Pairs of Progress a MCP Program
TEARS was awarded a 2010 MCP Mentoring grant for children of incarcerated caregivers/parents called Pairs of Progress (POP). We will provide a total 210 matches over three years. Under this program, children of prisoners, ages 4 through 18, will be matched with adults from their community. The service area for the POP Program will encompass Lee, Macon, and Russell counties in Alabama. TEARS will support a match partnership for twelve months. Our goal is to recruit and, match 70 mentees with mentor each programming year. Pairs of Progress mentoring program was developed to provide each mentee with that additional supportive adult, that is not there to replace their incarcerated parent or caregiver, but to offer added resources to aid in their personal success.
More than 2 million children in this country have a parent in prison. An ever increasing number of children have been impacted by incarceration of a parent at some point in their young lives. Parental incarceration and criminal arrests impact children in a number of ways including shifts in caregivers, changes in schools, and loss of parental support.
Data indicated that mentoring programs can help young people, including those with incarcerated parents, by reducing their first time drug and alcohol use, improving their relationships and academic performance, and reducing the likelihood that they will initiative violence. In addition, mentoring programs can provide these children with opportunities to develop a trusting relationship with a supportive adult and a stable environment that can promote healthy values and strong families.
In response to the growing number of children impacted by incarceration, Congress established the Mentoring Children of Prisoners Program through the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Amendments (Public Law 107-133), and assigned the administration of the program to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded three-year Mentoring Children of Prisoners grants to 52 organizations for the first time in 2003. By 2008 a total of 219 mentoring children of prisoners programs were funded across the U.S.
Impact of Parental Incarceration on Children
- Sometimes experience symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, including guilt.
- May feel isolated or different from others.
- Sometimes leads to the internalization of negative emotions due to a perceived inability to relate to others.
- May have difficulty forming and retaining meaningful interpersonal relationships due to a fear of being rejected.
- 1 in 3 are likely to exhibit behavioral problems such as being aggressive or disruptive; these youth are also likely to show deficits in academic performance.
- Sometimes displaced from their homes.
- May experience psychosocial developmental setbacks due to parental incarceration.