We spoke with Jacquelin Green, Family Services Manager at Saanich Neighbourhood Place and a 2019 recipient of the Thriving Child and Youth Award for her outstanding work with families in the community over more than twenty years. Jacquelin kindly agreed to be interviewed for this issue of the Keeping in Touch BC newsletter about her work supporting incarcerated dads with young families.

In June, 2022, the Deputy Warden for Programs at the Vancouver Island Regional Correction Centre reached out to community organizations, looking to set up a parenting program for inmates. Obtaining parents skills training is often a requirement for getting access to their children, but it is difficult for the men to the obtain the training and support they need to feel confident in their parenting skills.

Saanich Neighbourhood Place agreed to work with the Vancouver Island Regional Correction Centre to offer parenting courses for inmates. Jacquelin, who would deliver the programs at the Vancouver Island Regional Correction Centre, first had to work through a substantial security process last summer before she could begin to deliver the programming onsite starting in the early autumn, and now goes onsite to the prison to deliver the programming.

The program that has been developed involves two-hour group sessions, with two sessions on a topic, repeated for the individual units within the prison. Starting with “Emotions and Parenting” last autumn Jacquelin did two sessions with one group, then a week’s break, followed by two sessions with the next cohort. She offered the training for four cohorts up to Christmas 2022.

Jacquelin commented that offering these sessions has been a very good learning process for her. She had previously had experience of working with mums whose partners/ex-partners had been incarcerated and wanted access to their children. Working with the men at the prison, she has been impressed with the extremely high level of engagement with the groups. They love their kids and want to have a relationship with them; this is often extremely challenging, especially if there has been previous experience of violence or emotional volatility. The program is voluntary, they have to get up early to attend, and they are making the choice to attend, but the participants demonstrate a strong desire to attend and engage in the learning.

Whilst there are some prison-based parenting programs available for women, this is the only parenting program running in a men’s prison in B.C.

Jacquelin has developed an engagement process with participants about the training they need to feel confident in their parenting role. She noted that individuals offer readily when asked about where they feel they need support and training, and she has developed a feedback form which is provided at the end of the sessions. There has been a particular request for co-parenting training, for example.

Jacquelin’s level of security clearance allows her unescorted access for the sessions. This make it easier for the dads to engage in confidence, as there doesn’t have to be a security person in the room during the sessions, although that would be provided if requested. She has found the institution extremely cooperative, supportive and appreciative as they work together on developing the program.

The dads with whom Jacquelin is working are eager to unlearn their learned experience from their childhood and their own trauma, and to learn a new skill set. A lot of the dads are young, under 30 years old. Some of the participants haven’t had children yet or have a partner who is pregnant, and are wanting to learn to prepare so they can make a good start as parents to their children. Jacquelin’s experience is that parents love their children and want to do the best for them and be the best parent they can be.

A challenge for participants, as they engage with the learning, is that many have short sentences and can only attend for a partial program. Jacquelin would love to be able to access funding for a group for dads to have parenting support when they are released. She notes that there is a lot of work to do be done to support the variety of family structures, of which this is one. She commented that, at Saanich Neighbourhood Place, almost all their programs are developed through interaction with the community to fine-tune programing to meet the needs of the community and address the barriers people in their community are facing.

Because Jacquelin’s work at Saanich Neighbourhood Place involves working with Child Protection in other contexts, she has been able to engage with them about this new program about how individuals might be able to use completion of the program as a tool to enter into conversation with MCFD about access to their children. For those who complete the program, a certificate of completion is provided.

Jacquelin ended by saying that it has been a great experience working with this group of parents and she is loving being able to offer parenting training to the group. She noted she has been doing parenting work for a long time. This is a new experience for her in the context of her work, and she is really happy to be able to take on this new challenge.