Love and Loss

SOURCE;  Intersection of Love and Loss:  "Children of Incarcerated parents" by Isadora Kosofsky, Time Magazine, May 17, 2016.  Link:  time.com/4327836/love-and-loss-children-of-incarcerated-parents/


According to the article in Time Magazine; " In 2010 more than 2.7 million children in the US had an incarcerated parent at some point in their lives.  Nationally there are more than 120,000 incarcerated mothers and 1.1 million incarcerated fathers who are parents of minor children."  This leads me to the question of what happens to the children of the incarcerated?  From first hand experience, I know that the department of human services first tries to place the child or children with family.  If that presents to be unsuccessful then their next step is to reach out to friends of the family.  Then if yet, they are unsuccessful, the department has no other choice but to place the child or children in a temporary home usually called a foster home.  In a lot of cases if their is more then one child, the possibility of them being placed in the same foster home is very unlikely.

source:  Effects of Parental incarceration on young children/ASPE. aspe.hhs.gov

  This is what happened to my children.  They were forced to be split up, causing more trauma.  The loss of an attachment figure is very devastating to a child and when they are separated from their siblings, this just adds to the many devastation's they suffer through.  Needless to say, when a child is placed outside of family or friends, the possibility of keeping some kind of connection with their parent or parents is difficult.  A lot of times, children are not told the whole truth as to why the separation and placement into a foster home occurred.  This is meant to be a means to try and protect the child or children from further trauma but in the end, hurts them more.  This can leave the child or children feeling angry, confused, scared, feel rejected or like they did something wrong to cause the separation themselves.

  Usually the reasons behind such incarcerations are related to an addiction and/or criminal activity that was occurring in the child or children's environment.  Even with such behaviors occurring, the child or children are still attached to their parents and are accustomed to what ever may have been going on around them.  Unfortunately, they might not even realize the dangers they may have been in. So in most cases, the child or children express what is going on inside of them through their behaviors at school or in their foster home.  The behaviors displayed may look like acting out or even closing up.  With the little awareness that our communities have on such topics, it is hard to properly give these children what they need in order to stabilize again.

When I got my kids back and was trying to help them to feel secure again, my son was having tremendous difficulties in school.  So much, that he was suspended from school and after a school meeting, I was talked into trying to home school him until he became more stable in his circumstances.  This proved to be very unsuccessful, so realizing that my son was falling through the educational cracks, I begun to advocate hard for him.

 The problem was that the school was not trained in how to properly address situations where a child comes from such trauma.  So with the help of the department of social services, my therapist and the several therapist of my sons, I helped them to understand the dynamics of his situation.  Several board meetings later, my son was able to be a success through a program that the district implemented in order to help kids with backgrounds such as his.  The program is called ATLAS (please see link).  This program, unlike any other is designed to help children who are struggling in school not because of a learning disability, but rather who's situation is circumstantial. I can not begin to describe how life saving this program has been for my son.  When I first won custody back of him, he was not able to stay regulated for even 30 minutes in a school setting.  By the end of the year, my son was excited to and looked forward to going to school and was successful all day.  These are the kinds of programs that our community must advocate for in order to stop this cycle of incarceration.

In my next source by Amy Alexander."Why Children With Parents in Prison Are Especially Burdened".  The Atlantic Dec. 14, 2015.  Print. (pg. 3,para. 3)   Vallas, the director of policy for the Poverty to Prosperity Program at CAP said, " Because these challenges affects such a large share of our nation's children, we ignore these intergenerational consequences at our peril."  When I read this statement this is how I internalized it.  That we, as a whole community, are not doing what we can to break the cycle and in turn causing more problems by just ignoring it.  This is a cowardly thing to do.  So just because we feel that this issues is to overwhelming or to big to overcome because it is ever growing larger and larger, then our heads have been turned to it?  This puts so much at grave risk!  Then when the issue is brought to our "back yard",  we do nothing but judge and talk down to the child, the parent and/or the circumstances because it has caused some kind of ruffled feathers in our mist?  It is time to see that if we are not going to help be part of the solution, then we are just as much part of the problem.

  These children need our help as a community to get a running start at not getting griped by the same vices that have or had griped their loved ones.  Interventions are needed in order to help  schools with proper programs, to help neighborhoods to build better support systems in keeping each other safe, and to help families break these vicious cycles of whatever it is that is keeping them from being reunited back with each other.  A majority of children with these types of back round also come from low-income families.  The funding for such programs as ATLAS has become scarce, causing fear of shut-down in the future.  We, as tax payer, are spending millions of dollars a year on focusing on the well being of the inmate themselves, that the children's needs are being overlooked.  So what can be done?  Who do we go to in order to get the support needed in order to advocate for such matters?  where do we begin?  There are already so many programs and resources that I begin to wonder what kinds of new ideas has anyone with a voice for these helpless children come up with or even tried to present to the table?