A TERRIBLE accident in 1998 left Jackie Hewitt- Main’s teenage son in a coma, fighting for his life – and changed both their lives.

The accident left 15-year-old Stuart Main with a brain injury which altered his personality.

It also gave Jackie a whole new mission in life – to find a way of teaching literacy to prison inmates with learning difficulties.

Jackie said: “The brain injury changed Stuart’s personality.

“He became aggressive and quite violent. He was banned from all the pubs in town and the police would call me and bring him home.

“I thought, ‘he is going to end up in prison. What can I do?’”

Jackie was determined to help Stuart change his behaviour, so she researched head injuries and how she could to help him.

She read up on multi-sensory teaching techniques and, slowly, her son began to make progress.

She said: “It was all about engaging him in a different way. Rather than writing on a piece of paper, we would go to Southend and write in the sand – anything to make him react and learn.”

In the process, Jackie discovered she was dyslexic and that this new way of learning was also helping her.

Spurred on by Stuart’s progress, Jackie enrolled at the University of Essex, studying special educational needs and qualifying as a teacher. She even managed to help 20 fellow students who were about to be kicked off their course by deploying this revolutionary way of teaching.

Jackie would take home her coursework, break it down and rework it so she could understand it.

She said: “I never wanted to be a teacher. Teachers destroyedme at a school. I only ever scraped through and never got top marks, but I could see I was helping both Stuart and these boys at uni.”

Recalling her fear that Stuart might wind up in prison, Jackie then decided to take her work to Chelmsford Prison, where she started working with inmates with severe dyslexia and learning difficulties.

This resulted in her book, Dyslexia Behind Bars, and the establishment, with the backing of Castle Point MP Rebecca Harris, the setting up of the Cascade Foundation, a charity dedicated to teaching prisoners.

Ayear on, the foundation has high hopes of cutting reoffending rates among prisoners with learning difficulties.

Using a mix of peer mentoring by ex-cons and a unique style of teaching, the foundation equips prisoners with the skills they need to get a job on the outside and stay on the straight and narrow.

One of the foundation’s own successful students now works for it, returning to prisons as a teacher.

Jackie said: “It doesn’t matter what these prisoners are in for.

“It’s about their learning difficulty.

This is my passion and I believe in everyone, I really do.

“Some people ask me why I’m helping prisoners, but after helping my son, this was the next step.

“This shows the prison system can rehabilitate people.”

The foundation has been working intensely at Doncaster Prison, in South Yorkshire, and hopes soon to start a similar programme in Thameside Prison, in South London.

It is also planning to start working with struggling families.

Jackie said: “I just want people to learn and see everyone has a gift and everybody is clever.”

Mrs Harris is full of praise for Jackie’s work. She said: “I believe the prison education system has a lot to learn from the work of the foundation.

“As its first official patron, I look forward to supporting its work and championing it in the House of Commons.”