Look Up and Hope: Strengthening Families Affected by Incarceration
Since 1896, Volunteers of America has been serving prisoners and their families. Reform and redemption were core values promulgated by founders Maud and Ballington Booth. Maud believed in a holistic approach when working with people touched by incarceration, and it is in that vein Volunteers of America advances with its new initiative—Look Up and Hope: Strengthening Families Affected by Incarceration. Our mission is to break the cycle of poverty for children affected by incarceration and walk beside them as they reach their full potential.
Families in Need
The number of incarcerated mothers has more than doubled from 29,500 in 1991 to 65,600 in 2007, which translates to 70 percent of all women in prison are mothers. Children whose mothers are incarcerated are more likely to have witnessed their parents’ arrest, experiencing significant trauma and household disruption as a result. When a mother is incarcerated, her children are likely to be transferred to the care of a non-parental caregiver, most often their grandmother. A significant body of research indicates that these children can suffer serious psychological and economic harm as a result of the parent’s involvement with the criminal justice system.
Generally impoverished to begin with, most children of prisoners become even poorer upon their parents’ arrest, because their family has lost either a vital wage earner or a critical source of child support payments. What becomes of these children? How do we help them and break this cycle?
Volunteers of America Response
Volunteers of America is introducing a new, more holistic and research-based approach to breaking the cycles of poverty and incarceration with Look Up and Hope: Strengthening Families Affected by Incarceration. This new national program is designed to support the long-term success of children and their incarcerated parent.
Look Up and Hope and its partner congregations and organizations will offer prisoners, their children and the children’s caregivers a comprehensive array of coordinated, support services including vocational training and employment services; educational programming and support for all family members; cognitive behavioral therapy; mental health and substance abuse treatment; group and family counseling; life-skills and parenting classes; caregiver support groups; graduated visitation opportunities; family-centered assessments; strengths-based service planning; and mentoring.
Through such a complex, multimodal approach, Volunteers of America expects to empower its Look Up and Hope participants with the skills, relationships, and resiliency they need to transcend the devastating effects of poverty and incarceration.
Why Volunteers of America?
Volunteers of America has over 113 years of experience in working with incarcerated populations and their families. We have identified five local offices as pilot sites for the Look Up and Hope program. These local offices have long-standing relationships with at least one of the populations of our focus—incarcerated parents, children or caregivers. Each of these local offices brings a unique perspective and four of the five have previously been Volunteers of America/Annie E. Casey Family Strengthening Awards Winners.*
Our strength-based approach, focusing on three generations—the child, the mother and the caregiver (often grandmother)—is a solid commitment by Volunteers of America to stay with these families for the long-term. Our hope is that we can help them conquer the barriers so often associated with those affected by incarceration and poverty, such as substance abuse, domestic violence and mental illness. For over a century, we have been empowering those we serve to reach their full potential, and although some people can’t imagine taking on an issue this complex, we can’t imagine not doing it.
The Results
Our purpose through this initiative is to preserve families whenever possible. Volunteers of America will help families to create and maintain economic stability; encourage and foster positive family relationships; provide emotional support for the children who suffer through the disruption caused by incarcerations, support school success; and in turn, prevent the juvenile delinquency which often stems from the troubled environment surrounding a parent’s incarceration.
We will serve the whole family focusing on children, incarcerated mothers and caregivers (usually the grandmother or another kin caregiver) simultaneously, creating a spiritually collective healing process for all involved.
Our communities and the nation have a huge stake in the successful reentry of incarcerated mothers after they serve their sentences. These mothers, along with their children and caregivers, are our neighbors. By providing a network of stability, we reduce the rate of recidivism helping the previously incarcerated to become healthy, contributing members of society. By acting now, we can show children another path, reducing the probability that children with incarcerated parents may enter the criminal justice system. We acknowledge that this is a great undertaking, but we believe that it is a necessary one; and through our model, Look Up and Hope, we will succeed.
What are the consequences if we don’t succeed?
Despite the explosive growth in the number of mothers who are in prison—and the potentially devastating effects of this incarceration on future generations—there are at present only a handful of prisoner reentry programs in the U.S. that are specifically designed to support whole families impacted by incarceration. By supporting Volunteers of America’s Look Up and Hope Initiative, you are changing the face of your community and the thousands of communities across the nation.
Our nation now spends $65 billion each year to incarcerate 2.3 million people—more than any other country. If we do not act now, the issue and the expenditure associated with it will grow exponentially. If we do not act now, presently overcrowded prisons will begin releasing individuals with no support system in place, placing them and others in jeopardy. If we do not act now, the future of these mothers, children and caregivers is at risk. Let us begin now—together—to work toward breaking this cycle of incarcerating mothers, destroying families and over-burdening state and federal correction systems, where there is no adequate support system in place for individuals returning home.
Volunteers of America believes the Look Up and Hope Initiative will change the future for incarcerated mothers, their children and families, resulting in stronger communities for everyone.
* Founded in 1948, the primary mission of the Annie E. Casey Foundation is to foster public policies, human-service reforms, and community supports that more effectively meet the needs of today’s vulnerable children and families. In pursuit of this goal, the Foundation makes grants that help states, cities, and neighborhoods fashion more innovative, cost-effective responses to these needs.
Resources for This Section
- Strengthening families impacted by incarceration: A review of current research and practice
The full report includes:
• A brief review of the service needs of families affected by incarceration
• A review of the most widely agreed upon research-based “practices” related to families af fected by incarceration
• An inventory of specific evidence-based programs, service models, and curricula that have been used to provide supportive services to incarcerated parents, their children, and their children’s caregivers