Office of Outreach & Engagement

Community Partner(s): Department of Correction, Department of Children and Families, legislature, Council of State Governments, CLICC, National Resource Center for Children and Families of the Incarcerated, Tow Institute of Justice, Family Reentry, My People's Clinical Services,

Demographics: Children, dads, moms, parents, caregivers, all races and ethnicities

School or College: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Campus Affiliation: UConn Hartford

Available in any town/city in Connecticut

Program Description

Since fiscal year 2008, the Institute for Municipal & Regional Policy (IMRP) has been receiving annual funding from the Connecticut General Assembly to administer competitive grants for providing positive interventions for at-risk youth whose parent(s) and family members have been incarcerated. The IMRP continually seeks to gain an additional understanding of these children and their service needs through research, evaluation, and outreach activities. As such, the IMRP, in collaboration with faculty members from various colleges and universities throughout Connecticut, is evaluating the effectiveness of direct care services in alleviating negative responses to parental incarceration and improving the positive attributes of CIP. The mission of the CIP Initiative is to improve the quality of support for children with incarcerated parents by using the various data and knowledge it gains to inform public policy and practice. 

The CIP Initiative has funded and developed programming, created a stigma measure specifically for children with incarcerated parents, an attachment scale, a family reentry workbook, a children’s website full of cartoon-like drawings that answer questions that CIP tend to have, a Frequently Asked Questions booklet for incarcerated parents, their children and caregivers, we purchased a playground for the only state women’s prison in Connecticut, redesigned Cybulski’s visiting area making it child-friendly, and many more diverse types of engagement seeking to support CIP and their families. The CIP Initiative also provides training, consultation, and research and offers scholarships to UConn students who have experienced the incarceration of a close family member. 

The CIP Initiative instituted seven Guiding Principles to inform its work. They are: 

1.  Practices should be explicitly designed with CIP needs in mind.
2.  Include CIP and their families in program development, implementation, and evaluation.
3.  The relationship between the child and the incarcerated parent should be supported.
4.  Programs should reach children and families to get “self-referrals.”
5.  Stigma and isolation associated with incarceration should be reduced.
6.  Emphasis on connections, collaborations, and coordination among agencies and community partners.
7.  Evaluation and accurate data are critical for identifying evidence-supported practices.