Request for Partnership Groups

Project Overview

            My name is Dee Ann Newell, and I am the recipient of a 2006 Senior Justice Fellowship Award from the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation of New York. My host organization is the national Family and Corrections Network. I am seeking 10 statewide, regional, or local collaboratives to partner with me to pursue policy reforms and systemic changes that best insure the well-being of children of incarcerated parents. The partnering locations must have been in existence for 18 or more months, offering services or advocacy endeavors that have included the target population of children of incarcerated parents and/or their caregivers and parents.

            The overarching mission of these partnerships is to develop local, regional, or state strategies that will further the much-needed, larger national advocacy effort on behalf of children of incarcerated parents.

            This project is based on the document, the Bill of Rights for Children of Incarcerated Parents, authored by Nell Bernstein, author of All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated and coordinator of the San Francisco Partnership for Children of Incarcerated Parents. and Gretchen Newby, director of the national organization, Friends Outside, in California. My fellowship-initiative will offer intense, research-based technical assistance to the ten (10) selected partnering for a fourteen-month period. Together, we will pursue effective strategies and develop a variety of tools to implement the changes supported in the Bill of Rights document.

        My mentor for the Soros Fellowship project to secure these rights for children of prisoners will be Ann Adalist-Estrin, a 25-year researcher, practitioner, trainer, and consultant to Family and Corrections Network and widely recognized for her work with children of prisoners. She will assist in the development of the initiatives, supporting the unique needs of each region.

The Bill of Rights states that every child of an incarcerated parent is to have the following rights:

1.      To be kept safe and informed at the time of my parent’s arrest;

2.      To be heard when decisions are made about me;

3.      To be considered when decisions are made about my parent;

4.      To be well-cared for in my parent’s absence;

5.      To speak with, see, and touch my parent;

6.      To support as I face my parent’s incarceration;

7.      To not be judged, blamed or labeled because my parent is incarcerated;

8.      To have a lifelong relationship with my parent.

            The Bill of Rights Project is based on the success of projects already underway in San Francisco and Arkansas. Working with the Children’s Bill of Rights, these two regions successfully developed arrest protocols for law enforcement and child protective services that reduce the trauma of witnessing a parent’s arrest; and law enforcement training modules and procedures to insure healthy placements of the children without the further disruption of an out-of-home placement by Child Protective Services.

            Another successful project was provision of a Family Impact Statement to judges on the impact of parental incarceration on the family when a defendant has minor children. Yet another example was the provision of services to the relative caregivers who typically provide a home for the children during their parent’s arrest or incarceration. These families save taxpayers money as the children do not enter the foster care system, and provide for family continuity, yet are one of the most underserved and financially supported families in our communities.

            I am interested in partnering with interested groups around the country who wish to work in the policy reform effort built around the Children’s Bill of Rights. I would like to know what you would be interested in pursuing. I hope to partner with you in carrying out your initiatives for policy reform.

            Applications are requested from groups consisting of three (or more) entities, including one state agency, and with one member having access to policymakers and community leaders. Only ten (10) partnerships will be established.

Applying groups must have at least eighteen months (18) of previous experience in their region or state serving children of incarcerated parents, their families, caregivers or parents or in advocacy efforts to improve practices and policies affecting these families.

1. The energy and activism of the applicant collaborative to sustain the work. Their interest in receiving technical assistance to develop and implement strategies leading to improved security and well-being for children of incarcerated parents, using the Bill of Rights for Children of Incarcerated Parents.

2. Ten distinct locations, representing a variety of communities, regions, or states within the United States are sought for this project. Each proposal will identify some specific advocacy needs for their locality, but groups receiving partnership assistance will not be limited to the goals set forth in the proposal.

3. While the ten locations develop their unique sets of initiatives, they will help create a national advocacy effort, engaging with national advisors on materials and strategies best suited to gaining these rights for children of prisoners. The “cross-pollination” assistance that will be afforded by this fellowship will lead to a manual of strategies that can be used by others to secure the well-being of children of prisoners and their families. Therefore, one selection criteria will be the ability of an agency to contribute to the mix of strategies and learn from the work of other project participants.

I. THE BENEFITS OF THE PARTNERSHIP AND TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

• Help the children and families through effective strategies for systemic change.

• Receive free technical assistance for the implementation of the strategies developed by the individual collaborative over a 14-month period of time.

• Collaborate with other project locations sharing ideas, strategies, and outcomes among each other, via the fellowship’s technical assistance.

• Help produce a manual of strategies to implement the Bill of Rights for Children of Prisoners for use by other localities around the USA

• Access to one of the authors of the Bill of Rights for Children of Incarcerated Parents for assistance and public awareness. (Nell Bernstein, author of the recently published book, All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated, published by The New Press, November 2005.)

• Access to Ann Adalist-Estrin, noted researcher, practitioner, and trainer for children of incarcerated parents, co-author of Responding to Children and Families of Prisoners – A Community Guide and author of The Children of Prisoners Library, Director of the National Resource Center for Children of Prisoners and Families of the Incarcerated (formerly the Federal Resource Center), and member of the board directors of Family and Corrections Network.

• Receive written materials, research-based ideas, templates from other areas, public awareness tools, and interactive communications with other sites.

II. OBLIGATIONS OF PARTNERING ORGANIZATIONS

If you are excited at the prospect of developing the strategies for your locality that will secure some Rights for Children of Incarcerated Parents, please consider applying. Use the following list of obligations to aid you in your partnership application for the project. I am eager to hear from any and all interested groups!

• Assemble energetic and committed members to serve on a task force with committees representing the specific rights and policy agendas that the groups wish to develop.  Work to better serve children of the incarcerated and their families.

• A commitment of the group to meet at least once a month for fourteen months, and to do the necessary research and legwork around the identified initiatives.

• To sustain communications with the fellowship partners(s) on a regular basis.

• Provide requested written information and evaluations to the Bill of Rights Project Fellowship partner that would measure the process and the outcomes and effectiveness of the pursuit of the identified goals of each organization.

• If funding is received, to participate in a national summit concerning the national movement to establish the Bill of Rights for all children of incarcerated parents.

• To interconnect to the other partnering entities for sharing and ‘cross-pollination’ of strategies and tools.

III. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

            Senior Justice Fellow, Dee Ann Newell, has a Master’s Degree in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University and has served children of prisoners, their parents, and relative caregivers since 1993. Ms. Newell lives in Little Rock, Arkansas and co-founded Arkansas Voices for the Children Left Behind, a grassroots advocacy organization in 1994. From 1991 to 2005, she served as Program Director of Services for Children of Prisoners and their Families at the Centers for Youth and Families, a children’s mental health agency While there, she developed the parenting program for parents inside the Arkansas Department of Corrections and developed several model programs for the children and their prisoner-parents, and other family members, including the federally-funded Family Matters Program Demonstration Site for Children of Prisoners, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice/National Institute of Corrections.  In 2003, her leadership led to the passage of the first state legislation in the nation to sustain the funding of services for children of prisoners. She received the 2005 Child Abuse and Prevention of Neglect Award from the federal HHS Commissioners of the Administration of Children and Families for her state, concerning her work on behalf of children of prisoners. She also received the Arkansas Chapter of National Association of Social Workers Public Citizen Award for her work in 2004, an award given to a non-social worker.

            Recently, her organization, Arkansas Voices for the Children Left Behind, received a $950,000 state grant to provide a Demonstration Project for Grandparents Raising Grandchildren in four areas of the state with either the greatest population growth or the greatest degree of abject poverty. The organization also has a grant to pursue the Rights to Realities Action Agenda under the Bill of Rights for Children of Incarcerated Parents, including pilot programs for law enforcement concerning arrest protocols and Family Impact Statements.

            She co-wrote, with her attorney husband, The Arkansas Legal Handbook for Parents in Prison: Your Rights and Responsibilities, in English and Spanish. She also co-wrote the booklet, What You need to Know when a Parent has been Arrested or is Absent: A Handbook for Relative Caregivers. She is currently completing a parenting curriculum for imprisoned parents and their caregivers, called Co-Parenting for the Children’s Sake, connecting the specific parenting issues of incarcerated parents with the caregivers of the children during the parent’s incarceration. Her organization sponsors the Annual Southern Summit Conference on Children of Incarcerated Parents and their Families: research-Based Practices and Initiatives.

            Family and Corrections Network, the national host organization for this fellowship, is a 25-year old organization serving families and organizations addressing the needs of children and families of the incarcerated, nationally through publications, training and technical assistance.

III. SELECTION CRITERIA:

To be selected as one of the Bill of Rights Project’s ten (10) locations, successful applicants will:

• Be a collaborative of three (3) partnering groups, local, and/or regional, and including state governments, concerned with improving outcomes for this population of children or their families;

• Have been in existence for at least 18 months;

• Provide a statement of need, including statistics for the area and other demographic information;

• Have a substantive number of staff or volunteers who would participate in the establishment of task forces for the welfare of the children;

• Engage and/or partner with one (1) state agency impacting children and families of prisoners, e.g., public child welfare, TANF agencies, departments of education, divisions of mental health, departments of corrections, or others;

• Have a history of work within the community for families of prisoners, prisoner-parents, children of prisoners, and/or relative caregivers, including caregivers of children due to parental incarceration.

• Have access to community organizers, leaders, youth councils, departments of corrections, children’s services, and/or educational organizations that impact children of prisoners, and others groups and organizations that may effect this population.

• Commit to form a task force with several committees to develop an action agenda for the location and to pursue strategies to initiate the policy reforms or systemic changes to better serve the children of incarcerated parents in ways that honor the parent-child relations and support the children. Such committees with the capacity to implement the changes will meet on a monthly basis with the Senior Justice Fellow, Dee Ann Newell, along with consultants, Nell Bernstein and Ann Adalist-Estrin, and others, as appropriate.

• Identify one or two of the rights that the partners would be interested in developing, understanding that the scope of work is not limited by these statements in the proposals.

A project application form is available. If you are interested, please complete and return to Dee Ann Newell by July 31, 2006. 

A telephone conference call was held July 10, 2006 to discuss the project and answer questions about the application process.  To hear an MP3 recording of the call, see conference call audio.

Notification of selections will be completed by August 31, 2006. The partnerships will begin September 1, 2006 and end October 30, 2007.

I look forward to hearing from you. FOR ANY QUESTIONS, CONTACT ME AT (501) 366-3647 (CELL) OR (501) 603-0244, Arkansas Voices’ Office Phone.

I look forward to your applications.

Sincerely,

Dee Ann Newell

5414 Edgewood Road

Little Rock, AR 72207

(501) 366-3647 (CELL) or (501) 603-0244

lujo@aristotle.net