Description
About 1.7 million children in the United States have a parent who is incarcerated, which often ruptures family bonds. Children may not be able to visit their incarcerated parent due to the distance of the prison, transportation costs, stigma, lack of child-friendly visiting areas in prisons and/or their own caregiver's refusal to allow visitation. Children whose parents are incarcerated are at a higher risk for their own later involvement in the juvenile justice system as well as mental health issues. Intervention programs are needed to help children maintain bonds with their incarcerated parent or other family member. Reading Legacies, a non-profit organization, was created to help unite incarcerated adolescents and adults with their children through a shared reading program. The incarcerated family member is recorded reading a book which is mailed to their children to listen to and/or read along with. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the Reading Legacies program based on the incarcerated surveys and caregiver surveys regarding program satisfaction and relationship outcomes from this intervention. Incarcerated surveys (n=1,247) and caregiver (n=101) surveys were returned after participation in the program. Over half of the respondents indicated that their relationship had improved with their child/sibling and almost half stated that their relationship had improved with the caregiver as well. Most (93%) indicated satisfaction with the program. One of the major limitations to this study was that the responses were not provided by the child themselves rather they were provided by a caregiver which could cause an inaccurate response depending on the bias of the caregiver. While this is an initial evaluation, Reading Legacies appears to be a program that is helpful in maintaining positive family bonds. More research is needed as to who chooses to participate in the program, why it is helpful, and what the program means to the child who participates.
