Learning from the Ground Up: Responding to Children Affected by Parental Incarceration

Abstract

Beginning in the fall of 2007, Illinois' Division of Mental Health began piloting an early intervention program targeting children of incarcerated parents. The pilot program was situated within a community-based agency on the Westside of Chicago with a high number of currently and formerly incarcerated community members. This article describes the program theory upon which the pilot program was based, the perceived benefits from the perspective of participants and the service provider agency, lessons learned, and recommendations for making incarceration-sensitive interventions a routine part of children's mental health services.

KEYWORDS:

• Parental incarceration
• intervention development
• child mental health
• implementation
• prevention

Notes

The work represented in this article was funded through the Illinois Department of Human Services, Division of Mental Health. We are grateful to Amy Starin, PhD, from the Division of Mental Health for the opportunity to participate in this project. We also acknowledge the contribution of Karen D. Barbee-Dixon, EdD, Wade Smith, LCSW, and Kenya Brownlee, LMFT from Habilitative Systems, Inc., each of whom who played a critical role in this project.