Tip Sheet for Providers:

Supporting Children Who Have an Incarcerated Parent

www.YOUTH.gov/COIP

This tip sheet was written by youth who have or have had incarcerated parents for service providers who work with them 

or may interact with them. The purpose is to provide practical advice for how to help the 2.7 million children and youth who 

have at least one incarcerated parent.

In June 2016, the federal government hosted a listening session with youth from across the country who have or have had 

an incarcerated parent. The listening session brought together 19 youth, ages 15 to 23, with a diverse range of experiences 

to discuss the challenges they had during their parent's incarceration and their ideas for how the government could better 

support them and their families. This tip sheet is a product of that listening session. 

WHO CAN USE THIS TIP SHEET?

This tip sheet was developed for service providers, who may 

be staff at youth serving organizations, including communitybased and faith-based; advocacy agencies; or state and local 

government agencies such as departments of labor, housing, 

corrections, and education.

1

• We rely on our own inner strength

• We often grow up too soon taking on responsibilities:

○Taking care of younger siblings

○ Getting jobs to help with family finances

○Negotiating services such as healthcare and 

mental health

○Navigating systems and avoiding negative 

attention from Child Welfare or Human Services 

who might take us or our siblings away

• We love our parents, even though they have made 

mistakes. We miss them during:

○Big events like having the parent there for 

holidays and graduation

○Small activities like having the parent there to help 

with homework and going to our sporting event

○Everyday opportunities for having parent as a 

role model

• We are misjudged by many and negatively judged 

because of our parent(s) or our parent’s actions

• We are sometimes told we will turn out like our 

parent(s) and we are constantly fighting against and 

running from that judgement

• We have different experiences than other youth 

whose parent is absent for another reason like 

divorce:

○Not being able to pick up the phone and talk to 

our parent any time we want

○Not being able to hug our parent during a visit

○Being judged differently and feeling shame and 

stigma because of those judgments

• We have different experiences even from each other:

○Living arrangements before the incarceration

○Relationship status with our parent before the 

incarceration

○Being told the truth or lies about the incarceration

○Involvement with child welfare during the 

incarceration

○Changes in financial stability during the 

incarceration

• We are not different from other youth in that we are 

young people, too, with the same needs and wants:

○To be loved

○To have support

○To be successful

○To have friends

• We do not have control over the situation, which is 

difficult:

○ We don’t know what to expect with the 

incarceration process or when visiting our parent 

in a facility

○ We don’t know with any certainty when we will be 

able to talk to or see our parent again

“[The program I am 

in] helped me a lot 

in realizing my needs 

and getting support."

-male, 23, NYC

From the youth: What you should know.
From the youth: Changes we would like to see.

•Increased opportunities to visit. Our parents are 

often incarcerated in facilities that are far away. 

Whenever safe and appropriate we would like for 

courts and correctional agencies to place our 

incarcerated parents in facilities closer to family. 

If that’s not possible, courts, corrections, and 

community-based organizations could consider 

providing additional transportation assistance to 

make visitation easier. 

• More frequent and less expensive opportunities to 

communicate. The cost of phone calls from prison 

can be too expensive, making it difficult, or even 

impossible, for us to communicate with our parents. 

Corrections could consider reducing these costs 

and allowing for longer calls. Organizations serving 

youth could consider ways to help pay for or share 

the costs of calls, which would allow us to talk to our 

parents more often. 

•Better communication between corrections 

and schools. We would like our parents to have 

the opportunity to participate in parent-teacher 

conferences. Corrections and courts should consider 

allowing flexibility for our parents to participate 

by phone or video technology, which the schools 

could help coordinate. Additionally, we often receive 

unexcused absences from school for going to visit 

our parents during the school day, even when we 

do not have other options. Schools could consider 

providing excused absences, and corrections could 

consider providing proof of visitation.

•Improved sharing of information about 

our parents. During the arrest, pretrial, trial, 

incarceration, and reentry processes, our parents 

are frequently moved around without letting us know. 

Courts, corrections, and probation should consider 

ways to ensure that we and our families have the 

most up to date information possible on the location 

of our parents. 

•Better understanding about the impact of 

mandatory reporting rules. We frequently choose 

not to share personal details about our parents 

or our lives with people or organizations who we 

fear will report that information to child welfare. 

Youth serving organizations should be aware of our 

hesitations and find safe, comfortable ways for us to 

share what is happening in our lives. 

•Friendlier interactions when visiting. We often 

feel like we are the ones who have done something 

wrong when we go to visit our incarcerated parents. 

Most prisons have strict rules about who can visit, 

the number of visitors, what we can bring, what we 

can wear, etc. These rules can be unclear, cause 

our families stress, and sometimes even result in a 

cancelled visit. Youth serving organizations can help 

us understand the rules and prepare for our visit. 

Corrections can make the rules easier to find and 

provide training for staff that reminds them that family 

visits are supposed to be a positive experience for 

all.

2

“Even though the anger of being a 

child with an incarcerated parent is 

painful, we have the power to give back 

to the communities affected by this 

issue that shaped us... [We can use our 

stories] to shape the narrative... [We 

can use our stories] as a powerful tool 

in affecting change."

-female, 23, Austin, TX

“We are not a statistic!"

-female, 22, Little Rock, AR

For more information about strategies

and recommendations from youth, visit:

www.youth.gov/COIP-ListeningSession-Report