Landmark Policy Recommendations are Unveiled: Recommendations from The National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated at Family and Corrections Network

Response to Support for Caregivers and Financial Barriers

• Supported recommendations to establish a federal policy that would permit kinship care agencies to serve families that are not in the child welfare system, identify promising examples of kinship navigator programs to disseminate to the field and analyze the impact of AFSA on children of incarcerated parents providing a more detailed definition of ASFA’s “reasonable efforts” requirement.
• It is difficult for caregivers of children of incarcerated parents to reach consensus on the issue of child support for incarcerated parents. The recommendation that incarceration not be considered “voluntary unemployment” or “abandonment” was not universally accepted. Caregivers who struggle to make ends meet are reluctant to agree to modifications of child support orders for parents in prison. Service providers, however, support this recommendation for incarcerated parents who lack the financial resources to provide economic support to their children while they are incarcerated and immediately upon reentry.
• Focus groups supported recommendations for evaluation of the three main issues commonly affecting the availability of state and federal benefits and income support for incarcerated parents and their children:
  1. Statutory bans that disqualify individuals with criminal records from eligibility;
  2. Restoration of eligibility upon release;
  3. Enrollment of individuals who did not previously receive benefits or income support.

Response to Issues Regarding Parental Arrest

The focus group participants raised issues related to parental arrest that were not covered in the report which focused primarily on responding to the placement needs of children when primary caregivers are arrested.

Minimize Trauma During a Parent’s Arrest

This quotation underscores participants’ concerns and sets the tone for their concerns below: “We are less concerned about the placement protocols than the issue of (law enforcement) interrogating children about their parents’ whereabouts and activities and destroying children’s property in search of drugs in front of the child.”

• Implement training and protocols for actions to be taken before and during arrests at which children are present—especially arrests involving custodial parents or guardians—to minimize trauma as much as possible and sensitize arresting officers to the impact of trauma on child development.
• Additionally, our focus groups that included law enforcement officers requested that recommendations related to responding to children at an arrest include language such as “. . . without compromising the integrity of the arrest or interfering with the safety of everyone involved.”

Minimize Trauma Regarding Parent-Child Interactions within Corrections

• Engage courts to help reduce trauma or strain experienced by children as a result of parental incarceration by recommending that parents be incarcerated in proximity to their children, when appropriate, and suggesting that parents enroll in parenting classes and promote promising practices to eliminate barriers to contact between incarcerated parents and their children, when appropriate.
• Emphasize the role of corrections in developing family strengthening visiting policies.
• Recommend that the National Institute of Corrections provide cross-training for corrections staff and child welfare caseworkers and community agency staff to highlight the impact of incarceration on children and families, with the goal of mitigating existing tensions between corrections and child serving agencies.
• Since many parenting programs in Correctional Settings are adapted from parenting classes designed for non-incarcerated parents, parenting programs in corrections should be subject to “peer reviews” by formerly incarcerated parents before implementation to assure relevance to the population.