"We sat in a prison in Cumberland, Maryland recording a story being read by an inmate for his child. The day had been a long one, and we had already recorded stories with more than a dozen others, so we weren't paying a lot of attention. But we became aware that the man sitting across from us was having difficulty. Soon he was unable to read because of the tears flowing down his cheeks and the sobs coming from his throat.

We turned off the tape, and asked if he wanted to collect himself. He nodded his head through his tears. He was Hispanic, and said in broken English that he had never before read a book to his children. The book, titled The Tree of Hope, seemed perfect for the moment. We too were moved to tears and we wept together."
—From Hope House, Stories of Hope

In 2006, I began consulting work with the Annie E. Casey Foundation to assist them in gaining a better understanding of the nature and scope of the effects of parental incarceration on children and families. I analyzed the current state of the field and the gaps that needed to be filled. The knowledge we gathered during our work revealed tireless advocates, researchers, grantmakers, and practitioners who have been committed to understanding and improving outcomes for children and families with incarcerated parents and building this field for over twenty years. We also discovered a wave of growing concern about these children and families, marked by increased activities of researchers, journalists, and advocates that address the life experiences of these children. For me, it was the first time in my career that I shared my story about my father's incarcerations and drug addiction, which ultimately ended his life.

Part of my work with the Foundation culminated in a 2008 report, Children and Families with Incarcerated Parents: Exploring Development in the Field and Opportunities for Growth. This report summarized areas of opportunities for growth in the field based on feedback from leading researchers, practitioners, advocates, policymakers and funders. The major recommendations included:

1. Develop a Data, Research and Evaluation Agenda:

• Create a central place to locate data on this issue and develop a user-friendly, compatible data source linked to a useful case management system(s).
• Encourage State Departments of Correction to collect data on children with incarcerated parents.
• Use data and research to inform and address the disproportionate impacts of race on incarcerated parents and their children.

2. Test, Promote and Sustain High Quality Practice and Service Delivery:

• Address the child, parent, and caregiver relationship systems, not just the child, when responding to the needs of children whose parents are incarcerated.
• Support a national repository, clearinghouse or database of promising and effective practices, programs and service-delivery strategies.
• Provide an opportunity for practitioners and agency providers to engage in standards for best practices, professional development, peer-learning and technical assistance that would enhance high-quality practices nationwide.
• Address the culture, policies and practices within corrections that make family strengthening and contact difficult.

3. Engage in Public Policy Advocacy and System Reform:

• Build capacity and collaboration among providers that will lead to policy change.
• Address practices and arrangements within the corrections system that make family communication difficult and expensive.
• Use local, county and state governments as untapped resources and potential partners.
• Address the risk to incarcerated mothers of losing their parental rights to child welfare under the Federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997.
• Support a national forum or other infrastructure to enable advocates, practitioners and people directly affected by this issue to gather and develop a common policy agenda whose implementation would be supported with sustained resources.
• Take advantage of timely federal policy opportunities to maximize the potential of benefiting children and families with incarcerated parents (or at least do no harm).

4. Create New Strategies to Address Crosscutting Issues and Dual System Families:

• A coordinated action plan is needed to influence existing policies and system reform that would afford public agencies, corrections, mental health providers and educators to communicate and collaborate as a network to address the unique needs of children whose parents are incarcerated.
• Develop programs that raise awareness and help train groups of professionals who interact with children and families with incarcerated parents, such as those in mental health, education, corrections, juvenile justice and child welfare.

5. Use a Child and Family Focus in Research, Practice, Advocacy and System and Policy Reform:

• Impacts on children and families need to be at the center of criminal justice policies and systems.
• A family-centered approach could lead to more substantial and positive changes in terms of public will, courts, judges, corrections and faith communities.
• There is a strong need for a major public education campaign that would lay the groundwork for a family-centered approach in the field and enhance public will around this cause.

An in-depth scan of the field to determine progress toward these recommendations is beyond the scope of this article. However, in the two years since this report was written and published, there is evidence that significant work at the local, state and national level has continued and some critical accomplishments have been achieved. Yet with every stone that is turned, I have learned more about the overwhelming amount of work yet to be done for this population, gaps that have been realized or that remain unaddressed, and nuances that have not been considered.

Progress in the Field

I would argue that one of the most significant markers of growth in the field is the evolution of a core group of stakeholders. The interest and support of several key foundations has led to collaborative efforts from diverse players in this field. Combined with the passage of the Second Chance Act and the reentry initiatives that are occurring in state and local jurisdictions, this support has helped create interest among several members of Congress and their staff in the millions of families affected by incarceration. This growing interest provides a real opportunity to promote policy options and to raise awareness on Capitol Hill about the importance of children and families during incarceration and in the reentry process.

Notably, the Council of State Governments Justice Center received support from the Open Society Institute, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Casey Family Programs to develop and disseminate Children of Incarcerated Parents: An Action Plan for Federal Policymakers.[1] This plan reflects a bipartisan consensus among state and local government officials responsible for supervising people sentenced to jail, prison, or community supervision and those agencies and advocates responsible for protecting and serving children and families of the incarcerated.

The Federal Action plan was broadly written for Congress and federal policymakers and includes recommendations for improved policy for children of incarcerated parents. The plan is organized into the following eight substantive areas that explain the unique challenges and needs of children of incarcerated parents based on the latest research findings and input from key stakeholders:

1. Overview and research
2. Responses to children during a parent's arrest
3. Parent-child interactions within correctional systems
4. Coordination across service systems
5. Support for kinship caregivers
6. Foster care and permanence
7. Child support
8. Benefits and income supports

The Justice Center released the Action Plan in October 2009, and has begun to reach out to committees and individual members of Congress working on related legislative vehicles or who have expressed interest in the issues surrounding children with incarcerated parents. The intended results of this work will help set the stage for more public awareness around this issue and an increased potential for policy influence.

At the state and local level, work has also continued to progress. A few noteworthy examples include:

• Encouraging State Departments of Correction to Collect Data on Children with Incarcerated Parents.
  Oregon, Washington and Rhode Island serve as good models for steps taken by a state to better data collection on incarcerated parents and their children.

• Cross System Collaboration: Creating Better Collaboration and Communication among Systems Serving this Population.
  The San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership and the Arizona Children of Incarcerated Parents Bill of Rights Project demonstrate effective strategies for coordination between corrections, child welfare, and human services agencies to help ensure that children and families receive the support they need.

• Foster Care: Providing Reasonable Reunification Services for Incarcerated Parents and their Children.
  New York State continues to provide a good example for the diligent efforts they make to keep incarcerated parents and their children connected through support and services for reunification or other permanent placement. Additionally, the Women's Foundation of California Children of Incarcerated Parents Learning Cohort informed and shaped a bill with the goal of preventing the breakup of families by increasing the chance that children will be able to reunite with their mothers after release from prison. This bill, AB 2070, authored by California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, gives social workers more discretion to extend the timeline before parental rights are terminated in the case of a parent's incarceration, and expands the reunification services available to families following incarceration. It was signed by the Governor and chaptered into law on September 28, 2008.

• The Role of Faith-based Institutions:
  The role of faith-based organizations in aiding prisoners, their children and families is critical. As such, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has developed a "Healing Communities" model, which encourages communities of faith to minister to members of their own congregations who are affected by crime and the criminal justice system. The Healing Communities model seeks to engage congregations by drawing upon the belief systems and unique strengths of the faith community—acceptance, compassion, forgiveness, redemption, and restoration. A healing community provides what programs and services generally cannot—"the transformation of hearts and minds" and the building of relationships that support people.[2] While this model is not a program per se, much can be learned from Michigan about the process of the adaptation and implementation of the model at the state level.

• Cultivating Co-investors for Sustained Resources and Capacity Building.
  In 2008, Grantmakers for Children, Youth, and Families (GCYF), with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, the California Endowment, and the Women's Foundation of California, implemented a major learning initiative on the issue of children with incarcerated parents. The overall goal of the initiative was to increase investments in grantmaking initiatives for children of incarcerated parents. Over the course of the year, GCYF held three learning events, developed an online resource library, identified and supported foundations working on or interested in learning more about the issue, and established an online learning community. This grant influenced the field by building partnerships, reaching and engaging grantmakers at the local level, and leveraging additional private funds.

Continued Challenges and Opportunities for Growth

Clearly, many of the recommendations from the 2008 report still need to be realized. However, I will use this opportunity to highlight a few issues not considered in the report, but that, I believe, warrant attention.

First and foremost, the population of incarcerated individuals, and thus parents, continues to grow. The documented number of children affected has increased since my 2008 report. Now it is estimated that over 1.7 million children under the age of 18 had a parent in state or federal prison in 2007, representing 2.3% of the total U.S. child population.[3] The number of children with a father in prison increased from 881,500 in 1991 to over 1.5 million in 2007, a 77% increase. During that time, the number of children with a mother in prison increased 131%, from 63,900 to 147,400.[4]

New Areas of Research

These growing numbers are of great concern. The challenges to families due to parental incarceration are many and complex, and since the 2008 report, there has been a surge of explanatory research on this topic.[5] Viewed cumulatively, this research shows that parental incarceration likely has direct effects on children resulting from the trauma of separation by incarceration (although the causal mechanism is not yet clear), but that parental incarceration is also a marker for additional risk factors. While children's responses to these risk factors vary, a significant number of children of prisoners experience challenges functioning academically and socially.

Research suggests that these children evidence higher levels of conduct disorder and acting out. They are more frequently exposed to violence, parental substance abuse, child abuse and neglect, and parental mental health issues, and are more likely to demonstrate significant behavioral, social-emotional, and school-related problems.[6]

Ann Adalist Estrin, Director of the National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated (NRCCFI) at the Family and Corrections Network, has provided a useful framework for understanding the varying needs of children with incarcerated parents, as seen in Figure 1 below.[7]

Figure 1 Children of the Incarcerated: A Continuum of Need

Ann also notes the need for further research in the areas of brain development, trauma, temperament, and attachment theory to understand the challenges to and effective services for children with incarcerated parents. Indeed, because the average age of children with an incarcerated parent is eight years old, with 58% under 10, and 22% under five, the developmental effects of parental incarceration need to be seriously considered.

Concluding Reflections from my Own Experience

Through the guidance and support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the network of knowledgeable, dedicated, and compassionate leaders in the field working on behalf of children with incarcerated parents, I have been afforded an incredible opportunity to continue to champion this issue as a former child of an incarcerated parent. To do this work as someone who was directly affected by the issue feels self-serving to me in many ways. I have benefited from sharing my story, recalling events and feelings that should have surfaced and been addressed when I was a child, but likely would never have, had I not been given the opportunity to do this work.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, it wasn't until I began working on this issue that I shared my personal experiences with others. No one, not even at the Foundation, knew my father had been incarcerated. This was not a secret I kept by design; it honestly never occurred to me that it could—or should—have any bearing on the work I was doing. It wasn't until I read Nell Bernstein's book, All Alone in the World: Children of Incarcerated Parents and heard Liz Gaines speak about the effects of incarceration on children at a September 2006 consultative session on reentry hosted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation that I made the connection between my own life experiences and the Foundation project with which I was assisting. However, even after that realization, I must admit I struggled to understand my own value in speaking or advocating on behalf of this population. I chalked it up to the need for a "bad girl gone good" success story. For all intents and purposes, I do look successful—at least on paper, but I remained very disconnected from any experiences and feelings related to my father's absence, incarceration and death, as well as other traumatic events like my mother's arrest and the incarceration of several close family members.

It wasn't until my recent opportunity to view the film Shadows: Children, Families and the Legacy of Incarceration that I truly began to understand the effects of parental incarceration on my life. I saw a piece of myself in every child featured in the movie. It was a bittersweet moment, for it was the first time I felt the intense pain of loss and how it has navigated my life, to a large extent, without my conscious awareness. It was the first time I was able to recognize and get angry about the precious time my father and I both lost due to his incarceration and grapple with the questions of why and to what end? And, it was the first time I did not feel completely and utterly alone. I wept that entire night and into the next day, for myself, and for all the children and families who live with the legacy of incarceration.

Even though my father is deceased and I am 38, that night I decided I want to know him. When he wasn't incarcerated, I didn't see him much and I have always felt tentative about asking other family members questions about him. During recent inquiries, I've learned that my father was flawed in significant ways and many loved him. As one family member recently told me, "He was a great person who never knew it." At that moment I understood my father, myself, and the legacy we share.

People often ask me what I needed or what would have been most helpful to me while growing up with a parent who was incarcerated. I do not know for certain. I can report on what research has shown; I know of the good work being done in the field. Now I know that for me, I needed to understand my father to make sense of myself.

I have spent my life vacillating between feeling like there is nowhere I belong and trying to fit perfectly everywhere. Perfection, of course, can never truly be achieved and, thus, as a child and an adult, I have found I often land in the most familiar territory, feeling like I am inherently "bad"—worthless, invisible, alone—running from something I could never comprehend, or anxiously trying to fix something that can never be mended. "Stacey, you are just like your father," droning in the background all the while.

Yes, my father—good, bad, troubled, abused, addicted—all that he was, is a part of me too. I wish he had had the opportunities and support he needed to improve that list.

What did I need? Hope perhaps. Hope that the sting of loss would subside; hope that life can be different. I think there are many ways to impart hope to children—art, faith, education, mentorship, stability, social support, to name just a few—but most of all through loving parents, even if they are incarcerated.

Hope is a powerful thing. It means that we don't give up on the great potential we have for growth and change in ourselves or others. It, too, can be a legacy. There is no prescribed method or direct path for imparting or acquiring hope of which I am aware, but I know for certain, and from experience, that no stone should be left unturned.

Endnotes

1. Jessica Nickel, Crystal Garland, and Leah Kane, Children of Incarcerated Parents: An Action Plan for Federal Policymakers (New York: Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2009). [Return to text]

2. See: Harold Dean Trulear, Robert Franklin, and Stephanie Boddie, "Healing Communities: Faith, Redemption and the Ministry of Reintegration," published by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2006; and Linda Mills, "Balancing Justice With Mercy: A Toolkit for Creating Healing Communities," published by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2008. [Return to text]

3. Lauren E. Glaze, and Laura M. Maruschak, "Parents in Prison and Their Minor Children," published by The Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2008. [Return to text]

4. Ibid. [Return to text]

5. See The National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated at Family & Corrections Network for a current listing of published studies. [Return to text]

6. Oliver Edwards and Ray Shannon, "An Attachment and School Satisfaction Framework for Helping Children Raised by Grandparents," School Psychology Quarterly 23 (2008): 125-138; Keva M. Miller, "The Impact of Parental Incarceration on Children: An Emerging Need for Effective Interventions," Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal 23 (2006): 472-486; Susan D. Phillips, Barbara J. Burns, H. Ryan Wagner, Teresa L. Kramer, and James M. Robbins, "Parental Incarceration Among Adolescents Receiving Mental Health Services," Journal of Child and Family Studies 11 (2002): 385-399; Julie Poehlmann, "Children's Family Environments and Intellectual Outcomes During Maternal Incarceration," Journal of Marriage and Family 67 (2005): 1275-1285. [Return to text]

7. Ann Adalist Estrin, Presentation at the Family & Corrections Network Child Welfare League of America 2008 Conference, FCN Super Session Presentation, February 27, 2008. [Return to text]

8. Sandra Barnhill, "Forever Family Pre-Conference Workshop: Practical Strategies to Connecting Incarcerated Parents and their Children," 10th Annual Centerforce Inside/Out Summit, San Francisco, CA, October 26, 2009. [Return to text]

9. Glaze and Maruschak. [Return to text]

10. Creasie Finney Hairston, "The Forgotten Parent: Understanding the Forces that Influence Incarcerated Fathers' Relationships with their Children," Child Welfare 77:5 (1998): 617-638. [Return to text]

11. Glaze and Maruschak. [Return to text]

12. Pamela Ovwigho, Correne Saunders, and Catherine Born, "The Intersection of Incarceration and Child Support: A Snapshot of Maryland's Caseload," published by the University of Maryland School of Social Work Family Welfare and Research Training Group, July 2005. [Return to text]