For Chengxeng, one of the hardest part of being an incarcerated parent is missing his son’s milestones. Fellow father, Douglas, also incarcerated, hopes to make up for lost time. Both are among the 900+ participants in jail-based parenting groups offered by the Washington County Department of Public Health and Environment in Minnesota. The department’s home visiting team first began working in the county jail in 2013 to help maintain and repair relationships among justice-involved families. In 2024, the team adopted the Circle of Security curriculum, which emphasizes the importance of parent-child relationships.
In this video, Nurse Home Visiting Supervisor Tyler Roenicke shares areas of overlap between home visiting and the Circle of Security curriculum, along with program changes made for the jail setting. We also hear from Public Health Nurse Deana Olsen and Jail Programs Coordinator Katelyn Schlief-Johnson about the need for jail- and prison-based services and their hopes for participants.
The video also draws attention to the more than 5.2 million children in the United States who have experienced the incarceration of a parent. These children, along with other family members, face extra hurdles trying to navigate daily life and repair relationships while involved with the justice system. Home visiting programs can consider ways to reach and effectively serve justice-involved families, even if they do not deliver services in the jail or prison setting.
Acknowledgments: Thank you to Washington County Department of Public Health and Environment, especially Tyler Roenicke, Deana Olsen, and Katelyn Schlief-Johnson, and participating parents for allowing us to feature them in the video. Thanks also to Elly Miles, Erin Doyle, and Heather Sandstrom from the Urban Institute and Grace Atukpawu-Tipton, Allison Meisch, and Joelle Ruben at James Bell Associates for their work shaping and refining the video. We extend our appreciation to Proper Studios for producing the video.