MONTPELIER – A subcommittee of lawmakers is working quickly this week to help children of incarcerated parents.
On any given day there are 1,664 Vermont children with incarcerated parents, according to Jill Evans, coordinator of the Women and Family Services program in the Department of Corrections.
When a father is incarcerated, 83.5 percent of children live with their mother, Evans told the House Corrections and Institutions Committee. When a mother is put in jail, 32 percent live with their father.
The children are “invisible and unattended victims of incarceration,” Evans said.
Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, chair of House Institutions and Corrections, asked Evans how the Legislature could help.
Evans suggested that the Legislature create an intra-agency team with staff at the Agency of Human Services, which oversees the Department for Children and Families.
State workers need to reach out to these families, Evans said, because the children are not in state custody and the majority are not in the child welfare system.
A more detailed report about children of incarcerated parents should be ready in about a month, Evans said.
Reps. Mary Hooper, D-Montpelier, and Joan Lenes, D-Shelburne, will work with Evans and a legislative attorney. They plan to ask a member of the House Human Services Committee to join them, they said Tuesday.
Evans said they may come up with a strike-all amendment to two bills related to this topic, or decide to do a summer study and come back next session with a recommendation on how to help these children.
The two related bills are H.325, which would create a “bill of rights” for children of arrested and incarcerated parents, and H.456, which deals with rights of children of incarcerated fathers.
