Pilot and Feasibility Research Results on Support4Families: An Intervention to Support Families of Loved Ones with Incarceration Histories

Background: The transition from living in prison to living in communities is not exclusive to the incarcerated individual – it is a family experience. That is because up to 90% of individuals releasing from correctional facilities rely on support from family for emotional, informational, instrumental, and tangible supports. Positive support from family is an empirically established predictor of a range of outcomes after an individual’s release from incarceration. However, support from families comes at high emotional, social, and fiscal costs to family members. Without intervention, otherwise positive support from families can turn negative or deteriorate over time. This paper presents the theoretical and empirical grounding for a new approach to reentry interventions – a reentry program that targets families of individuals leaving incarceration as the program participant. The conceptualization of this program – Support4Families – was derived from the feedback of families of formerly incarcerated loved ones and other preliminary social support research findings. Then, the paper presents pilot and feasibility results from two studies of Support4Families.

Methods: The feasibility test of Support4Families occurred with 60 family members of loved ones releasing from incarceration. Data were collected on fidelity of implementation, family member satisfaction, interventionists responses, family histories (e.g., trauma, incarceration, quality of familial relationships, employment and other community stability factors), preliminary outcomes of knowledge and skill development, and recommended changes to the curriculum. The pilot test of Support4Families was conducted with an additional 60 family members and collected data on changes in knowledge, skills, and familial relationships pre and post intervention.

Results: Family members were highly invested and engaged in the intervention. They reported appreciating the support of other family members going through the same experience as them. They expressed experiencing a reentry transition similar to their incarcerated loved ones experiencing a transition. Participants were satisfied and made recommendations for ways to improve the program. Finding time to practice and implement the skills learned was a concern. Results show there were positive changes in knowledge and skills; and slight changes on familial relationships.

Implications: Support4Families was designed to be responsive to the idea that incarceration is experienced by the family unit – children, siblings, parents, partners, and other loved ones. And, although the family unit bears a significant burden of the support needs of individuals, little attention is given to providing support or guidance to the family unit. Support4Families is a promising intervention because it deviates from case management approaches that have been tried in existing family-oriented reentry interventions and program content was designed based on feedback from the family members of individuals with incarceration histories. As such, Support4Families seeks to build the resources within the family unit in a way that is manageable, realistic, and creates long term resilience for families and their loved ones with incarceration histories. Early results are promising and the need for a broad intervention research agenda in this area is evident.