I am not sure about the literature on the topic; however, I am aware of a program called FEAT: http://featforchildren.org/ that was developed in Ontario. It is relatively new, but the person who runs it is a grad student so she may have conducted or be in the process of conducting some research on the program.

Skye your input has been greatly appreciated and I will definitely have a look at the website you have provided for me as it is indeed part of my literature objectives. 

really very useful website@Skye Stephens

Hello Jessica?  

You ask the following: “Which are the most effective enhanced visitation programmes for children and their incarcerated parents out there?”

As Skye Stephens rightly says, FEAT (Fostering, Empowering and Advocating, Together) is a well-known program related to children’s visitation of their incarcerated parents. The program was founded in 2011 to support the needs of the over 50,000 children in Ontario that had a parent in the criminal justice system, that is, incarcerated.

As I it is, your question makes me think that both parents are incarcerated. However, it makes a difference between having one or both parents incarcerated. Suffice it to say that if the former is the case, then the non-incarcerated mother or father generally continues to take care of the child. If the latter is the case, then the child can stay, for example, at a social welfare center. Generally, when a normal mother, so to speak, takes care of her children, they have more opportunities to hear of their imprisoned father than when they stay at a social welfare center. All things be equal, a child whose father, for example, was put in jail is more likely to want to visit him when s/he stayed with her/his mother than with the staff of a social welfare center.

As for your interesting and highly debated question, let me start by saying that answers to it depend on many issues, such as children’s reaction as soon as their parents are imprisoned; children's age, their style of attachment to caregivers, parenting style in which they were raised, type of discipline strategies followed in their socialization, and type of prison where their parents are incarcerated. That said, I would like to point to some parameters that would be taken into account by any program having to do with children’s visitation of their incarcerated parents out there. As I see it, any program designed for children’s visitation of their incarcerated parents should take into consideration the following:

(1) An incarcerated parent -- or a prisoner whoever -- does not stop being a parent (and someone who should be treated with justice and respect) and a child has a right to both parents.

 (2)  It has been found that a single visit to their parent(s) in prison can reassure children that their parents are alive and well and not being mistreated or neglected. Surely, this knowledge is beneficial to the child’s well-being and development.

(3) Children, like most of us, are often influenced by the exaggerated and dreadful depictions or images of prison settings seen on television, in films, or online, and so forth.  Because of this, a single visit to their incarcerated parent(s) may show children that this is not necessarily the case. Of course, this is more likely to happen when the visit is child-friendly, what is not generally the case. Suffice it to say when one visits an incarcerated individual, there are generally imposing gates, a security search process, drugs dogs, stern prison officers, and the like. All of this only can heighten a child’s fears, anxiety, and stress. On the contrary, a child-friendly prison design, regulations, activities, and initiatives can help children and parents interact physically, intellectually, and emotionally.

(4) It has also been demonstrated that it is usually better for children of imprisoned parent(s) to visit the prison sooner rather than later, because their fantasies about the prison where their parent are incarcerated can be worse than the reality. There is mounting evidence that shows us that the unknown can be scarier and more traumatic and dreadful than the real prison experience.

(5) It has been also found that children who visit their parent (s) in jail show better emotional adjustment and are able to deal with the situation in a more a positive way than those who do not. In order to foster this emotional adjustment, prisons should, as noticed above, be equipped to welcome children on visits with child-friendly play areas, appropriate and sensitive security search techniques as well as longer, child-centered visits to allow children to settle and feel comfortable in a very unfamiliar situation, that is, in prison. Encouraging and maintaining the child-parent bond reduces the negative effects of imprisonment and allows for the child’s healthy development Therefore, children’s experience of visiting their imprisoned parents can have beneficial effects on children’s sense that, for example, they continue to have parents and that their parents continue to love them.

 6) Of course, children’s experience of visiting their beloved parents in prison has also, say, a dark side, that is, such experience may be a traumatic event for many children. Suffice it to say that, first, when children visit their imprisoned parents, they often say: “Dad/Mom, come home with us today!” As this is not generally the case, children, namely children under 7-8 years of age, have difficulty understanding this impossibility, become frustrated, and experience again the pains of an additional separation. Second, however much the visit may be a child-oriented visit, prisons are always peculiar places where “mean” people, as it were, are kept. Third, if we want to be honest, we should confess that it is more than natural that even children associate prisons with misdeeds of any type. This is more like to happen with younger than older children because younger children are oriented to a heteronomous morality -- a morality guided by the ideas of fear, punishment, coercion and unilateral respect – and older children to a an autonomous morality—a morality based on the  ideas of equality, cooperation and mutual respect. In other words, more than older children, younger children are more likely to think that their imprisoned parents have done something wrong. Therefore, younger children may have difficulty understanding that innocent people can be put in jail.  

(7) As to children’s reactions regarding their parents’ incarceration, it has been found that such reactions greatly depend on the child’s age.  It has been found, for example, that between the ages of 2-6, children can feel separation anxiety, impaired socio-emotional development, traumatic stress and even survivor guilt. Children between the ages of 7-10 may experience developmental regressions, poor self-concept, acute traumatic stress reactions, and impaired ability to overcome future trauma. Children from ages 11-14 may experience rejection on limits of behavior and trauma-reactive behaviors. Children from the ages of 15-18 may experience a premature termination of dependency relationship with parent(s), and it may lead them to intergenerational crime and incarceration. It is more than natural to think that when visiting their imprisoned parents, children’s reactions to the imprisonment of their generally beloved parents may have beneficial or detrimental consequences that may occur when children visit their incarcerated parents. It is natural to think that, because children from the ages of 15-18 may experience a premature termination of dependency relationship with the incarcerated parent, they become less frustrated and perturbed than their younger counterparts when dealing with the experience that their “dad/mom” cannot go home with them just today.

(8) As you certainly know, after John Bowlby’s and Mary Ainsworth’s seminal work on attachment, four types of attachments were conceptualized: secure, avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized. For example, it has been found that avoidant and ambivalent attachment types are organized forms of insecure attachment, which means that these children are insecure in their attachment to the caregiver figure, but have modified themselves and their interactions with their caregivers in an organized way. Children who are disorganized — also an insecure attachment — have not developed an organized way to respond to their caregivers. As I see it, “secure” children are more likely than their “insecure” counterparts to experience anxiety and stress when they have to copy with the frequent episode: “Dad/Mom cannot go home with you. It takes yet a bit long for this to be the case”

(9) Dianne Baumrind was able to conceptualize three different types of parenting: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive. To put it simple, an authoritative parenting is demanding but warmth; an authoritarian parenting is demanding but cold; and a permissive parenting is guided, so to speak, by the slogan “laissez faire, laissez aller, laissez passer”, i.e., let’s it go. If incarcerated parents were authoritative figures before going to prison and continue to be so even when they are visited in prison by their beloved children, it is likely that, for example, their children feel more stress and anxiety in the above mentioned episode than children whose parenting was either authoritarian or permissive.

(10) Martin Hoffman was capable of conceptualizing three different types of discipline practices/strategies parents use to socialize their children: power assertion, withdraw of love and inductive or explanatory practices. When power assertion is the case, parents try to control their children undesirable behaviors (e.g., to lie, to bit a friend) by appealing to their physical power to punish or exert control over certain resources such as toys, fruit-gums, and the like. (e.g., “if you do that -- to lie, hit, and so forth -- you will be punished/won’t have toys anymore”) When withdrawal of love is the case, parents appeal to a kind of blackmail in that parents try to control the child’s undesirable behavior by threatening him/her with unpleasant psychological consequences, such as, “if you do that -- to hit your sister, for example – then mom does not like you anymore”. Thus, in the withdrawal of love strategy parents give a direct, albeit not physical, expression of their disapproval of the child’s misdeeds or undesirable acts. Contrary to power assertion and withdrawal of love discipline strategies or practices, in inductive or explanatory practices, parents try to get the child’s adherence by explaining to him/her the negative effects of his/her misdeeds and undesirable acts on others (e.g.,” if you hit your sister she may be hurt and will be sad”).  All things being equal, contrary to children’s socialization through power assertion or withdraw of love, children that were socialized via inductive practices tend to be more morally developed and attached to their parental figures than their power assertion or withdraw of love counterparts. This being so, it seems empirically evident that when those children have to departure from prison after having visited their incarcerated parents, they experience, for example, more anxiety and stress than that experienced by their power assertion or withdraw of love peers.

(11) The extent to which children benefit or do not profit from visiting their incarcerated parents also depends on the type of prison where their parents are incarcerated. As noted above, we can think of prisons whose functioning allows that children visit their incarcerated parents in a friendly and agreeable way, and other prisons where this is not the case. The more the latter is the case, the more it must be recognized that the process of visiting an imprisoned parent -- a figure usually representing stability and safety to a child – can be a traumatic process. It should be noted that visiting procedures vary, but many jails and prisons force family members to be separated from the incarcerated relative by a thick glass window, which means they have to talk to each other using, for example, telephones or mobiles.  Also many jails and prisons make visitors undergo frisk and search procedures. Crowded visiting rooms and long wait times are common. These conditions often deter family members from wanting to visit their incarcerated loved one.  Many children feel that the controlled environment and the limited time they could spend visiting their parent (s) do not allow them to have the kind of interactions they might have in less controlled environments.

(12) I can make this list regarding the issues involved in any program of children's visitation of their incarcerated parents a longer list. Be that as it may, I hope that I have been able to show that (a) incarcerated parents continue to be parents (and citizens) and have the right to be visited with dignity by their relative, be they children, adolescents and adults, and also non-relative people; (b) the benefits/harms involved  in any program on children's visitation to their incarcerated parents, should not be seen as nothing-or-all phenomena; and (c) such programs will great depend on many factors, such as children’s age, their style of attachment to the incarcerated parent(s), the way children were socialized  and educated, type of prison where they parents are incarcerated, and so forth. To deal adequately with a program having to do with children's visitation of their incarcerated parents is a complex that demands a lot of all involved in such programs. If we want to take into account the child’s best interests, and hence, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, then in this process we should follow a demanding track, not a shortcut. In this respect it is worth mentioned that it is said that Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), king of Macedonia, once asked his tutor, the Greek geometer Menaechmus (380- 320 BC), to teach him a shortcut to mastery of geometry. Menaechmus is alleged to have replied that for traveling through Alexander’s country there were royal roads and roads for common citizens, but in geometry there is only one road, and this (difficult) road is the same for all people.  There should be many ways of dealing successfully with the problems involved in programs regarding children's visit of their incarcerated parents. No program will be good or excellent when we follow a shortcut instead of a demanding track. If this were the case we risk being lost in the interim and not attaining the purported goals.

I hope that I have got your question, and that this helps.

Best regards 

Best regards

It will be impossible to find an objective program for visiting incarcerated parents. Nothing is better than, with sweetness, gentleness, affection and care, to explain to children the reasons of the imprisonment of their parents. What is the jail, what they do, and, probably, also, which led their parents to jail. The objectivity of reality has to be given to know to the children, and, that, case to case, because no child is the same neither the behavior of parents towards the Gaol are equal. It is urgent to do case to case analysis and the incarceration causes of parents should be de-dramatized towards the children, instilling them hope, confidence and self-esteem.