Children of Incarcerated Parents

LOCATING AND ENROLLING THE CHILDREN
In a typical BBBS program, a parent or guardian contacts the agency to
request a mentor for her child. But Amachi was targeting precisely those children
whose parents or other caregivers had such stressful lives that they were
unlikely to learn about and refer their children to a mentoring program.Thus,
one early task was to identify, locate, and enroll children who were eligible for
Amachi.This proved, at least initially, to be a challenge.The children of incarcerated
parents are, after all,“invisible,” and, in many cases, their lives are transient as
they are moved from one caregiver to another.
P/PV staff went through a trial-and-error process to develop a strategy for
identifying the children. It quickly became clear that agencies and institutions
were reluctant to participate in the recruiting. An effort to work through
Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services, whose clients include thousands
of at-risk children and youth, was unsuccessful because the agency did not
specifically identify children of inmates during its intake process. And even when
it knew of such children, it would not reveal their names because of concerns
about confidentiality. Conversations with some of the pastors whose congregations
would become involved with Amachi indicated that they, too, did not wish
to participate in identifying the children.While their churches were located in
areas where large numbers of these children lived, the pastors did not know
which children who came for worship services or weekday programs had parents
who were incarcerated. And they were reluctant to publicly ask for names
from their congregation members because they felt it could stigmatize the children
and their families.
As a result of these experiences, P/PV staff decided to go directly to the prisons
to try to obtain the names of inmates’ children.While this ultimately proved
to be an effective strategy, there was a further process of trial-and-error before
they were able to connect with the prison personnel who could provide access
to the inmates.
Focusing on the Philadelphia Prison System, the Amachi director, Rev.
Goode, initially contacted prison chaplains at five local jails and asked for their
help. However, the chaplains had been involved with previous efforts to work
with families of inmates, and those efforts had been unsuccessful. Fearing a
repeat, and also concerned about confidentiality, they were reluctant to provide
direct help.
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AMACHI