Contact: Diana Strand, OSLC, 541-485-2711; Sgt. Anna Marie Freeman or Sgt. Steve French, Lane County Sheriff’s Office, 541-682-2297; Lauren Booth, CJA, 503-892-5396
EUGENE, OR — The Lane County Sheriff’s Office in collaboration with Oregon Department of Human Resources, Children’s Justice Alliance (CJA), Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC) and Pathfinders of Oregon to deliver a research based parent management training program for inmates residing in the Lane County Community Corrections Center (CCC), the County’s correctional work release / re-entry center.
The parenting program is congruent with the primary goal of the CCC, which is to assist inmates in transitioning back into the community with gainful employment and the skills to maintain a clean, sober and productive lifestyle. The majority of inmates in Oregon (approximately 60% statewide) are parents.
The parenting program, called Parenting Inside Out (PIO), was originally developed in part by Dr. Mark Eddy, a local Research Scientist at the OSLC. PIO brings together the core elements of OSLC’s parent management training (PMT) programs, which have been nationally recognized by a variety of federal peer review “best practice” panels.
The PIO program focuses on key parenting skills such as positive encouragement, monitoring and supervision, discipline and problem solving, as well as important parenting knowledge such as child development and how the “job” of a parent and the “job” of a child change over time. The program is aimed at breaking the cycle of criminality; reducing recidivism of the incarcerated parents and reducing the chance that the children of incarcerated parents will themselves become in involved in the criminal justice system in the future.
The program will be paid for through contracts from the Oregon Department of Human Services to the CJA, a Portland non-profit focused on advocacy for the children of incarcerated parents.