Family Foundations – Inmate Parenting Education

Generous funding from the Frees and Simmons Foundations, both in Houston, Texas, will ensure that female inmates of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) will have an opportunity to explore and improve their parenting skills.

Most female inmates are mothers. The chances of the child of an inmate parent going to prison as an adult are excellent. Teaching female inmates parenting skills is one way to break this cycle that is costly in both dollars and human capital. TDCJ’s existing peer education program provides a built-in, systematic and sustainable venue for increasing parenting skills among hundreds of female inmates.

Nature of Project

This program is a collaboration between the Frees and Simmons Foundation, Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), University of Texas Medical Branch, and CRG. CRG will create a 3-5 hour training module that can be incorporated into the peer education classes currently ongoing at TDCJ. We will also create a participant workbook "planner" for each student.

A written curriculum will ensure that information given the students is accurate, consistent, and based on latest research. Through group participation, the women will have opportunities to share with one another, and support each other while not in the classes. We know from our experiences with the other peer education programs, that the peer educators continue to function as teachers, mentors and coaches in literally thousands of contacts outside of the classes.

Training Content

The training will address, at a minimum:

• Childhood development
• Family systems
• Effective communication skills
• Re-unification with children (to be taught as a pre-release class)

Anticipated Outcomes

Outcomes from a similar program, Woman to Woman: Inside and Out, a peer-driven health education program designed specifically for the women in TDCJ were very positive, both for the peer educators and for the participants in the peer educator-led classes.  An external qualitative retrospective evaluation was conducted, and focused on data from staff, peer educators and participants of the program, with non-participants as a control. Information was collected via personal interviews and focus groups.

The program improved peer educators’ presentation and communication skills, thus increasing self-esteem and accountability.  They were viewed as role models within the system as well as health resources for those around them.  On average, each peer educator talked to 12 people a week on an individual basis outside of a class setting about a health related topic.  These could result in approximately 18,700 teachable moments during a year, factored on an existing corps of 30 peer educators.

Both peer educators and participants demonstrated concrete changes in health care behaviors, including improved communication with healthcare providers and an increase in self-advocacy for health concerns.

We anticipate similar results from the Family Foundations Inmate Parenting classes.