Parenting Inside Out Phase II: Enhanced Visitation Pilot Project

This program promotes and expands services in detention and correctional facilities to incarcerated individuals who have children younger than age 18, and provides states and localities with funding to implement positive family engagement strategies and activities that address the needs of incarcerated parents with minor children. This program is authorized under the Department of Justice Appropriations Act, 2018, Pub. L. No. 115-141.

The State of Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) will use funding to serve incarcerated parents with minor children in the ODOC Coffee Creek Correctional Facility (women) and the Santiam Correctional Institution (men) who have successfully completed the Parenting Inside Out (PIO) program. The children of the incarcerated parents involved in PIO will receive age-appropriate materials to help build protective factors and reduce the impact and trauma of having an incarcerated parent. To lessen the trauma of entering a prison for children and enhance skills for staff, ODOC will provide trauma-informed, emotional intelligence trainings for visitation security staff. The project’s goals are to reduce recidivism and improve parenting skills through enhanced visitation for incarcerated parents using strategies that foster parent/child bonding, enhance the parent/caregiver relationship, and encourage positive family engagement while reducing parental stress and depression during incarceration. CA/NCF