Mentoring Children of Prisoners
President Bush, in his 2003 and 2004 State of the Union address, asked the nation to reach out and help the more than 1.5 million American children with a parentor parents in prison.
According to national statistics, 59 percent of these children are under the age of ten. Most of these children grow up without the benefits of the guidance from a reliable adult in their lives. In fact, a U.S. Senate report indicates that without appropriate modeling from a responsible adult, these children are six times more likely than other children to become incarcerated at some point in their lives.
Because this is such a critical issue for our society at large, the Corporation for National and Community Service (Corporation) is responding to the President's request. Through its Faith-Based and Community Initiative, the Corporation is working with faith-based and small community organizations to provide services related to mentoring children of inmates, as well as gang and youth intervention and ex-offender and reentry activities. Several programs of the Corporation — AmeriCorps, AmeriCorps*VISTA, and Senior Corps — are encouraging their programs to develop new opportunities that serve children of prisoners.
The Resource Center offers the following resources to support the Corporation’s Mentoring Children of Prisoners efforts:
- Public/Private Ventures (P/PV) offers support and publications for national service programs involved in mentoring children of prisoners.
- Faith Community and Criminal Justice Collaboration: A Collection of Effective Programs
This collection of programs looks at how people of faith work with or in criminal justice institutions to reconcile, restore, and nurture individuals back into families and communities. - Family and Corrections Network offers 19 free pamphlets for people serving children of prisoners.
- Performance Measurement Tools:
- Mentoring Children of Incarcerated Parents (DOC) - Instruments to Measure the Performance of Youth Mentoring Programs
- Mentoring Surveys Scoring Sheet (XLS) - accompanying score sheet for above material
- Supporting Children of Inmates Senior Corps Highlights (PDF) - Senior Corps project directors share their accomplishments and best practices for developing volunteer service opportunities that support and help sustain children whose parents are incarcerated.
- Mentoring Children of Prisoners Grantee Profiles (PDF)- Project descriptions of winners of the FY 2003 Mentoring of Childrenof Prisoners grant competition.
