Youth Mentoring - Mentoring Children of Prisoners

Mentoring Children of Prisoners

In January 2002, President George W. Bush signed a bill expanding the Safe and Stable Families Program (Public Law 107–133), which included authorization for a mentoring program for children of prisoners; and, in his 2003 State of the Union Address, he proposed a $150 million initiative that would bring mentors to 100,000 of these children.

Since then, the Family and Youth Services Bureau within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been funding community- and faith-based organizations to provide mentors to children and youth with incarcerated parents.

According to a U.S. Senate Report, children of prisoners are six times more likely than other children to be incarcerated at some point in their lives. Without effective intervention strategies, as many as 70 percent of these children will become involved with the criminal justice system.

Read more about this topic:  Youth Mentoring

Famous quotes containing the words mentoring, children and/or prisoners:

    Never be intimidated when you deal with men. Curse, don’t cry.
    Anonymous, U.S. professional woman. As quoted in Aspirations and Mentoring in an Academic Environment, ch. 4, by Mary Niles Maack and Joanne Passet (1994)

    Many people now believe that if fathers are more involved in raising children than they were, children and sons in particular will learn that men can be warm and supportive of others as well as be high achievers. Thus, fathers’ involvement may be beneficial not because it will help support traditional male roles, but because it will help break them down.
    Joseph H. Pleck (20th century)

    When posterity judges our actions here it will perhaps see us not as unwilling prisoners but as men who for whatever reason preferred to remain non-contributing individuals on the edge of society.
    George Lucas (b. 1944)