Lessons From the Field: Developing and Implementing an Intervention for Jailed Parents and Their Children

• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Author: Pajarita Charles,Margaret Kerr,Jennifer Wirth,Sarah Jensen,Michael Massoglia,Julie Poehlmann‐Tynan
• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12524

P C, M K, J W, S J,

M M,  J P-TUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison

Lessons From the Field: Developing and

Implementing an Intervention for Jailed Parents and

Their Children

Objective: In this Lesson from the Field, we

describe an intervention designed by our trans-

disciplinary team focusing on opportunities for

enhanced parent–child visits when a parent is

incarcerated in jail. We present implementation

challenges and lessons learned from our pilot

feasibility study.

Background: Separation from one’s par-

ent because of incarceration has become an

increasingly common experience for U.S. chil-

dren, with one in 14 children experiencing a

coresident parent leaving for prison or jail.

Parental incarceration is associated with ele-

vated risk for less optimal child development

outcomes, yet few evidence-based interventions

are available to mitigate this risk.

Experience: Our eld experience underscores

knowledge about intervention development and

lessons learned in four areas: (a) use of visit

coaching with jailed parents and caregivers,

(b) application of video chat technology, (c)

serving families holistically, and (d) developing

family-focused services in jails.

ConclusionandImplications: Our study

highlights the value of integrating multiple

perspectives, ensuring exibility with families,

School of Social Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison,

1350 University Avenue Madison, WI 53706

(paja.charles@wisc.edu).

Key Words: Children, incarceration, intervention develop-

ment, jail, parent–child relationships, video chat.

combining technology with enhanced support

strategies, and collaborating with community

organizations and government agencies. The

intervention can be implemented without exten-

sive training and can be useful across different

family professionals working with families

involved in the criminal justice system.

To help mitigate risks associated with parental

incarceration and with the expectation that

increased family contact will lead to improved

postrelease success, we developed the enhanced

visits model (EVM). The EVM is an interven-

tion to connect children and their incarcerated

parents using a combination of in-home video

chat and visit coaching. The goals of this paper

are to describe the intervention and present

implementation challenges and lessons learned

from our feasibility study.

B

Although few evidence-based interventions

exist for children with incarcerated parents,

they are urgently needed because of the large

numbers of U.S. children impacted by parental

incarceration and the risk factors these children

face. At year-end 2017, there were 1.4 mil-

lion individuals in state or federal prison and

745,200 in local jails (Bronson & Carson, 2019;

Zeng, 2019). Importantly, most incarcerated

men and women are parents to minor children,

Family Relations 70 (February 2021): 171–178171

DOI:10.1111/fare.12524