By Annmarie Timmins
Concord Monitor (New Hampshire)
NEW HAMPSHIRE — If not for a unique family program at the Laconia prison, Michael Schwarz would return home next month a stranger to his 6-month-old daughter, Macayla. Richard Boden’s kids wouldn’t be getting dad’s help with homework or tapes of him reading them books.
And Jose Sanchez isn’t sure he’d be doing so well on parole. “She’s brought a lot of meaning and purpose to my life,” Sanchez said of daughter Kaylie, who went from 3 months old to 5 years during his prison stay for drugs.
“You have so much stress when you come out, stress of finding a job and stress of following the rules of parole,” he said. “You feel everything is against you. When I came out,
instead of my daughter running from me saying, ‘Who is this guy?’ she gave me a kiss. She was really happy to see me. She keeps me on the right track.”
This Family Connections Center program - which teaches fathers how to parent, teaches couples how to communicate and keeps children connected to their dads during their time in prison - is slated to continue in the Concord and Berlin prisons when Laconia closes this summer. But its future is in jeopardy because the House Finance Committee cut the director’s position from the governor’s proposed budget.
Unless the state Senate replaces director Kristina Toth’s $72,000 position during its upcoming budget negotiations, Toth and Corrections Commissioner William Wrenn say the program is doomed. Here’s why: Toth does all the training and writes grants that bring in more than $370,000 a year to pay for the program and seven of its 10 staff members. The state pays for only Toth’s position and those of two others, for a total of $186,600.
While the House budget still contains the two other state positions, Toth said those employees will be far too busy with day- to-day work to continue seeking the grants that pay for the bulk of the program and most of the staff.
Toth lobbied the House Finance Committee members before their vote, but none came to hear from the fathers directly. Now some inmates have told her they intend to write to state senators, explaining what the program has done for them. And Toth will make her pitch again, too. “I think it’s worth the fight,” she said.
A different world
Imprisoned fathers can visit with their children during all prisons’ regular visiting hours, but Toth and the fathers interviewed for this story said that atmosphere is no place to form a real bond - it’s loud with the chatter of dozens of other families visiting, playing with your baby on the floor isn’t allowed, correctional officers stand guard, and there’s no forgetting you’re behind bars.
“My first visit with my daughter was in the (regular) visiting room,” Sanchez said, “and she was horrified. She was really scared, and she cried and she didn’t want to come near me.”
It’s a different world at the Family Connections Center in Laconia, which sits inside the prison’s walls but feels and looks like a day care. Bright murals, painted by inmates, decorate the walls. The two “visiting” rooms are homey, with carpets, soft lighting, toys and comfortable furniture. Children who’ve visited over the years have tracked their growth on a height chart and left their painted handprints on the wall.
And fathers get to spend their visit alone with their child, with no officers watching. The visits are monitored by center staff, who watch through a one-way mirror with the inmate’s knowledge, and afterward give them pointers and praise on their interaction.
Toth started the Family Connections Center in Laconia in 1998 with the help of two departments at the University of New Hampshire: family studies and cooperative extension. Now, Child and Family Services as well as the state Division for Children, Youth and Families are partners, too.
Similar, but much smaller, programs exist in the Concord and Berlin prisons, and Toth learned last week that she’d won a grant to hire staff for a program at the women’s prison in Goffstown. The mission, Toth said, is to strengthen families by allowing parents to play a meaningful role in their children’s lives during their prison sentences.
While Toth has not found any studies proving it, she said general research shows that strong family connections help reduce recidivism and the generational cycle of violence and crime within families.
Sanchez said he saw the program change the hardest of men inside the prison. When his ex-wife said she would no longer bring their daughter to the prison for general visits, Sanchez persuaded her with this argument: “I told her, ‘I grew up without a father. You grew up without a father. Let’s not let that happen with our daughter.’ ”
Enhancing relationships
The Family Connections Center in Laconia and the sister programs in Concord and Berlin are open to inmates only after they complete an 18-hour parenting class. So far, 1,896 inmates have completed that program, Toth said. Once that’s done, inmates can take advantage of several classes, support groups and counseling sessions.
The center offers a prevention and relationship enhancement program, in which couples work with a counselor on their communication skills and their relationship. There is also a family re-entry program where families talk about the inmate coming home and fitting back into the family. And fathers can gather for regular support groups to talk through problems and frustrations. Last year, 216 fathers in Laconia attended at least one support group, but on average most attended four.
But it’s the one-on-one weekly or biweekly visits that are most popular. Last year, 48 fathers had 216 visits with their children in Laconia. For some, the visits are the only time the children see their fathers because they do not attend the general visiting hours.
Toth remembered one dad who confessed to her that until prison, he’d never spent time with his child sober. Others love the chance to sign permission slips for their children’s school activities, she said. Schwarz, 24, came to prison on a parole violation in December when his daughter was 2 1/2 weeks old. When he said goodbye, he had never changed her diaper or gotten comfortable holding her.
Last week, during a 90-minute visit with Macayla, now 6 months old, Schwarz playfully held her over his head and coaxed a smile out of her like a pro. Staff at the center taught him how to change a diaper and hold his daughter. Her first word was “da-da,” and it was in the Family Connections Center playroom that Macayla did her first rolling - with dad at her side.
Schwarz said his whole week now revolves around his alone time with his daughter. “Just to be able to hold her and play with her,” he said. “I talk about it all the time, and it’s all I look forward to. I know she’s getting more comfortable with me, more used to me.”
His fiancee, Jessica Baker, 21, has seen the change in Schwarz, too. “At first, he’d be so scared holding her,” Baker said. “Now he’s even given her her bottle.”
Schwarz’s fondness and closeness with his daughter has reassured Baker that Schwarz will succeed on parole this time. “It’s comforting to know that he is getting this time with her,” said Baker, who is not allowed to join the visit. “That’s huge. I don’t want him to be a stranger when he comes home. And he’s learning to be a dad.”
Bodean, whose children are 7 and 9, has been visiting with his son and daughter for nearly a year at the center. During the colder days, they visit in a room set up like a living room. In the warmer months, they sit outside in a fenced-in grassy area that Toth was able to build with grant money.
Bodean helps his daughter with her math and has seen firsthand how good his son is at reading. In between visits, he records books onto audio tapes and sends them home with his children, another program offered at the center. It’s a popular one, too: Last year 58 fathers made similar recordings - and the children get copies of the books to follow along with the tape.
“I like the visits because I still have a relationship with my kids,” said Bodean, who is up for parole on a theft by unauthorized taking charge in November. “It’s a lot harder to be part of your children’s lives without the one-on-one visits. And I know it’s important for both parents to have a relationship with their children.”
Future connections
Neither the Concord nor the Berlin prison has the space the Laconia prison does to accommodate all the center’s offerings, Toth said. Berlin has found a room for one-on-one visits, she said, but Concord hasn’t. Her dream is to one day get a portable classroom in Concord for the visits and classes.
When Laconia closes, the center’s staff will be divided between Berlin and Concord. Toth has a desk in Concord - at least until theof June unless her position is put back into the budget. But even with less space, Toth believes the program can still do much to foster a connection between incarcerated fathers and their children.
Fathers in Concord and Berlin can already do video visits with their children, where the father and child communicate in real time through a web camera and a computer. Toth believes so much in the power of touch, she said she wasn’t sure how intimate those visits would be. She’s been surprised.
“They can show dad their artwork or hold up the family cat,” she said. “Or show him their new sister.” One father of teenagers was devastated when he learned their mother was taking one of them to live with a grandmother in Arkansas. He’d enjoyed seeing the boy during regular visiting hours. The video visit has been an appreciated compromise, Toth said.
Toth intends to reach out to fathers as soon as they arrive at the prisons in Concord and Berlin to offer the center’s services. If a child does not have access to an internet connection at home, he or she will be able to use one at the nearest Child and Family Services office.
The internet will also be used to do the relationship and re- entry programs, Toth said. Now, the fathers and their partners get the training separately because Concord and Berlin have been unable to accommodate co-ed classes. Child and Family Services will also send a family advocate to the home of an inmate’s children to help them maintain that family connection.
Toth laid out this future during an interview last week with unexpected enthusiasm given the questions surrounding the program’s future. She seemed convinced, or was it hopeful, the program is meaningful enough to save itself.
Copyright 2009 ProQuest Information and Learning