How do you parent a child if you\u2019re behind bars? How can you steer your child away from some of the life decisions you made? And possibly the greatest challenge \u2013 how do you learn to readjust to a two-year-old\u2019s tantrums or a teenager\u2019s misbehavior after you return home? \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Years before our executive director, Dr. Ben de Haan, and research director, Dr. \u00a0J. Mark Eddy, joined Partners for Our Children, they worked together with numerous collaborators in Oregon to develop a program to address these types of questions. The program \u2013\u00a0Parenting Inside Out<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 helps incarcerated parents prepare for the parenting challenges they\u2019ll face after leaving prison.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t often think about it, but many prisoners have children at home. Today, more than half of all prisoners in the U.S. have children under the age of 18,\u201d said Dr. Eddy. \u201cConsidering there were virtually no evidence-based programs specifically designed and tested for criminal justice-involved parents, we knew we had to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n Parenting Inside Out<\/em>\u00a0was a collaborative effort between the\u00a0Oregon Department of Corrections<\/a>,\u00a0Oregon Social Learning Center<\/a>(OSLC) and\u00a0Pathfinders of Oregon<\/a>. The program was designed to strengthen the bond between the parent (inmate) and his\/her child during visitations, teach effective parenting strategies and also help the parent identify strategies to prevent future incarceration.<\/p>\n Work on the program began as the state of Oregon was designing a new prison for women, Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. A multi-disciplinary team, co-led by Dr. Eddy; Dr. Rex Newton, a psychologist who spent his career working with parents in prison, on probation and parole; and Charles R. Martinez, Jr., a scientist at OSLC and expert on parent management training and interventions with diverse populations, spent three years developing the program, and six years examining its impact on incarcerated mothers and fathers both inside and outside of prison. Tracy Schiffmann, an instructional designer and expert on adult learning theory, was the lead curriculum writer. Danita Herrera was the project coordinator on the study, which is the largest study of its type ever conducted.<\/p>\n Inmates could ask to participate in the study, which was delivered in minimum and medium security \u201creleasing institutions\u201d for men and women in the Willamette Valley, where inmates came during the end of their sentences to prepare for their return home.\u00a0Parenting Inside Out<\/em>\u00a0was found to have a variety of positive impacts in a long-term, randomized controlled trial. Compared to study participants who were randomly assigned not to receive the program, parents in the\u00a0Parenting Inside Out<\/em>group were less likely to be rearrested, more likely to be involved in the lives of their children and less likely to be depressed or report substance abuse after leaving prison. In 2014, the program was added to the\u00a0National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices<\/a>.<\/p>\n A variety of papers have been published on the study. Dr. Eddy has also co-edited a relevant volume called\u00a0Children of Incarcerated Parents: A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners<\/em><\/a>, published by the Urban Institute Press.<\/p>\n Parenting Inside Out\u00a0<\/em>was created\u00a0<\/em>to\u00a0<\/em>respond to a need of the adult corrections system in Oregon. At POC, we work on projects designed to meet identified needs in Washington\u2019s child welfare system. A general area of need is evidence-based programs that are developed specifically for child welfare-involved families and that are not cost-prohibitive to deliver to families.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why POC is leading the effort to develop an \u201copen-source\u201d parenting program, which will be non-proprietary, affordable, adaptable and widely disseminated in Washington State and beyond. We are currently in the process of developing this program in close collaboration with the DSHS Children\u2019s Administration and other key partners, including Seattle Children\u2019s Hospital. Once developed, the program will be tested in a randomized controlled trial. Read more about the program\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0or email us your questions \u2013\u00a0info@partnersforourchildren.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n Stay tuned for a blog post focused on this new effort!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How do you parent a child if you\u2019re behind bars? Drs. Benjamin de Haan and J. Mark Eddy collaborated on a parenting program that addresses this and similar questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[94],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/partnersforourchildren.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7793"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/partnersforourchildren.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/partnersforourchildren.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partnersforourchildren.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partnersforourchildren.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/partnersforourchildren.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/partnersforourchildren.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partnersforourchildren.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partnersforourchildren.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}