These activities hone literacy skills of parents, encourage positive relationships between parent and child, and promote learning for children. They can also serve as topics of conversation for when parents are able to either telephone their children or participate in a family day at the facility.

Caregiver Connection
Naturally, interaction between children and their incarcerated parent will be strongly affected by the outside caregiver. As the link between incarcerated parent and child, the outside caregiver can foster interaction in a family literacy context by:

• encouraging children to correspond with their parents.

• making books and other materials sent by parents readily accessible to the children.

• engaging the children in other literacy-building activities. For example, the outside caregiver might read with the child. The child may then wish to send a “book review” to his or her incarcerated parent.

• enrolling in a family literacy program with the child.

For those programs offering time for interactive literacy activities between parents and their children, the role of the outside caregivers becomes even more prominent. They will, after all, be responsible for the children’s and their own involvement in the program. This role must be clear to all involved.

“I learn[ed] today about reading to children and how fun it would be to read to them. Kids are so fun to read to. You can see how much they know and how they learn and what they are thinking about. I, personally, would like to read to my children right now and see what they know and learned.”
Participant in family literacy program