Charlotte Oliver is a reporter with Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.
Since 2003, mothers in Vermont prisons have been able to visit their children in a room with carpets and couches and stay in touch free of charge through a partnership between the state and a nonprofit.
But the same services have never existed for incarcerated fathers.
With 64% of the state’s prison population being parents, lawmakers are considering a bill that would change that.
The bill, H. 219, would introduce the program at Northwestern State Correctional Facility in Newport. Fathers who partake would be able to virtually attend family court hearings, regularly call their children and visit with them in a plush, child-friendly space.
The bill takes funding from an existing pool of money in the Department of Corrections’ budget to pay for equipment and staff — meaning it doesn’t require new money from lawmakers.
Lund, a social services organization, runs the program currently available only to mothers, called Kids-A-Part. Lund would expand the program as the first step, with intentions to take it statewide by 2028.
“Fathers deserve to have access” to the same services as mothers, said Kim Laroche, who runs parent-child services for Lund.
“It’s kind of one of those no-brainer bills,” said Rep. Troy Headrick, I-Burlington, the bill’s lead sponsor. But stakeholders in the program anticipate roadblocks with funding it in the future, as well as finding suitable spaces in old facilities.
The bill passed the House late last month with near-unanimous support and will now be reviewed in a Senate committee. Under the bill, the Department of Corrections would both fully fund the existing program and its expansion — and write into law a mandate that the program continues.
The existing Kids-A-Part program lives in a space distinct from the cold, hard surfaces of the rest of the women’s prison. In the room, two green couches sit atop a patterned rug, with a shelf of toys stacked against the wall nearby.
Kids visit their moms in that space, and the program organizes two group visits a month in which multiple families get together in the space at the same time.
Laroche, when she thinks about visitations she’s seen, said she pictures a teenager with her legs draped over her mom as they sit on the couch together. “And the daughter’s just filling her mom in on the drama of school,” she said.
Headrick said legislators need to foster those relationships between parent and child. The bill’s primary intention is to help the kid whose parent was “taken from them” when they were incarcerated, Headrick said.
Kids-A-Part also facilitates letter-writing and video calls between mothers and children. Those services usually cost inmates, but the program covers the fee. Inmates also aren’t usually able to attend most family court hearings, but program staff gives them the option to attend virtually.
Some lawmakers think the bill is long overdue. “It’s embarrassing that it’s gone this long without being available to men,” Headrick said.
The department supports the expansion of the program and has partnered with Lund, but it has raised concerns about facility and staffing constraints. Finding a sizable space that can be designated for Kids-A-Part is difficult in many facilities, the department found when it studied the program.
Space isn’t the only concern. Laroche and lawmakers mentioned the condition of buildings as a limiting factor. One year around Christmas, the Kids-A-Part space in Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility — the women’s prison — had flooded with sewage, said Haley Sommer, spokesperson for the department, in a March 18 committee meeting.
The department also raised worries about the staffing shortage in Vermont’s prisons, as “staff who are able to facilitate programming may be pulled to oversee security operations,” department employees wrote in the same study.
While you can’t “copy and paste” the program from the women’s prison to the men’s, expanding it is definitely possible, said Laroche. She’s hopeful the bill will pass. Once Newport has a suitable space, Lund can “bring in games and toys,” Laroche said.
The goal is to “make sure that when the children arrive, that they see that space as special to them for their visit with their parents,” Laroche said.
