Other Community Initiatives
The Inside-Out Connections project: Helping communities address the needs of children with incarcerated parents.
Children of incarcerated parents are among the most vulnerable for neglect, abuse, behavioral and health problems, delinquency and substance abuse. In Minnesota, more than 15,000 children have a parent who is incarcerated.
Decades of attachment research underscore the obvious: kids need parents. They do better in their presence and suffer when the parent-child relationship is severed or breached. At the Initiative Foundation, we feel that addressing the needs of children who have experienced a parental incarceration is a strong fit with our strategic goal to foster meaningful opportunities for the region’s youngest children, youth and their families - particularly those facing poverty and other high-risk factors.
Our Inside-Out Connections project helps communities address the needs of children with incarcerated parents. Our goals are to ...
- Create and support multi-sector coalition teams to determine the needs of children with incarcerated parents.
- Increase the capacity of coalition teams to develop and carry out an action plan around issues such as parent education, family support, child mentoring and community engagement.
- Increase community awareness and support for children who have a parent in jail or prison.
For additional information, visit the Central Minnesota Inside-Out Connections website or contact Don Hickman, vice president for community & workforce development, (320) 631-2043.
