Innovative approach will help parents address their past

A charity founder has published a children’s book to address her past and help her kids cope with mistakes she made.

Eppie Sprung, who is founder and CEO of ex-offenders charity Next Chapter Scotland, is due to release, Here, with You, to enable parents who have criminal records confront their past with their children.

The story centres around a conversation between two bears (a parent and a child), in which the parent tells the child about choices from their past that are still impacting on their lives today.  The child asks questions and the parent answers as best they can.

The book is illustrated by watercolour artist, Cathy Van Hoppe, and her paintings bring the relationship between the two characters to life.

Sprung received an outpouring of negative tabloid and media stories in 2013 when the then English teacher was found guilty of having an affair with a student.

She was 26 at the time, the boy 17, so the relationship was not in itself illegal.

However, Sprung was charged with an abuse of trust which she admitted in court.

She was given a community payback order and placed on the sex offenders register.

Sprung said: “My conversations with my children began long before the book was finalised. I took advice from play therapists, educational psychologists and practitioners and the overwhelming message was - don’t lie.

“The damage will come from the things that are hidden rather than the things that are shared in the open.

“When the children were three, we used a story book about a teddy bear being arrested to introduce the fact that I had been arrested in the past. Aged four, my daughter asked what I’d been arrested for, out of the blue, whilst we were at an Italian restaurant on holiday in Malta!

“The older they get, the more detailed the questions are becoming and I am following the approach of answering everything they ask in the most age-appropriate terms I can manage, with no lies and no pretence.”

She added: “It's far from simple, though, and I’ve absolutely no idea whether I’m getting it right or not. All I can do is try my best and hope that the deep and secure attachment I have with both children will ride out the waves that will surely come.”

Any profits from the sale of the book will go directly to the charity.