Prisoners Once Removed: Children of Incarcerated Parents

Amanda K. Holland; Karen L. Alexander

22 Prisoners Once Removed: Children of Incarcerated Parents

Introduction

Children of incarcerated parents have many needs and have endured much turmoil and stress, such as family abuse, addictions, low socio-economic status, limited educational goals, dealing with the fallout of their parent’s cycle of incarceration, absence of (functional) parents, and parents reentering and leaving the family. You as a family and consumer sciences (FCS) teacher need to be aware of and be sensitive to these possibilities. So often these children are “prisoners once removed,” tagged with the label of prison through no fault of their own and living through the consequences of their parents’ actions. Since FCS classrooms are often the one place in school where students can relax, communicate, and share personal experiences, these students need the comfort and security that your classroom can provide. Consequently, FCS teachers can accommodate these students’ particular needs and experiences to make them welcome so they can learn and thrive.

Key Terms to Know

Assumptions (implicit and explicit)

Brookfield’s critical thinking model

Checking for accuracy in assumptions

Children of incarcerated parents

Making informed decisions

” I think they shouldn’t have took my mama to jail… Give her the opportunity to make up for what she did. Using drugs, she’s hurting herself. You take her away from me, now you’re hurting me.”

-Terrence, a fifteen-year old boy left to fend for himself after his mother was imprisoned for nonviolent drug possession (Bernstein, 2005).

Critical Thinking

What assumptions do you have about the students in your classroom whose parents are in prison?

What do you know about these students and their parent’s situations?

How does this impact your interaction with them in your classroom?

How do you use this information with your students?

In this chapter, we will use Brookfield’s Critical Thinking Model (2011) to answer these questions and help you become better prepared to teach these students. Brookfield’s critical thinking model involves “(a) identifying the assumptions that frame our thinking and determine our actions, (b) checking out the degree to which these assumptions are accurate and valid, (c) looking at our ideas and decisions (intellectual, organizational, and personal) from several different perspectives, and (d) on the basis of all this, taking informed actions” (Brookfield, 2011, p. 1).

Identify Your Assumptions

We all have assumptions about people who are in prison and their children. These assumptions guide our actions and thoughts, especially if we are in the classroom with children of the incarcerated. They may be valid assumptions based on accurate information, or they may be unreliable. There are two types of assumptions: explicit and implicit. We have explicit assumptions: those that we are already aware of and can readily recognize and acknowledge. We also have implicit assumptions: those that we are not aware of and are often buried deep within us. However, both of these types of assumptions guide us.

What explicit assumptions do you have about people who are incarcerated? Do you think they are violent, drug-addicted, lazy, poor, poorly educated, given to using swear words, tattooed, mentally ill, abused, or wrongly accused and caught up in a criminal justice system with a disproportionate rate of incarceration in communities of color without a full menu of options available to others? Do they need assistance when they are released from prison? Are their children having problems in school and in the community? Are the children better off living in foster care and cutting off their relationship with their parents? Are the children abused? Do they come from low-income families?

At the same time, what are your implicit assumptions about the incarcerated? Are they good parents or bad? Should their children live with them? Are they hopeless and in a cycle of imprisonment and criminal behavior? As for your implicit assumptions about their children… Are they too much trouble to manage in the classroom and community? Because of their parent’s actions, do they deserve consideration and assistance in your classroom or in the community? Are they “tainted with the blood” of their parents? Are they similar to children of the active-duty military since their parents are away from home, or are they somehow different?

What do you assume about children with incarcerated parents in your classroom? Are there any? How will you know? What do you know about them? Should you know if their parents are incarcerated? Why or why not? How should you interact with them? Should they be treated differently than others in your classroom? Why or why not?

Your answers to these questions and your thoughts and actions that naturally follow will guide your behavior and attitudes toward children of the incarcerated in your classroom. Take time to clearly examine your assumptions toward these children and their parents.

Check the Accuracy of Your Assumptions, Consider Different Perspectives

Brookfield’s second and third phases of critical thinking are to check the accuracy of your assumptions to determine if they are faulty or valid and to look at your ideas and decisions from different perspectives. This may involve gathering data, watching movies, reading books, discussing your opinions with others whom you trust, and traveling to gain new experiences (Brookfield, 2011).

Statistics:

What do we know about the incarcerated and their children? Let’s check the statistics.

In 2004, in the latest survey by the U.S. Department of Justice, parents in prison had nearly 1.9 million children at the time of admission to prison (Glaze & Maruschak, 2010).
African American children (6.7%) were seven-and-a-half times more likely than white children (0.9%) to have a parent in prison. Hispanic children (2.4%) were more than two and a half times more likely than white children to have a parent in prison (Glaze & Maruschak, 2010).
More than 4 in 10 fathers held in state or federal prisons were African American, about 3 in 10 were white, and about 2 in 10 were Hispanic. An estimated 1,559,200 children had a father in prison at midyear 2007; nearly half (46%) were children of African American fathers (Glaze & Maruschak, 2010).
Almost half (48%) of all mothers held in the nation’s prisons at midyear 2007 were white, 28% were African America, and 17% were Hispanic. Of the estimated 147,400 children with a mother in prison, about 45% had a white mother. A smaller percentage of the children had an African American (30%) or Hispanic (19%) mother (Glaze & Maruschak, 2010).
One in every three African American males born today will go to prison in his lifetime, as will one of every six Latino males (Mauer, 2010). These figures represent the future for a generation of children growing up today.
African Americans are being prosecuted for drug offenses far out of proportion to the degree that they use or sell drugs. In 2005, African Americans represented 14% of current drug users, yet they constituted 33.9% of persons arrested for a drug offense and 53% of persons sentenced to prison for a drug offense (Mauer, 2010).
More than half (53%) of the children reported by women in state or federal prisons were between 10 and 17, compared to the 47% of the children reported by men (Glaze & Maruschak, 2010).
Approximately one-half of fathers sent to state and federal prisons were not living with their children prior to the incarceration and most of these fathers have had children by multiple partners.
Parents who spend time in prison or jail also tend to be poorly educated, lack material resources, and frequently have problems with drugs, alcohol, and mental illness, each of which has been linked to poor child outcomes even in the absence of incarceration.
Children of the incarcerated tend to live in high-risk environments and do not have the same menu of options that children in low-risk environments have available, such as high-quality schools, safe neighborhoods, and healthy nutrition (full-service grocery stores rather than convenience and liquor stores) and recreational opportunities.
There is another aspect to incarceration: when state mental hospitals were closed in the 1990s, prisons became the place where the mentally ill were housed. Over 70% of the inmates in prisons and jails suffer from substance abuse and mental disorders with the prison serving as a de facto mental health facility. Because of the lack of sufficient services for them, the mentally ill often cycle into and out of the prison. Children of the incarcerated are living with abuse and mental illness in their daily lives.

Interviews

Through research with incarcerated mothers and fathers, the author of this chapter has heard a number of stories of mothering and fathering. Children whose mothers are in prison have often lived in homes where there is a cycle of abuse, mental illness, neglect, and low educational expectations. A woman said she was abused sexually, physically, and emotionally, and her father got her addicted to marijuana by age 8 so she would feel better when he sexually abused her (Trost, 2009). Her own mother was unable to help her because of the level of abuse she had been subject to during her own life.

Often these mothers’ parenting theories mirrored their mothers’ behavior. As an incarcerated woman shared, “Learning to be a mother is like shaving your legs…I just watched my mom…and that’s how I did it” (Trost, 2009, p. 33). This method takes on new meaning when a child is raised in an abusive and abusing household where one or both of their parents was incarcerated, sometimes repeatedly.

Two other incarcerated women related they left school early, in 7th and in 9th grade respectively – pregnant – never having taken a child development, adult living, or career and technical education class that would have given them skills and knowledge to raise a child, develop life goals, and learn skills for the world of work (Trost, 2009). Unfortunately, this is a common thread among incarcerated parents.

In general, mothers who are incarcerated believe that good mothers provide for their children’s physical needs: give their children a bath every other night, get them fed and off to school. Perhaps because of their own addictions or mental illness, there is little understanding of doing homework and projects, supporting their children in sports and extracurricular activities, and providing them with structure and boundaries.

Where men are often about power, women typically focus on interpersonal relationships and are often incarcerated because they are trying to support their children through drug sales or prostitution or because their spouses or boyfriends have abused and threatened them into committing an illegal act.

Fathers who are in prison are generally absentee dads, often have multiple children by multiple baby moms, and provide little financial, physical, or emotional support for their children or partners. Whereas mothers in prison have clear but limited expectations of their mothering, incarcerated fathers tend to see good fathers as being “responsible” with little time invested identifying what that means.

Children of the incarcerated are often present at their parent’s arrest. Almost 70 percent of children who are there watch their parents being handcuffed and nearly 30 percent are confronted with drawn weapons (Phillips, 2010). Consequently, many of these children are found to suffer classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome: they cannot sleep or concentrate, and they have flashbacks to the moment of arrest (Bouchet, 2008).

Children have a difficult time when their parents go to prison. They experience parental loss, stigma, and shame (and consequently keep their parent’s imprisonment a secret) and bullying. Typical feelings include vulnerability, anger, guilt, depression, and anxiety (Children’s Justice Alliance, 2010). They may exhibit the following behavioral symptoms:

Separation anxiety and fears of abandonment
Fear, sadness, loneliness, low self-esteem, and emotional withdrawal from friends and family
Use of alcohol and/or drugs
Eating and sleeping disorders
Anxiety, attention disorders, and developmental regression
Physical aggression, withdrawal, acting out, academic and classroom behavior difficulties, and truancy (Children’s Justice Alliance, 2010, p.3)

Any of these symptoms can be warnings of possible trouble in school, below-average academic performance, and increased drop-out rates for children. They often live in a new situation removed from the companionship of their siblings. They also face increased poverty due to losing their parent’s income – this is a challenge since many of these families already live in poverty (Pathfinders of Oregon, 2013).

Videos

To further check the validity of your assumptions and consider different perspectives, there are a number of high-quality videos that will give you insight into the prison experiences of incarcerated parents and their children. View these resources to check your assumptions and learn more about your students and their parent’s situations.

Ashkenazi, N. (2012). The Grey Area: Feminism Behind Bars. New York: Women Make Movies Release.

This movie provides an intimate look at women’s issues in the criminal justice system and the unique experience of studying feminism behind bars. It was produced and directed by students at Grinnell College in collaboration with women at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women. (65 minutes)

Lankford, S.M., (2010). Women Incarcerated. Retrieved July 18, 2013, from http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=sf4NPVry7b8

This video addresses the social issues of child abuse and neglect, homelessness, incarceration, and the special needs of women behind bars. It is a hard-nosed, harsh-language, and painful portrayal of some women’s lives. (9 minutes)

Miller, D. Behind These Walls. Retrieved July 18, 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=bzipCCRlnAs&feature=related

This is an award-winning student documentary that presents personal stories from prison inmates involved with the Oregon Corrections Enterprise (OCE). OCE provides jobs for prison inmates, allowing them to have productive lives while supporting their families. (12 minutes)

Books

Bernstein, N. (2005). All alone in the world: Children of the incarcerated. New York: New Press.

Written by an award-winning journalist this book provides an intimate and at times heartbreaking look into the lives of children of the incarcerated and their families. Bernstein explores many different sides of the issue, ranging from children’s experience at the time of their parent’s arrest, to unnecessarily harsh laws and policies that force even low-level offenders to forfeit parental rights, to proposals for alternative forms of punishment that take into account the status of prisoners who are also mothers and fathers.

Burgess, S., Caselman, T., Carsey, J. (2009) Empowering Children of Incarcerated Parents. New York: YouthLight.

This book is for counselors, social workers, psychologists and teachers who work with children ages 7-12 who have a parent who is in jail or prison. It is designed so that work can be done individually or in small groups.

Children’s Justice Alliance (2010). Working with children and families with parents involved in the criminal justice system: A toolkit for educators. Retrieved July 25, 2013 from http://www.parentinginsideout. org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Educational- Services-Toolkit.pdf

This toolkit provides a treasure trove of information for educators and includes book titles, video suggestions, and a reading list for young children.

Enos, S. (2001). Mothering From The Inside: Parenting In A Woman’s Prison. New York: SUNY Press.

This powerful book explores how inmate mothers find places for their children to live, manage relationships with caregivers, demonstrate their fitness as mothers and negotiate rights to their children under challenging circumstances. It illustrates the impact of race, ethnicity, and marginality. Although not a recent publication, this book is one of the classics in the mothering from prison literature.

Martone, C. (2005). Loving Through Bars: Children with Parents in Prison. Santa Monica, California: Santa Monica Press.

Written by an educational administrator, this book explores the difficulties children face in maintaining relationships with incarcerated parents. Not only are these children “innocent victims,” they can also be lost in a vicious cycle that can lead to future criminality and deviant social behavior. The author provides dramatic and haunting testimony of the devastating impact parental incarceration has on children. A definite read.

Taking Informed Actions

Let’s do a check for learning: At this point, you have questioned your implicit and explicit assumptions and checked them for accuracy by reading statistics and interviews, watching videos, and reading books. In this process, you have undoubtedly looked at your ideas and decisions from different perspectives. Stop now and ask yourself: What do you know now that you did not know at the beginning of this chapter? What assumptions did you bring that you have found to be invalid and no longer useful to guide your decision-making? What changed your mind?

Now the question is, how will this new knowledge and self-awareness inform your teaching? How will the awareness of the issues and emotions experienced by children of incarcerated parents help you better serve their needs and make your classroom more inclusive? The following are strategies for adults who work with students (Adalist-Estrin, 2013; Nicholas, Bearse, & Burrell, 2009).

What Students Need

Consistent caring adults who understand that, in general, children love their parents, even when their parents have committed a crime and these parents love their children, even when the parents have done something bad (Oslick, 2013). While this may sound confusing, this is the way children process their incarcerated parent’s feelings of affection and love.

People who will understand that children of prisoners feel angry, sad, confused, and worried. Instead of showing sadness and depression these students often demonstrate anger and acting out. You may need to explain to them that their parent’s incarceration is not their fault and help explore and challenge any feelings of self-blame or shame. In addition to coping with these feelings, the students also may be dealing with the feelings related to having been moved when their parents were incarcerated. Since many children of the incarcerated live with single parents, especially single mothers, they may have been placed in an alternative living situation at their parent’s incarceration: living with another parent (if they were living with their father or mother only), living with an aunt or uncle, with a grandparent, or placed into foster care. These households are often caring for other children as well and are frequently stressed by a lack of financial, physical, and emotional resources required to care for another child. This move can be very stressful, and the students will need support and a listening ear through any part of this transition period. You may need to give the student additional time to complete assignments or make accommodation for absences.

Connections to mentors who specialize in helping children of the incarcerated. These mentors may be in your school, your church, or your community. It may be you.

Often families with incarceration histories engage multiple social service systems. You may want to ask to become a part of this team.

Here are strategies for teachers who have students with incarcerated parents in their classrooms. Since we have a high population of children with incarcerated parents in our nation, undoubtedly you will be teaching these children.

To the extent possible, track down how many students in your classes have parents who are incarcerated. Do this through your school’s guidance counselor, registrar, or associate dean or vice-principal. Taking this step makes you attentive to the particular needs of all your students.

Create opportunities for students to express their feelings and learn to cope with them. You may assign journal-writing activities after students read books, view videos, and or engage in the classroom or small group discussions and provide leading questions to guide students in unpacking their feelings. Create a secure, online journal-writing environment where students log in and logout so their journals are kept private and confidential. This way no papers or journal books are left around at home or school to be read and used in ways not intended (blackmail, teasing, bullying, or other forms of retribution by friends, enemies, or family members). This provides students with a venue to inform you about their life to increase your understanding of their life experiences. It also makes you aware of incidents that may need to be reported or followed up on. These entries should not be graded for spelling or grammar, rather the evaluation method should support the students’ efforts to think critically and self-examine.

Communicate your respect for your students and their families. As we are doing in this chapter, examine your assumptions and attitudes in the classroom to check for discriminatory behavior or words. FCS classrooms must be an inclusive environment “where diversity in family composition and circumstance is considered and accepted” (Oslick, 2013, p. 545).

To help all students open up to each other and to help you get to know your students, engage them in activities that foster learning and interpersonal skill-building.

Books by Tom Jackson provide literally dozens of purpose-driven, classroom-tested activities. His books, although published from 1993 to 2002, provide many easy-to-use games to get students interacting and learning. These books include Activities That Teach, More Activities That Teach, Activities That Teach Family Values, Still More Activities That Teach, and Conducting Group Discussions With Kids – all published by Red Rock Press.

Cooperative learning activities are great because they require students to think individually and interact collaboratively with others. These activities may include a Think, Pair, Share where after you pose a question, students individually think and write their own responses, then they turn to a neighbor or assigned partner and pair up, sharing their individual responses. Finally, they share as pairs their thoughts with the rest of the class. This activity reduces student’s anxiety at being singled out in class. Use this anytime you want to introduce a lesson or check for student knowledge.

Try a Jigsaw activity when students are responsible to learn from a reading and are overwhelmed by the prospect of doing that individually. In this activity, each team member is responsible for learning a specific part of a topic and reads it individually. After meeting with members of other groups, who are the “expert” in the same part, the “experts” return to their own groups and present their findings. Team members then are quizzed on all topics. Use a Three-Minute Review during a lecture or discussion by asking teams of students to review the content and prepare questions for clarification or further discussion. These are just a few of the many cooperative learning strategies you will find useful in your classroom to help get to know your students, and so students learn academically and develop social skills.

Be sensitive and aware of your students’ lives. Consider the language you use in the classroom; your students may not have a mother, father, may live in foster care, or be homeless. Their understanding of family may not include blood relatives but may be friends and social workers. “Home” may be different from what you understand it to be. Telling students to get their parent’s permission or to redesign their bedroom when they have access to neither is insensitive.
Strive to know the nature of the relationship between your student and their incarcerated parent. Is it adversarial, fear and chaos-ridden, or close? Is it “hope springs eternal” where even though it is difficult when the parent is home with the potential for drugs, violence, and turmoil in the picture, does the student still love them and want them home? Learn this through their journal entries and the relationships you are creating with them. Be aware that students may act out in school because they are exhausted from refereeing a parent at night, from living on the streets, from being homeless, from couch-surfing from friend’s home to home. Give them space and understanding.
Be aware of the drug and alcohol addictions and mental health issues in the families of your students. These can have a profound impact on the lives of your students.
Provide students with a chance to learn and practice skills and keep busy with activities. Your FCS classes provide students with hands-on learning opportunities and skill-building that gives them something tangible to learn and excel at. These are important for career development and goal setting, particularly when their lives feel meaningless and adrift.
Engage all your students in a service-learning project. In your child development class, assign the students a service-learning project in which they support the Storybook Project in a local jail or prison (see description below). Your students’ role would be to gather donated new children’s books and money and deliver them to a contact person for this Project. In this way, your students would gain knowledge and awareness of the Project and of those it impacts and apply their child development knowledge of age-appropriate reading materials and literacy support to a needy organization in your community. Be sure they also conduct research on the Storybook Project, the prison, and the incarcerated-perhaps asking the coordinator of the Storybook Project or a former inmate who participated in it while inside the prison to be a guest speaker. They should write a reflective journal about their new learnings and experiences. Finally, take time to have a celebration when these books and dollars are delivered to the contact person, taking photos or videos for the school website and inviting the local paper or TV station. There are Storybook Projects in many prisons around the nation. Contact the Volunteer Coordinator at your local prison for contact information for this organization. Be aware, however, if students in your classroom have family members who are incarcerated and are involved in the Storybook Project from inside the prison, then this may give them an opportunity to share this with others in their circle of friends. It may also be something they do not want to discuss with others. You will have to be sensitive to their feelings and not break any confidences.
Connect students with a faith or community organization to provide meaning for them beyond their own crisis. Engaging your students in FCCLA, Future Educators of America, or ProStart will provide them with a self-guided project and leadership opportunities, both valuable to their self-esteem and emotional health.
Create and promote support groups for youth facing this issue in your school. In addition to FCCLA, Future Educators of America, or ProStart, consider creating a club or support group for children of incarcerated parents. You might meet before school, after school, or during a planning period. The students should meet outside of school to socialize/support and take on special projects to connect them to the community.
Identify people who can help them maintain contact with their incarcerated parents or explain to them why they cannot maintain contact. Children of the incarcerated struggle with having face-to-face contact with their parents. Cost is one factor: Almost half of the parents incarcerated in federal prisons live more than 500 miles from their last residence. Another factor is, for a variety of reasons, the caregiver may not want the child to visit their incarcerated parent. You can help your students maintain contact with their parents by encouraging them, if appropriate, to write letters or cards, send school work, make phone calls (the incarcerated can only make collect phone calls that are often very expensive), and/or send photos. Where allowed by the court, you may send incarcerated parents copies of the student’s schoolwork, report cards, and school newsletters. You will also want to give the students additional time on assignments or additional absences to allow them to visit their incarcerated parents.
Promote discussion among your peers and staff in your school. However, be sure to maintain confidentially among your discussions. Students may not want this becoming public information in the school.
Encourage the children of incarcerated parents in your classroom to seek out and participate in parent-child activities provided by the prisons that encourage interaction. These may include

The Storybook Project is a volunteer organization in many prisons that encourages parent/ grandparent interaction with their children through reading, generally serving those up to age 18. The prisoners choose and read books to their children, record them, and the books and recordings are then mailed. This program strengthens both the adult’s and children’s reading skills and creates opportunities for communication through letters, phone calls, and visiting days. Parents discuss the books with their children, ask for book reports to be written and mailed to them, and discuss books they may be reading at home. This opens the door for further communication and supports literacy in both the parent and child.
Daddy-Daughter or Daddy-Princess dances are available in some men’s prisons. Organizations facilitate these events by providing the girls with dresses, hair styling, makeup, and transportation, and hosting the event. The organizations seek permission from the prisons for the dads to dress in their “normal” clothes for this event and to allow cameras, music, decorations, food/beverages, and games to be brought in.
A Sunday afternoon activity where parents can play and interact with their children on the prison grounds, outside the constraints of the visiting room.

Summary

Summary
Enabled:

Statistics Tracking
Children of the incarcerated are an often forgotten segment of the student population in our schools and as all children do deserve special recognition and attention to meet their particular needs. With an awareness of your assumptions about them and their parents, a detailed check of the validity of your assumptions (explicit and implicit), looking at your ideas from different perspectives, and internalizing the suggestions provided here for meeting their needs in your classroom, you can accommodate these students’ unique needs and experiences to make them welcome so they can learn and thrive in your inclusive FCS classroom.
Exercises

In a short paper, reflect on your assumptions regarding students with incarcerated parents. In your paper, use Brookfield’s Critical Thinking Model as a guide for your reflection.

This chapter provides several video and print resources to enhance your understanding. Select several of the resources to read and view. Then, write a reflection on how the resource/s impacted your thinking. Be sure to include any of the assumptions that the resource/s helped you to rethink.

Locate additional quality resources on this topic. Develop an annotated bibliography to share with your course colleagues and professor.

Knowing that cooperative learning is a best practice strategy for working with this population, develop a cooperative learning lesson plan on an FCS topic of choice. For additional guidance, review the chapter, Cooperative Learning, and the chapter, Planning for Instruction.

Create a list with contact information of school and community resources that could provide support for teachers when working with this population. Sure your list with your colleagues and professor.
References

Adalist-Estrin, A. What do children of prisoners and their caregivers need? Children of Prisoners Library, CPL 203. Retrieved July 23, 2013 from www.fcnetwork.org

Bernstein, N. (2005). All Alone In The World: Children of the Incarcerated. New York: The New Press.

Brookfield, S. D. (2011). Teaching for Critical Thinking: Tools and Techniques to Help Students Question Their Assumptions. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass.

Bouchet, S. (January 2008). Children and Families with Incarcerated Parents—Exploring Development in the Field and Opportunities for Growth. Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Children’s Justice Alliance (2010). Working with children and families with parents involved in the criminal justice system: A toolkit for educators. Retrieved July 25, 2013 from http:// www.parentinginsideout.org/wp-content/ uploads/2012/09/Educational-Services-Toolkit. pdf

Glaze L. E. & Maruschak. L. M. (2010). Bureau of justice statistics special report: Parents in prison and their minor children. NCJ 222984. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.

Krupat, T., Gaynes, E., Lincroft, Y. (May 2011). A Call To Action: Safeguarding New York’s Children of Incarcerated Parents. New York, NY: New York Initiative for Children of Incarcerated Parents/The Osborne Association.

Mauer, M. (2010). Justice for all? Challenging racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Human Rights, 37(4). Fall.

Nicholas R. S., Bearse, M., & Burrell, T. (2009). Behavioral Health Toolkit for Providers Working with Children of the Incarcerated and their Families. Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. Retrieved July 25, 2013 from www.dshs. wa.gov/pdf/dbhr/youthtxtoolkit.pdf

Oslick, M.E. (2013). Children’s Voices: Reactions to a criminal justice issue picture book. The Reading Teacher, 66(7).

Pathfinders of Oregon. Children of Incarcerated Parents. Retrieved July 24, 2013 from www. pathfindersoforegon.com

Phillips, S. (August 2010). An Exploratory Study of the Range of Implications of Families’ Criminal Justice System Involvement in Child Welfare Cases. Children and Youth Services Review. CYSR1230.

Trost, B.C. (2009). Mothering from prison: Using narratives in a mother-child support program. Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences, 101(3), 32-38.

About the Author

Dr. Betty Chamness Trost, CFCS; lecturer (retired), Family and Consumer Sciences Education and Studies, Iowa State University. Dr. Trost has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of FCS, methods, curriculum development, assessment and evaluation, program development, leadership in contemporary social issues, development of the middle child, and administration of human service agencies. Her research focus is on parents who are incarcerated. She was a co-founder of the Storybook Project of Iowa. betty.trost@gmail.com