Caring for Kids
Challenges and Case Building
More than 2.7 million children have a parent currently behind bars, and more than 5 million children have experienced a parent's incarceration in their lifetime. Children of incarcerated parents are at risk for a number of adverse outcomes, including challenges at school, substance use, depression, anxiety, and involvement in the justice system.
In our work to disrupt and prevent trauma to children and families affected by incarceration, we have found that the quality of family visits during the parent’s incarceration can correlate to reducing risks for their children. With funding from the University of Minnesota Office of the Vice President for Research, our team used an observational protocol in 2021 (designed for visits with children between 2-6 years) developed by Dr. Julie Poehlmann-Tynan at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and adapted it for older children and adolescents (7-17 years).
We examined the visit quality as a potential protective factor, and studied associations between children’s developmental outcomes and characteristics of their jailed parents. We found that the type of visits children can have (e.g., Plexiglas barrier vs. video visits) has important implications for the way they can interact with and connect with their parents. We also learned a lot about the ways in which caregivers can be important sources of support for helping children navigate and process their experiences with visits.
Making small changes to the physical environment of the visiting space – such as adding child-sized furniture – can make a big difference.
State legislation in 2022 created a unit of professionals in the Department of Corrections to support parents and families involved in and impacted by incarceration.
Community-engaged Solutions
Our team partners with local and state agencies and community organizations to research upstream interventions that support families and have the potential to disrupt the cycle of incarceration. When the Minnesota Department of Health asked our team in 2018 to assist with data collection and research on family home visiting programs, we recognized an opportunity.
Family home visiting promotes health equity by providing tailored supports to families experiencing chronic stressors like poverty.
Early childhood family home visiting (FHV) is a voluntary, home-based intervention used to improve outcomes for mothers, children, and families. A trained home visitor provides individualized services to meet the unique needs of each family. FHV provides education, parenting support, and connections to community-based resources for families from the prenatal period through when a child enters kindergarten. Research has demonstrated many positive effects of FHV, including better birth outcomes, lower parental depression, increases in positive parenting skills, increases in school readiness, and reductions in child behavior problems.
Mothers with young children who participate in family home visiting are less likely to become involved in the criminal legal system. The same is true for their children.
Our Center for Research in Family Home Visiting partners with the Minnesota Department of Health’s FHV section to co-develop a comprehensive research and evaluation agenda and to connect FHV to research and future practice. We are also exploring potential collaborations between FHV and criminal justice settings.
Our analysis of the Minnesota Student Survey (MSS) in 2022 found that 1 out of 6 youth in Minnesota have an incarcerated or previously incarcerated parent, making parental incarceration one of the most frequently reported Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) for this population. Two-thirds of adults in Minnesota jails are parents with minor children, a majority of whom are interested in participating in parenting education. Clearly, jails have an opportunity to support families impacted by the legal system through policies, programs, and resources, and by connecting them to a range of community-based services to meet their needs.
Data from our team has also informed other statewide investments to reduce families’ likelihood of being touched by the criminal legal system. Early Learning Scholarships, funded in 2022, help low income families access Early Childhood Family Education programming, with priority given to children from marginalized backgrounds, including those affected by incarceration. Our research also informed the funding and creation of the Family Support Unit in the Department of Corrections. Our next challenge is to document the many ways in which these upstream interventions can support positive social outcomes.
Dr. Shlafer’s enthusiasm for this work is spreading: in 2023, students in her honor’s class, Incarceration and the Family, partnered with Dr. Diana Poch and people incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Sandstone, MN to start Project Teddy Bear, a restorative justice project. Students collected yarn to send to incarcerated men, many of whom were learning to crochet for the first time. The men used the yarn to crochet stuffed animals which were donated to children staying at the Ronald McDonald House.