Training

CIP Training Institute
To strengthen the state’s ability to best support children with incarcerated parents the Initiative is working to establish a training institute that will offer instruction to people of various disciplines from clinicians to corrections staff, judges, child welfare workers, educators, pediatricians and school nurses on how to best support CIPs within the context that these workers engage with them. The curriculum that is currently being developed is designed for probation officers and case managers within the Women Offender Case Management (WOCM) model of probation supervision. WOCM is a collaborative case management model designed to support criminal justice-involved women as they leave incarceration and reintegrate into the community.

Past Training

Training for WOCM Model Probation Officers and Case Managers
In December of 2014, the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy’s Children with Incarcerated Parents (CIP) Initiative partnered with the Court Support Services Division (CSSD) hosted the Training for WOCM Model Probation Officers and Case Managers. The training focused on supplying the participants with an enhanced understanding of parental incarceration’s effect on children and the parent- child relationship, having an increased awareness of the available tools that attendees may use to support children and strengthen the parent-child bond, as well as created an understanding on how to reduce the likelihood of trauma in children when arresting their parent.

The keynote speakers as well as attending participants included members from various fields of the criminal justice system. Among the speakers were Aileen Keays, the Research Specialist for the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy and Program Manager for the Children with Incarcerated Parents (CIP) Initiative, Ann Adalist- Estrin, the Director of the National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated at Rutgers University, Joyce Betts, the Executive Director of Families in Crisis (FIC), Tamara Lanier, the Chief Probation Officer for Court Support Services Division (CSSD), and Trevor Johnson, the Regional Manager for Overseeing Adult Probation Services.