“This is so important when you think about the number of how many incarcerated parents' children live in the county,” George said. “By offering a program that will allow parents the chance to serve their sentences and still spend time with their children, we help to maintain the family structure. The children have done nothing wrong, and where we can help, we should.”
According to a Nov. 1 press release from the county, data from the Fort Bend County detention center in Richmond showed 5,341 individuals booked at the jail, or 44%, in 2019 had minor children. This program aims to coordinate a protocol for identifying the needs of incarcerated parents with minor children and further establishing policies for visitation at the detention center to increase opportunities for engagement, play, and mutual learning between incarcerated parents and children.
The department of behavioral services will work with Dr. Robin Gearing, a professor at the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Houston, to develop and deploy the Always Parenting program in two phases.
The initial phase will focus on planning activities to implement a coordinated system of programs and services to support the needs of incarcerated parents and their children.
An advisory group and subcommittees comprising key agency and community stakeholders will identify services to target, such as screening and assessment tools specific to parenting; creating supportive and safe visiting protocol and procedures, such as child-friendly visitation rooms, visit coaching and virtual visits; and developing core personnel training for mental health first aid and trust-based relational intervention.
The next phase focuses on the execution of these plans and the institution of a countywide collaborative system to improve its response to the needs and outcomes of incarcerated parents and their children.
Commissioners Court approved the grant funding from the Fort Bend County Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention for this program Oct. 25 in the amount of $741,460. The duration of the program is set to last for 36 months from Oct. 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2025.
