Nurturing Young System Impacted Parents
One of our system’s most important responsibilities and most impactful interventions is the support and encouragement of parenting youth. Incarcerated teen parents, particularly fathers, are an often ignored and overlooked population, who often face institutional facility barriers to visiting and maintaining a relationship with their child. This was the motivation for Just Beginning, a parenting program created by the Youth Law Center in partnership with Georgetown University for incarcerated teens that incorporates research from successful attachment approaches to parenting. Just Beginning is showing to be impactful in improving relationships between parents and children, supporting a smoother re-entry process and changing the culture inside detention facilities.
One of the most important things about Just Beginning is it gives the father that time to develop their father skills. That for me, I think that’s important because I can’t go out and ask my dad for help to show me how to be a dad because my dad wasn’t there for me. That’s the reason I took the program, because I want my son to grow up and to feel that I’m with him.