Reading with Dad VHC 2015
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Reading With Dad: Serving Incarcerated Parents and Families- Information on a partnership piloted by the Grafton-Midview Public Library with the Grafton Reintegration Center and Grafton Correctional Institution presented at the 2015 Virginia Hamilton Conference on Multicultural Literature for Youth.
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Reading with Dad VHC 2015
- 1. READING WITH DAD: SERVING INCARCERATED PARENTS AND FAMILIES Nicole Lee Martin and Katie Cooley Holahan
- 2. DID YOU KNOW? The United States has the largest prison population in the world. 1 About half of U.S. prisoners are parents of children under 18, nearly 3 million children. 1 More than 1/3 of children were expected to reach the age of 18 while their parents were still incarcerated. 1 Between 1991 and 2007, the number of children with mothers in prison more than doubled, up 131% while the number of fathers in prison grew by 77%. 1 African-American children are 9 times and Latino children are 3 times more likely than white children to have a parent in prison. 2
- 3. WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS? Parental incarceration creates additional challenges for children and families often resulting in: • Financial instability and material hardship 3 • Instability in family relationships and structure 3 • Residential mobility 3 • School behavior and performance problems 3 • Shame, social and institutional stigma 3 • Emotional trauma 4 • Strained and often difficult relationship with incarcerated parent 4
- 5. FAMILY LITERACY ON THE INSIDE A simple way to repair some of this damage, especially in young kids, is for these fathers to take an active role in their child’s literacy skills development. 5
- 6. READING WITH DAD: APRIL 2014- PRESENT $2000 provided by The Stocker Foundation for recording materials, new books, educational toys and manipulatives, and shipping costs. It took over 1 year to gain approval to begin the program and complete training. Working with a prison educator, 4 classes of inmates were selected to pilot the program at Grafton Reintegration Center. Classes include beginning readers, pre-GED and GED students as well as inmate volunteer narrators. Program was made to fit into existing class schedule and divided into three sessions. Family reading rooms were cleaned, organized and books were labeled by reading level.
- 7. READING WITH DAD SESSIONS Session #1: Every Child Ready to Read Session #2: Book Sharing
- 8. SESSION #3: READING AND RECORDING
- 9. COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT Although children’s books have addressed many other sensitive issues, including adoption, disabilities, divorce, and the death of a parent, relatively few books have been written addressing parental incarceration. 6 Family reading rooms at prisons are in need of books in general due to limited budgets and staff time. Many parents, incarcerated or not, may be struggling readers themselves. Image from http://www.jacquelinewoodson.com/visiting-day/
- 10. BOOK TITLES Visiting Day by Jacqueline Woodson (Scholastic Press, 2002). The Night Dad Went to Jail by Melissa Higgins (Picture Window Books, 2011). A Terrible Thing Happened by Margaret M. Holmes (Magination Press, 2000). My Daddy is in Jail by Janet M. Bender (YouthLight Inc., 2003). “What Will Happen to Me?” by Howard Zehr (Good Books, 2010). Mama Loves Me From Far Away by Pat Brisson (Boyds Mills Press, 2004). When Andy’s Father Went to Prison by Martha Whitmore Hickman Albert (Whitman & Company; Revised edition 1990). Image from http://www.amazon.com/The-Night-Dad- Went-Jail/dp/1404866795
- 11. HELPFUL WEBSITES• Sesame Street: Little Children, Big Challenges http://www.sesamestreet.org/parents/topicsandact ivities/toolkits/incarceration# • The Annie E. Casey Foundation http://www.aecf.org/resources/children-with- incarcerated-parents/ • The National Resource Center for Children and Families of the Incarcerated at Families and Corrections Network http://nrccfi.camden.rutgers.edu/ • National Center for Child Welfare Excellence http://www.nccwe.org/index.html • Correctional Association of New York http://www.correctionalassociation.org/issue/famili es • San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents Bill of Rights
- 12. RESOURCES 1. Murray, David; Farrington, David P.; and Sekol, Ivana. Children’s Antisocial Behavioral, Mental Health, Drug Use, and Educational Performance After Parental Incarceration: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Psychological Bulletin. 2012; 138 (2): 175-210. 2. Sullivan, Megan. Welcoming Children and Families Affected by Incarceration. Public Libraries. 2013; 52 (4): 41-43. 3. The Annie E. Casey Foundation. Children of Incarcerated Parents Fact Sheet. Retrieved from http://www.aecf.org/resources/children-of- incarcerated-parents-fact-sheet/ 4. La Vigne, Nancy G.; Davies, Elizabeth & Brazzell, Diana. Broken Bonds: Understanding and Addressing the Needs of Children with Incarcerated Parents. Urban Institute Justice Policy Center Research Report. 2008. 5. Higgins, Nicholas. Family Literacy on the Inside. Public Libraries. 2013; 52 (1): 30-35. 6. Schlafer, Rebecca J.; Scrignoli, Alyssa. Tough Topic, Necessary Reading:
- 13. Questions? Contact Us! Nicole Lee Martin nmartin@gmplibrary.org Katie Cooley Holahan kholahan@gmplibrary.org
Editor's Notes
- Most police forces don’t know what to do with a child when a parent is arrested. According to a study conducted in California in 2001, only one in 8 agencies had policies requiring officers to ask in an arrestee if they have any children, regardless of the presence of a child at the time of the arrest. The same study shows that even if a child was present at the time of the arrest, only 42% asked about aftercare of the child.
- Financial instability and material hardship is often caused by a lack of income due to incarceration of a parent. Those children with parents who had been incarcerated were 80% more likely than those without incarcerated parents to live in a household that experienced economic strain. Furthermore, children that were benefiting from welfare funds from parents who were unemployed prior to incarceration may lose these monies as they are difficult to transfer to a new caregiver. Residential mobility, instability in family relationships and a lack of structure in home life are often caused when a mother is sent to prison. The child or children are placed in more varied and uncertain living arrangements. The majority of children do NOT live with fathers. After the mother is incarcerated they tend to live with grandparents, relatives, friends or child protective services. Emotional trauma is brought on by this difficult situation and child welfare services estimates of children with recently arrested parents 1 in 5 had clinically significant internalizing problems (depression, anxiety, withdrawal) 1in 3 had clinically significant externalizing problems ( aggression, attention problems, disruptive behavior). Children demonstrate below average academic performance and are more likely than similarly disadvantaged children to fail or drop out of school. 16% of children with newly arrested parents developed temporary school phobias which made them unwilling to attend for up to 6 weeks. Shame, social and institutional stigma can develop for children, other family members and even for the incarcerated family member. Parents may not want their child to visit them in prison out of shame or fear that seeing them behind bars would upset the child further. Children may experience teasing and a general lack of support from schoolmates, friends and their community in general when a parent is incarcerated. This can contribute to low-self esteem and other issues. A strained and often difficult relationship with an incarcerated parent develops for a variety of reasons. The majority of incarcerated parents live over 100 miles away from the home they occupied before arrest. Travel is time consuming and expensive, interrupts caregiver’s work schedule and child’s school schedule. Long wait periods before visitation approval; frisk searches and disrespectful treatment can also contribute to families not visiting. Even phone calls can be difficult to maintain relationships. Many prisons require collect phone calls, which are 5-10 times more expensive than a typical residential phone call. Ultimately, over half of incarcerated parents do not receive any visits from their children during their sentence. 40% of mothers and 60% of fathers report no weekly contact of any kind.
- How can libraries help to ease the struggle these children and families experience while a loved one is incarcerated? How can libraries share resources with these communities and meet their needs? What opportunities are they missing out on in prison that we can bring to them, so that they may feel like part of their family and community? We asked ourselves these questions because we felt that we were not neglecting the families of incarcerated fathers that are within our community. The Grafton Correctional Institution and Grafton Reintegration Center are merely 5 minutes away from our library facilities. We did not have any outreach programming there aside from lending books from out collection to inmate readers and we asked, “How can we do better?”. We came across Nicholas Higgins’ article “Family Literacy on the Inside” in Public Libraries, a professional librarianship publication, and were inspired by his work with fathers on Rikers Island, NY. “The reason we come to work each day is to serve all of our residents, whether they live in homes near the branch, or in cells at the jail on the outskirts of town.” Higgins “Simply put, these fathers could create stronger bonds by reading books to their kids.” Nicholas Higgins, Family Literacy on the Inside, 2013
- Discuss “On the Night You Were Born” and reasons for choosing this title for the recording.
- Although the average reading and math levels of an incarcerated adult are at or below the eighth-grade level, only 9% of all prisoners with low literacy skills receive literacy training while in prison (ProLiteracy America, 2003) http://literacyconnects.org/img/2011/11/US-Adult-Lit-Programs-Making-a-Difference-Research-review.pdf We struggled to find appropriate books that accurately showed life for the family of an incarcerated parent. Many were not in print anymore or available to buy. Ideally, reading rooms would be filled with quality books that depict diverse family backgrounds and experiences. Restrictions on the types of books and content of titles were also a barrier to collection development in reading rooms.
- More suggested book titles can be found on our handout and by accessing the other web resources and articles we have shared in this presentation.