Reducing Barriers to Reunification for Children of Incarcerated Parents
Kathleen Creamer, Esq.
Background
Children of incarcerated parents are a growing yet underserved population of vulnerable youth. While increasing attention has been paid to the needs of these children during parental incarceration, there is a notable gap in attention to the needs of these children once a parent is released. When a child is placed in the foster care system during a parent’s incarceration, the problems experienced by these families are compounded and policy and practice barriers exacerbate the challenge to successful reunification. Research has found that children of incarcerated parents experience trauma as well as social and economic barriers that can result in significant mental health issues, school failure, substance abuse and delinquency. When these children enter foster care, they are particularly vulnerable and at risk for poor outcomes.
Project Summary
Kathleen Creamer is working at the local level in Philadelphia and at the state level in Pennsylvania to improve the well-being of children and families when a parent is incarcerated and children are in foster care. The number of families experiencing involvement in both the child welfare and prison systems is growing. Although the exact number in Pennsylvania is not known, nationally almost ten percent of incarcerated women and two percent of incarcerated men have children in foster care. States and municipalities have begun to recognize the need to better coordinate services for these families, but few successful models exist. Kathleen aims to establish mechanisms for capturing needed data and advancing a coordinated service model to improve reunification outcomes for children of incarcerated parents in the child welfare system in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.
Kathleen is working to improve the coordination of social work services for families involved with both the Philadelphia Department of Human Services (DHS) and Prison System (PPS). She has three primary strategies for achieving her goal at the local level.
- First, she will convene a joint DHS/PPS task force to develop policy and implement practice changes for social workers with cases involving incarcerated parents.
- Second, she will develop a new policy and practice guide for social workers with these cases.
- Finally, she will create a discharge planning guide for parents leaving incarceration.
At the state level, Kathleen will advocate for modifications to Pennsylvania’s interpretation of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) regulations. AFSA includes language that advises states to begin the process of terminating parental rights when a child has been in foster care for 15 out of 22 months. This so-called “15/22” timeline is particularly harmful to parents who are incarcerated and unable to reunify with their child. (In 2009, the average sentence in Pennsylvania was 3.7 years.) Some states, recognizing the unique challenges that incarceration poses for a family, have relaxed the AFSA timelines, or modified their termination of parental rights statutes to clarify that parental incarceration alone is not sufficient to permanently sever the parent-child relationship. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania law reflects a rigid interpretation of AFSA and does not include such flexibility for families. Kathleen has drafted legislation to change the interpretation of AFSA in Pennsylvania and will work to galvanize support from policymakers and practitioners to pass this legislation.