Question
Are there opportunities for social workers to work with inmates in combination with their families?
Answer
Absolutely. I have met a number of social workers whose job entails providing opportunities to work with both the inmate and family members particularly in cases where the inmate may have abused one of those family members.
This of course requires a very unique skill set, such as the ability to understand conflict and trauma, to be able to facilitate family sessions where there is a great deal of tension, so there is that kind of opportunity.
I have also met social workers whose job entails trying to enhance the bonding and the relationships between inmates and family members. For example, lots of inmates are parents and they did not abuse their children, right? The crimes have nothing to do with their children but the incarceration, of course, has strained the family relationships. The children may be very young and they are growing up without mom or dad, and the social worker's job at the prison is to try to schedule and facilitate sessions where the children come in and spend time constructively with the incarcerated parent. It is not just a regular old visit, I am talking about a visit with a social worker where they get to talk about their relationship, and the social worker's job is to help facilitate that bonding.
I also know of social workers who have organized programs where the inmate will narrate a book for their young children who are at home living a hundred miles away across the state or what have you, and the father is narrating a book, a children's book; reading to his children from prison and it is recorded. The social worker makes sure that the recording gets to the child and then tries to facilitate a long-distance conversation, where the child talks about the story and the social worker is trying to facilitate that conversation, and of course the goal here is to try to maintain that connection because the overwhelming majority (99%) of inmates are going home and we want to maintain those bonds.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the webinar, Social Work and Criminal Justice: An Essential Partnership, presented by Frederic G. Reamer, PhD.
