Evaluation of the Parental Support Intervention For Our Children's Sake in Prisons in Sweden

Children of Incarcerated Parents - Evaluation of Parental Support Programme in Prison to Promote Positive Parenting and Prevent Children's Ill-health and Delinquency Later in Life

Evaluation of the effects of the parental support intervention "For our children's sake" on positive parenting outcomes when conducted with incarcerated parents in prisons in Sweden.

Children of incarcerated parents comprise a greatly disadvantaged group in society with elevated risk of ill-health, behavioural problems, and own delinquency and unemployment later in life. Positive parenting comprise an important factor for children's positive and healthy development. Incarcerated parents may have difficulties to engage in positive parenting due to disadvantaged situations affecting parenting negatively such as drug addiction, poverty, or lack of experience of positive parenting in their own childhood. Previous research has suggested that interventions to prevent the intergenerational effect of criminality should be targeting family factors where positive parenting has been emphasised. Internationally developed parenting interventions for incarcerated parents suggest an impact on parenting outcomes such as positive parent-child interaction, parenting knowledge, empathy, parent stress, increased child contact and active parenting, However, the majority of the programmes evaluated to date have been conducted in the US, with a prison and probation context with limited generalisability to the Swedish system. In Sweden, the parenting programme for incarcerated parents, "For our children's' sake" (FOCS) was developed in 2012-2014 with the aim to support positive parenting for the child's healthy development and is currently delivered in Swedish prisons. The aim of this project is to evaluate the effects of the FOCS parenting programme on parenting outcomes through a controlled trial with a parallel implementation process evaluation.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Serving a sentence at any of the included prisons
• Having at least one child in the ages between 0-18 years. Parents of children aged 0-2 and 13-18 years will not be included in the primary outcome measure, as the measure is not developed for these age groups. These parents will be included in the mediator measurements.
• Are in contact with their child/children in any form. If not, these parents are included in the mediator measurements, as the primary outcome: relationship quality, is not applicable.
• Having the legal right to contact the child
• Not committed either a crime against the child or any violent crime against the other parent

Exclusion Criteria:

• Not fulfilling inclusion criteria