen man had actually brought my yogurts while I’d been training. But that taught me a lesson that day that I try now to just be like, okay, that’s the problem, whatever. How are we gonna fix it? Or how are we gonna make it work for us?

I’ve definitely tried to do that along my whole journey. I think shortly after that conversation in the prison with those officers and another officer, I went guilty. I decided to go guilty on my case because to me I could have gone to trial and potentially been found not guilty, but I could also have been found guilty. And then, then I really would be looking at the between 7 to whatever years. So I felt like the fastest way to get home or to deal with this problem was to go guilty, take the charge, get some credit off, and get home to my little girl. So yeah, I’m definitely problem, solution, get it fixed.

David Jones [00:34:58 - 00:35:10]

Thank you. Don’t put energy into things you can’t change is one of those lovely bits of advice, isn’t it, that can be helpful throughout one’s life?

Rhia Canady [00:35:12 - 00:35:57]

At the time I was thinking, what are you on about? You don’t know what it’s like to be here. But it’s true. I’m wasting all this energy, or it’s spiralling around in my mind continuously, whatever it might be. And the fact of it is, sometimes things are beyond our control, and being in prison is where I learned there’s so many things in here I can’t control, but I can take control of my mind. I can take control of my body. I can take control of what I consume, whatever that be, whether that’s food, what I’m reading, the conversations, all those things. I could take control of that in there. And off the back of that, I built a structure, I built a routine, and then I tried to carry that back out into the real world, the gym. And yeah, the gym is a huge part of my healing process.

David Jones [00:36:06 - 00:36:15]

Can you tell us about the Fly Girl Foundation and was there anything that kind of triggered the idea for it in the first place?

Rhia Canady [00:36:16 - 00:37:15]

So House of Lords definitely was like, I would say the thing that ignited the fuel. Meeting Aliyah, who runs Daddyless Daughters, feel like we share similar visions and she’s been a huge support for me in this journey. And I felt like I saw a gap because when you come out of prison and you’re on probation and you’ve got license conditions and all these things, all these services employed by the MOJ like to send you to places because they say, oh, go and do this, it’ll be good for you. Go and do this, it’ll be good for your mind and blah, blah, blah. But actually, they don’t have a clue what’s good for you. They don’t have a clue what would be good for your mind because they just get given a referral that’s got basic information off it and they don’t know that much about you or what you’re going through. And I was sent to the Nelson’s Trust, Women’s Centre in Bristol to go, I had to complete so many days by probation.

They send you for sometimes it could be up to 30 sessions, but I think I only had to do like 6 to 8, something like that. And it was a lovely centre, but I didn’t fit there because the criteria for the workshops and things were substance misuse. I don’t fit that bracket. Alcohol dependency. I don’t fit that bracket. Parenting courses. I don’t fit that bracket. Domestic abuse I don’t fit that bracket.

There wasn’t anything for anybody who, it was also like courses for people that needed help getting back to work. I didn’t fit that bracket either because I was running a small business at the time. So they didn’t really know what to do with me because I’m not their average client. I had to complete these days for probation or again, it could be a recall. So the lady said down there, after completing the referral, I told her all about me. I told her my partner had been killed, why I went to prison, blah, blah, blah. But again, I was wearing that mask.

I think I went in and I looked quite, not professional, but I looked quite smart that day. And I was looking around and people asked me if I was here to work as opposed to being a client. So I knew this wasn’t the right setting for me. Anyway, I had to complete these days. So they asked me to go on a course run by Women’s Work Lab, which was around the barriers women face when going back into work. It was like an 8-week course, go every Monday. Once you’ve done that, you’re like ticked off the list, you don’t have to come back.

And I went on this course and there was like 4 of us and I didn’t speak much, I didn’t engage much. And then I said one day like, this course for me is a bit ridiculous because you’re talking to women that have come from either prison or some kind of, maybe they’ve got a suspended sentence or they’ve had some kind of contact with the criminal justice system. So they’ve usually got some kind of trauma going on or something like that. You’re talking to them about things to declare when going into an interview. But like, how about some of us have struggled to even get the bus here this morning or just walk down the street and have a normal conversation and you are asking us to talk about barriers? The barrier was even trying to come and sit here and engage. And the lady was like, you’d be a good speaker. You should do lived experience work. And that was like, as I said before, this word kept following me around all the time.

And I think that shortly after I’d gone to the House of Lords, so as a collective, there was lots of gaps that I was seeing in this world where I felt that women and young girls need support. So initially with Fly Girl, I started going back into the prison and supporting women in an approved premises in Bristol, working in there every Friday, delivering a lived experience workshop. So I’d have a new cohort of girls all the time because the turnover’s quite high in approved premises. So that’s where we started, and the girls absolutely loved the workshops, loved hearing positive stories and how we’ve overcome different hurdles since coming out of prison or maybe even before prison. Then we expanded slightly, we do a lot of work with young girls in schools because we’ve realised that actually, especially in a lot of our own lived experience stories, there was opportunities for lots of prevention way beyond 32. So now we work with a lot of secondary schools, giving talks around coercive control, exploitation, how to navigate that, and support services available. We do one-to-one mentorship with young girls and women.

We’ve done a lot of gang awareness training for youth workers for them to understand maybe things that are missing or signs to look out for when working with young people. Again, a lot of the preventative side, because the empowerment side’s great, it’s wonderful, but if we can prevent and empower at the same time, then I feel like we’re doing an even better job. Yeah. And then now we’re part of the Eastwood Park in-reach team, working with the women directly in the prison, supporting them before release. They know exactly who we are. When they get released, we can offer a prison pickup and support to first probation, and then we take them on to be part of our empowerment programs. And hopefully we’ll take on some volunteers pretty soon from our empowerment programs. That’s always the goal.

David Jones [00:42:11 - 00:42:39]

Thank you. Rhia, can I ask you about something? Because I think what you’ve been describing is how you have the particular approach to pick people up or join with people at the beginning of their journey. And when we were talking here before, I remember you describing an experience where you were just outside a prison and you noticed a woman who’d come out and didn’t seem to have anywhere to go to. Do you remember that?

Rhia Canady [00:42:39 - 00:43:31]

Yeah, that was only a few weeks ago, actually. So I’d arrived at Eastwood Park to do a prison pickup that day for a client who I’d been working with in Eastwood Park for quite some time, and I’d actually been working with her in previous settings as well. So I arrived to pick her up, and I waited outside the prison. Now, prison releases, they’re never, it’s never like, you’re getting out at 9, I’ll be at the gate. You get there at 9, they could be out anytime between 9 to half past 11, maybe sometimes 12, depending on how many people are there. But I was waiting, and I was waiting for my client, and I noticed this lady come out with several bags on her back, and there’s usually a few cars waiting outside the prison, family and friends of people being released or other support workers. And usually they’ve got a relationship with like a taxi company quite local, I think, the prison.

So it’s usually a taxi driver outside. And she walked up to the taxi man and asked, oh, are you here to take me? And he asked her name and he said no. And then she stood there puzzled and she was just looking around. And I didn’t want to overwhelm her because I know stepping out of prison is overwhelming anyway. So I just observed for a minute and I could see that she was just like constantly looking around to see if there was somebody coming, rummaging in her bag. So I got out the car and I said, hello, are you waiting for a lift? And she said, oh.

The prison said they’d organise me a taxi, but there’s no taxi here and this taxi’s not taking me. I’ve tried to ask the prison for some kind of help through the gate, but the reception, like the gate staff, they don’t know anything about taxis or anything. So she just basically didn’t have a clue how to get to her next point of call. She had to be at probation in Swansea by 11:30. She had no phone. She had a travel warrant, which is basically like a piece of paper that you produce at the local train station that will get you to wherever it is you need to get to. But the local train station was over 15 miles away, and she doesn’t have a phone, and she doesn’t have any money until she gets to wherever her bank card is to get her money. So I couldn’t leave her.

And I didn’t leave her. I said to her, look, are you going to Temple Meads? She said yes, and I said, that’s fine. I’ve gotta drive past there to drop this other client off that I’m waiting for. So if you’d like a lift, I’ll happily give you a lift. I Introduced myself, showed her my badge, showed that I’m a professional, and she got in the car. Whilst we were waiting for my client to come out, my client eventually came out. She’s with another girl who is in the same situation, is going to another part of Wales, released with a travel warrant, no money because it was a recall.

And when you’re on recall, you no longer get the discharge grant. So usually you get released from prison with like, when I was in prison, it was around 90 quid. I don’t know how much it is now, but it was around £90. It does go up with cost of living, so to speak. But if you are on a recall from a previous sentence, you don’t get the discharge grant. So a lot of these girls are being released with a travel warrant, but no money to get to the train station, no money to get anything, no money to make a phone call to say to probation, my train’s running late, or whatever. And I just feel that’s preparing anyone to fail before they’ve even begun.

So on that day, those 2 girls were really lucky that I was there to give them a lift. But had I not have been, who knows what might have happened. And that to me is one of the important reasons why we do prison pickups. Having a familiar face or someone there to support you at that tough moment could be the difference between, you name it, multiple scenarios. But it definitely could be the difference between someone being recalled pretty quickly back to prison and somebody arriving at their accommodation and feeling supported and safe and knowing that there’s somebody they can reach out to if things are tough. Because I did have support being picked up. I was picked up by a friend. I was brought to my house. My mum was here waiting, and my friend then took me to probation and they took me food shopping. But I still felt really overwhelmed even with that support. So, if I didn’t have that support, who knows how I might have felt.

David Jones [00:47:17 - 00:47:21]

Thank you very much. Naomi, I think I cut you off.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:47:21 - 00:47:55]

No, it sounds like you’re doing something that’s making a real difference, Rhia. Tremendous project. But I suppose I’m conscious of the fact that the work that you’re doing kind of like keeps alive for you quite a difficult period in your life, and wonder how you cope with, you know, emotionally with the challenges of the work that you’re doing. You must see people who, or meet women with quite difficult stories, you are kind of like keeping yourself attached to a point in time, which was quite difficult. So how do you deal with that? How do you cope with that? And any advice that you would give to others?

Rhia Canady [00:47:57 - 00:48:45]

So I can remember when I first started this work, having a conversation with a friend in London who also does this similar work. And they said to me, make sure you go to therapy and make sure you start therapy. And I laughed, I laughed, and I said, me, therapy? I don’t need therapy. Right? I’ve had my bereavement counselling in prison and I left it there and I’m okay. And she was like, trust me, girl, it gets heavy and you’re gonna need some kind of outlet, support, whatever it may be. So I am lucky enough to be part of another organisation called the National Women’s Justice Coalition. And from there, I sit on a board called the NVAC. Which is the National Voice Advisory Panel.

It’s a lived experience board. And through that board, we get reflective practice with a psychiatrist. She’s wonderful. And I absolutely love those sessions. For me, she knows when she’s ready to say, has anybody got something to bring? My hand goes straight up, but I do let others speak as well. But I’ve always got something that I want to bring to the table just because my work, I guess, is I’m constantly in those environments, like you said. And from that, I have reached out to her to start private sessions, like one-to-one sessions, because I definitely see the benefit and feel the benefit of just having a space to offload, but then to also get unbiased opinions back is always great. Separate to that, I go to the gym minimum 3 to 4 times a week.

That is vital to me. When I was in prison, I was training 6 times a week, well, 6 days a week, sometimes 3 to 4 times a day, but 6 days a week. And I’m also part of something called Fight Club, which is like boxercise to drum and bass. And that is a great outlet for me because it’s in the evenings if I’ve had a heavy day at work to go to that class, and I go twice a week, and it’s like all girls. It’s quite uplifting, and I feel a weight off my shoulders when I leave. So I try and take care of myself in all ways and cover all angles, if that makes sense, mentally and physically and emotionally.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:50:23 - 00:50:31]

Brilliant advice there. Thanks very much for coming on today to tell us about the work that you’re doing, Rhia. Really great to hear about these kind of projects happening.

Rhia Canady [00:50:31 - 00:50:33]

That’s no problem at all. Thanks for having me.

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash