OJJDP FY 14 Practitioner-Researcher Partnership Mentoring Childrenof Incarcerated Parents Demonstration Program

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This demonstration program will support a practitioner-researcher partnership to develop and evaluate new mentoring practices to serve the needs of youth whose parents are incarcerated. Incarcerated parents and their children are a heterogeneous group, and associations between parental incarceration and developmental outcomes are complicated. However, research has shown that having an incarcerated parent can present individual and environmental risks for the child and increase the likelihood of negative outcomes. While mentoring has been shown to be an effective intervention for youth , more research is needed to understand how the unique needs of youth who have incarcerated parents are best supported through mentoring. Under this demonstration program, practitioners and researchers must partner to enhance existing mentoring programs to serve children of incarcerated parents and evaluate the new approach. (The program development/implementation and evaluation will be funded as two separate awards under the corresponding categories described below.) The mentoring model that applicants will develop and test should enhance their existing mentoring services, incorporate changes to each of the eight elements of mentoring practice noted below, and be implemented across multiple sites. The evaluation should be a rigorous, random assignment experimental design. This program is authorized pursuant to paragraph (2), under the Juvenile Justice heading, in the Department of Justice Appropriations Act, 2014, P.L. 113-67, 128 Stat. 5, 64.

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