COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE HEARING
STATE CAPITOL HARRISBURG, PA
MAIN CAPITOL BUILDING ROOM 60, EAST WING
TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2 015 1:00 P.M.
PRESENTATION ON CHILDREN OF INCARCERATED PARENTS: SEEKING SOLUTIONS
BEFORE: HONORABLE GENE DiGIROLAMO, MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE RUSS DIAMOND HONORABLE TOM MURT HONORABLE JACK RADER HONORABLE CRAIG STAATS HONORABLE JUDITH WARD HONORABLE DAVID ZIMMERMAN HONORABLE BRIAN SIMS
Pennsylvania House of Representatives Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 2
I N D E X
TESTIFIERS
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NAME PAGE
SHIRLEY MOORE SMEAL EXECUTIVE DEPUTY SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS...... 6
HONORABLE WILLIAM T. TULLY JUDGE, DAUPHIN COUNTY COURT OF COMMON PLEAS...... 12
ANNA HOLLIS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AMACHI, PITTSBURGH...... 19
KAYLA BOWYER and DEVIN WINTERS SIBLINGS AND AMACHI PARTICIPANTS...... 30
KAYLEE MORGAN AMACHI...... 37
MARY ANN GRANT AMACHI...... 39
TIGER WEAVER AMACHI...... 44
KATHLEEN CREAMER, ESQ. SUPERVISING ATTORNEY, FAMILY ADVOCACY UNIT, COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES...... 48
SUBMITTED WRITTEN TESTIMONY
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(See submitted written testimony and handouts online.) 1 P R O C E E D I N G S
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3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: If I could have
4 everyone’s attention, I would like to call the hearing to
5 order. And first order of business, I ’d like to ask
6 everyone to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.
7
8 (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited.)
9
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay. Again,
11 welcome, everyone. I know some of you have come a long
12 distance. Many of you have come from Pittsburgh so we are
13 just very happy to see you and have you here today for the
14 hearing.
15 I think the first thing I will do is give all the
16 Members a chance to say hello and tell everyone where
17 they're from. And my name is Gene DiGirolamo. I ’m from
18 Bucks County in the 18th Legislative District, and I am the
19 Republican Chairman of the Committee.
20 REPRESENTATIVE SIMS: My name is Brian Sims. I'm
21 the State Representative from Philadelphia’s 182nd District
22 in Center City and I'm the acting Minority Chair for the
23 hearing today.
24 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay, Tom.
25 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: Tom Murt. I represent 4
1 Philadelphia and Montgomery Counties.
2 REPRESENTATIVE STAATS: I ’m Craig Staats and I
3 represent the 145th District in Bucks County.
4 REPRESENTATIVE WARD: Representative Judy Ward
5 from Blair County, the 80th District.
6 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative Russ
7 Diamond, Lebanon County, 102nd District.
8 REPRESENTATIVE ZIMMERMAN: Representative Dave
9 Zimmerman, Lancaster County, the 99th District. It’s about
10 halfway between here and Philadelphia.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay. Really busy
12 day up in Harrisburg. We have an appropriations hearing
13 going on so I know some of the Members of the Committee are
14 over at the appropriation hearing also, and some of them
15 might be coming as the hearing goes on.
16 But w e ’re here for what I consider a really,
17 really important issue today. And as we all know, with the
18 increased incarceration rates over the last few decades,
19 this has produced a surge in the number of children that
20 are left behind, the silent victims of crime. These are
21 young people who are strapped with multiple problems. They
22 too often get caught up in the cycle of poverty and crime
23 and incarceration themselves. Having a parent in prison
24 can have an impact on a child’s mental health, social
25 behavior, and educational prospects. 5
1 The emotional trauma that may occur and the
2 practical difficulties of a disrupted family life can be
3 compounded by the social stigma that children may face as a
4 result of having a parent in prison.
5 Pennsylvania has taken steps I think in the
6 direction of trying to address some of the problems of
7 these children. There was a Joint State Government
8 Commission established that came back with a report in 2011
9 and I know a link to the report is available in the hearing
10 packets.
11 But I also would like to point out that one of
12 the Members of the Committee, Representative Tom Murt, who
13 is here today, is working on introducing legislation that
14 will help protect and provide services for some of the
15 children who have parents that are incarcerated. And I ’m
16 hopeful and I know the other Members of the Committee are
17 hopeful that today we might get some ideas that might help
18 Representative Murt when he’s crafting the legislation.
19 And that’s why it’s so very, very important that w e ’re here
20 today.
21 So with that, just a couple ground rules very
22 quickly. As you can tell by the lights, the TV cameras are
23 on so I just want to remind everybody that we are being
24 filmed and hopefully at some point in time it will be on
25 PCN on the TV channel. 6
1 And also what I would like to do because many of
2 you have traveled a long way, I ’d like to get everybody to
3 give their testimony first and then at the end of the
4 hearing if we have some time, maybe we'll have some time
5 for questions or answers from the Members of the Committee.
6 We do have to be out of the room by three o'clock so
7 hopefully we can get through all the testimony and we will
8 have time for some questions and answers at the end.
9 Okay. With that, I'd like to call up our first
10 testifier, Shirley Moore Smeal, who is the Executive Deputy
11 Secretary for the Department of Corrections. And, Shirley,
12 welcome.
13 MS. SMEAL: Thank you.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Good to have you
15 with us. And you can begin whenever you're ready.
16 MS. SMEAL: Well, thank you. Good afternoon,
17 Chairman, and Members of the House Human Services
18 Committee.
19 As was stated, my name is Shirley Moore Smeal and
20 I am the Executive Deputy Secretary for the Pennsylvania
21 Department of Corrections, and it's my pleasure to be here
22 to participate and provide testimony on behalf of Secretary
23 Wetzel and the Department.
24 When we talk about children and we talk about
25 incarcerated individuals, it may or may not come as a 7
1 surprise to you that in Pennsylvania we have over 50,000
2 individuals who are incarcerated. Of that number, we have
3 approximately 2,400 women who are incarcerated. So on
4 average when we look at cost, it costs approximately
5 $34,000 per year to house a male offender, and when we look
6 at females who are incarcerated, the cost jumps up to
7 almost $44,000 per year. And if those figures alone aren’t
8 astonishing, then hopefully these numbers will be.
9 And as indicated in the written testimony that I
10 provided, in Pennsylvania we have over 81,096 children that
11 have a parent in prison; 75,747 of those have a male or a
12 father who’s in prison and over 5,000 have a mother who is
13 in prison. These are children who are directly impacted by
14 incarceration. However, when you consider the number of
15 nieces and nephews and cousins and neighborhood children
16 that are impacted as well, the effects of parental
17 incarceration become exponential and the results often
18 become priceless.
19 So as a society, we have to recognize that my
20 normal is not your normal, and the normal for those kids
21 who have a parent incarcerated is not our normal either.
22 Those who have come in contact with the criminal justice
23 system, we have to make sure that they are provided the
24 best opportunity for success that we can.
25 So how are the children impacted? To name a few, 8
1 the negative outcomes that they experience are guilt over
2 the parent's incarceration, depression, anxiety or
3 resentment, low self-esteem, lack of emotional support, and
4 stress from having different or multiple caregivers, just
5 to name a few. Additionally, these children are at a
6 greater risk of substance abuse and possibly criminality
7 later in life. They have increased risk for domestic,
8 physical, and sexual abuse, and/or poor school performance.
9 Unfortunately, some children experience
10 generational incarceration like a daughter, mother, and
11 grandmother that I had that were all confined at SCI Muncy
12 whenever I was Superintendent.
13 So what can we do to lessen the impact for those
14 children of incarcerated parents? According to parole
15 violator research, one of the greatest key indicators that
16 contributed to their success was having a mentor compared
17 to those who were parole violators that were returned and
18 did not have a mentor, so meaning that it's an important
19 factor to keep those that are paroled or on the street to
20 have a mentor. It’s significant to keeping them out.
21 And as far as research on having a mentor keeping
22 young people out of the criminal justice system to begin
23 with, the research says that at-risk kids who have a mentor
24 are less likely to get involved with the criminal justice
25 system. So programs like Amachi that focus on providing 9
1 mentors to children and having the positive role models
2 reduces the impacts that I have previously noted that are
3 caused by incarceration, positive role models that offer
4 help to give children self-confidence, self-esteem, the
5 ability to dream, and also the opportunity to recognize
6 that the normal that they may have experienced does not
7 have to continue to be the normal that they are destined to
8 become. We can break the cycle of incarceration.
9 As I indicated earlier, the cost for
10 incarceration is significant, but how much more does it
11 cost for the children of those parents who are
12 incarcerated? As a society, we have a responsibility and I
13 would say an obligation to make sure that those children
14 who have and are most likely to have the most severe
15 challenges in life receive optimal support.
16 In the Department of Corrections we offer several
17 programs to assist with this, programs such as InsideOut
18 Dads, our parenting initiatives, our reentry services that
19 offer parenting workshops. We also have made a concerted
20 effort that in every one of our prisons, that the visiting
21 room is child-friendly, that there are appropriate
22 resources to promote interaction with the child and the
23 parent or the caregiver.
24 We offer read-to-your children programs and
25 that’s a program where the grandparents or parents can read 10
1 a book, have it videotaped, and then the book and the tape
2 get sent home to the children so that they can read along,
3 which also helps to promote interaction with the parent.
4 That’s just one way that we can promote interaction.
5 At SCI Muncy we have Project IMPACT, which uses a
6 small visiting room, and in that room there are actually
7 multiple rooms that are age-appropriate so whenever the
8 children come to visit, the parents can take the children
9 and be in a room that is specific to the needs of the
10 children, again promoting interaction and fostering
11 relationships.
12 Most recently, one of the developments was
13 recognition by Sesame Street that children of incarcerated
14 parents are impacted significantly. And their book is
15 entitled Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration. A
16 couple of things that it helps to do is to comfort children
17 and guide them through the tough moments, helping children
18 feel secure. And we have made these books available in all
19 of our facilities so when the children come to visit, when
20 the caregivers come to visit, they’re able to take the
21 books with them. So many more benefits of the book are
22 outlined in my written testimony that was submitted.
23 We also offer virtual visitation and soon we will
24 be offering a Female Reentry Unit on the grounds of SCI
25 Phoenix, which its purpose is to promote family 11
1 reunification. And family reunification is also one of the
2 services that we provide through our Bureau of Community
3 Corrections because we recognize how important it is for
4 families to maintain those relationships and to help the
5 individuals get out, stay out, and become productive
6 members of society.
7 So therefore, the programs like Amachi play a
8 significant role in breaking the cycle of incarceration and
9 giving the children the best opportunity for success by
10 providing mentors who care, who are role models for
11 children who otherwise may not have positive role models in
12 their lives. So if we want to truly continue to impact and
13 make a difference in our society, we must continue to fund
14 programs that optimize opportunity for success for the
15 children of incarcerated parents.
16 Thank you.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay, Shirley,
18 thank you very much.
19 Next up we have the Honorable William Tully, who
20 is a Judge. Your Honor, welcome -
21 JUDGE TULLY: Good to be here.
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: — from Dauphin
23 County Court of Common Pleas.
24 And I would also like to recognize Representative
25 Rader's presence in the Committee hearing. Welcome, Jack. 12
1 Your Honor, welcome, and you can begin whenever
2 you’re ready.
3 JUDGE TULLY: All right. So a pleasure to be
4 here and to give I guess the background on the perspective.
5 It’s always good to hear the background before the opinion.
6 I oversee the Juvenile Division and essentially, if not
7 hear almost all the cases, review any of the cases that are
8 heard by the three Juvenile Masters that hear the minor
9 matters, mostly the misdemeanor ones.
10 And not every case that comes into the juvenile
11 system even gets to the Court of Common Pleas Judge. Many
12 of them get resolved informally. Now, those cases that are
13 involved informally are usually your less serious offenses,
14 oftentimes the minor misdemeanors, but what’s most common I
15 think in reviewing those cases, usually there’s two parents
16 that are involved that have already laid down the hammer
17 based upon the child being caught up in the criminal
18 justice system, and the juvenile probation officers are
19 able to evaluate that and realize that you don’t
20 necessarily need formal intervention by the Court.
21 The probation officer will oversee the steps that
22 the parents have taken to see to it that whatever the
23 underlying problems were, oftentimes peer influence, when
24 those things get resolved, those cases are disposed of.
25 And the only reason I ’m aware of them is I ultimately have 13
1 to sign off at the end when they successfully complete that
2 informal disposition.
3 But what I notice in those cases, in the vast
4 majority, you have at least one very, if not two, very
5 involved parents that really take the step to correct the
6 problem. And again, everyone knows that even the best of
7 parents sometimes have issues when kids get into trouble.
8 That's why we have the juvenile system.
9 What becomes more serious is when you get the
10 cases that actually have to be formally resolved. The
11 misdemeanor offenses normally go in front of the Masters,
12 and again, I would sign off of those but never really have
13 a chance to see the participants. But my attention is
14 usually involving the felony offenders, the repeat
15 offenders, the ones with the serious issues. And those
16 cases, more common than not, there's at least one missing
17 parent, sometimes two missing parents. And when there is a
18 missing parent, it's almost always the father.
19 More importantly than that, the explanation given
20 for the absence of the father is either they're caught up
21 in drug dependency issues, they're incarcerated, and
22 oftentimes both. And again, I can't give you a study or a
23 scientific view of what's going on there, but certainly
24 anecdotally you simply look at those cases where the parent
25 is missing -- now, more importantly, especially with the 14
1 young men, where the father is missing -- what's really
2 missing in those cases is those qualities that are brought
3 forward by that father role, not only as far as discipline
4 but the mentorship, the role model, all those positive
5 things that a father can play is missing in that child's
6 life.
7 Now, that's not saying that if father was
8 involved they wouldn't be involved, but it certainly is
9 significant in number that it makes one ponder if the
10 absence of the father has a major causal nexus to the
11 trouble the children get into, especially in the cases
12 where they continue to get in trouble. I mean, let's face
13 it; any child is at risk of getting caught up in the system
14 once just by hanging out with the wrong people, getting
15 caught up with the wrong issues. And let's face it; the
16 popular media and social media, all of those can be
17 counterproductive and undermine whatever parents try to do.
18 But when you take that role model out of the
19 picture, it makes it difficult really for the other parent
20 to have the ability to monitor the child, the ability to
21 oversee the peers that they might be hanging out with, and
22 in many ways, if there's multiple children involved, only
23 having one parent, you kind of lose out. I used to say
24 that when we had our second child, we were still in a
25 position we could play man-to-man or zone defense. Once we 15
1 had three, we were always in zone, and once they figured
2 out the defense, the kids had the upper hand.
3 So obviously the missing parent influence there
4 is a factor, and that means if incarceration is a major
5 part of that, I think it’s incumbent upon our lawmakers to
6 take a look at maybe the whole philosophy that we've taken
7 because oftentimes what sounds good addressing the intended
8 consequence sometimes backfires when you find out there's a
9 lot of unintended consequences.
10 I think a common one from what I've seen is large
11 quantities of those fathers are missing because they're
12 incarcerated on mandatory sentences on drug cases. And
13 again, drugs are a problem. We've been fighting the war
14 for a long time. I'm not sure what progress we've made by
15 locking large numbers of our population up, but if those
16 numbers are those that are at that fatherly stage that they
17 would otherwise be available to teenagers is something to
18 look at. And again, I'm not second-guessing the wisdom of
19 trying to crack down on the supply when we don't seem to
20 cut down on the demand as much and creates part of the
21 problem.
22 But if we're warehousing a lot of people in a
23 state correctional institution and it's not necessarily
24 accomplishing the end that we had in mind and then we see
25 there's collateral issues that arise from the lack of 16
1 parenting, the lack of involvement, the lack of mentorship,
2 the lack of role model, maybe it’s time to look at whether
3 there are other options that better serve the needs of
4 society as a whole. And I guess as populations increase,
5 maybe that’s one of the criteria that you can utilize in
6 deciding where the priorities are.
7 I think w e ’re past the stage where we think we
8 can build prisons and house everyone we would like to house
9 there. We have to start making decisions on those that are
10 ones that need to be housed there to protect society as
11 opposed to those that we may find better ways of
12 incorporating them back into society, concentrating on the
13 underlying causes, whether it’s chemical dependency,
14 economic, lack of skills and employment, whatever the case
15 may be, but more importantly find a way to get them back
16 into the community with their kids.
17 I found that in criminal court even if you have a
18 father or a mother that’s really interested in their
19 children, that can be the motivation for rehabilitation as
20 well. And we all know you can’t force rehabilitation; they
21 have to want it. If they don’t want it, you can give them
22 the best treatment, the best counselors, and it’s a waste
23 of time, but if you give them the motivation and they
24 invest themselves in it, that’s usually where the best
25 return is. 17
1 So those were the thoughts that I wanted to share
2 with you when I saw what the issue was before you, and I'm
3 happy to answer any questions that you might have or
4 clarify anything that I may have said up to this point.
5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Your Honor, thank
6 you very much.
7 I don't know if you're able to stay for a little
8 bit towards then and we're going to open that up for
9 questions and answers then.
10 JUDGE TULLY: I have a juvenile session in 10
11 minutes so -
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay.
13 JUDGE TULLY: And I actually have a kind deputy
14 that parked out back to whisk me back but -
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: We really
16 appreciate you testifying. And the one thing you said
17 about the drug problem, I mean to me this is the biggest
18 problem we're facing right now in our society. Back home
19 in my legislative district in Ben Salem, my police chief
20 tells me that 90 percent of the people that he is
21 arresting, 9 out of 10 are addicted to either heroin or
22 these painkillers, these opiate painkillers; 90 percent of
23 the people that he's arresting, they're committing these
24 crimes, robberies, shoplifting, breaking into cars,
25 breaking into homes, 90 percent of the people are addicted, 18
1 mostly to heroin and they're first getting addicted to
2 these painkillers.
3 JUDGE TULLY: Well, it doesn't surprise me at
4 all. I mean I started off as a prosecutor 30-some years
5 ago and then actually did defense work before going to the
6 bench as well, but the heroin is the most startling change.
7 I mean there was a time when the drug du jour was initially
8 marijuana, then it was cocaine, and then it was the
9 freebasing. The heroin today, that is the most common drug
10 charge that comes into juvenile court.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Yes.
12 JUDGE TULLY: Oftentimes the juveniles are used
13 by the wrong mentors that use them to do the mule work
14 knowing that if they get caught, oh, they're in the
15 juvenile system; there's not as much leverage on law
16 enforcement to turn them around. The numbers of heroin
17 cases are absolutely frightening and it's well worth your
18 attention.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Thank you. Okay.
20 Well, thank you for your testimony today, Your Honor.
21 JUDGE TULLY: Well, thank you for the kind
22 invitation. Good luck to you on solving this one.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay. Next up we
24 have Anna Hollis, who is the Executive Director of this
25 group that I've been hearing an awful lot about, Amachi 19
1 from Pittsburg. And, Anna, please come up. Welcome.
2 MS. HOLLIS: Thank you.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: And you can begin
4 whenever you’re ready.
5 MS. HOLLIS: Okay. Good afternoon, Chairmen and
6 Committee Members. Thank you for the opportunity to
7 participate in this public hearing and to be a contributor
8 to understanding about the impacts of incarceration on
9 children and families and communities. And I want to thank
10 Representative Tom Murt for taking time out in Pittsburgh
11 to get to know who we are and helping to arrange this
12 opportunity for us.
13 I ’m fortunate enough to lead this organization
14 that is very much committed to making the lives of these
15 young children whole. I ’m proud in fact to be joined by
16 many of our stakeholders from the Pittsburgh area, a
17 busload of people who care deeply about this issue. We
18 have parents with us, we have mentors with us, we have
19 individuals that themselves have experienced incarceration,
20 and I ’m especially proud to have these courageous young
21 students with us, our high schoolers.
22 This may not be appropriate for this session but
23 I think it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission at
24 this point. But I would like for our ambassadors, Amachi
25 ambassadors, if you would just stand quickly or wave your 20
1 hand. These are our high school students that are learning
2 to self-advocate and who are learning to tell their stories
3 and learning to inform policies that directly impact their
4 lives. Their work is supported through a very generous
5 grant from the Heinz Endowments. It’s led by one of our
6 staff members who was a former participant in Amachi
7 Pittsburgh, and w e ’re really proud to have you. Thank you
8 for standing behind me in support.
9 And incidentally, you’ll hear from two of the
10 ambassadors a little later today.
11 Amachi, by the way, is a Nigerian Ibo word that
12 means "who knows what God has brought us through this
13 child?” I know that’s a lot of words packed into one
14 little word but it really speaks to the centerpiece of our
15 mission and why we do what we do. We believe all children
16 have inherent value and unlimited potential, and it’s our
17 job to help them discover that within themselves and to
18 empower them to build on their strengths and be successful
19 in life. That’s the mission of Amachi. That’s what w e ’re
20 dedicated to.
21 And just recently I recalled hearing a news
22 report about a very well-known reality TV star -- if you
23 watch those Housewives shows, she’s on one of them -- her
24 name is Teresa Guidice. And so she and her husband were
25 sentenced to 15 months and 3-1/2 years respectively for 21
1 fraud, bank fraud, or some white-collar crime, and what
2 really struck me about this report is that the Judge
3 staggered the parents' sentences so that their four
4 children would not have to be without both of their parents
5 during their time of incarceration. And on one hand I was
6 jumping out of my skin because I thought that was the best
7 thing, to think about the children first, to allow the
8 impact on the children to weigh in on that Judge's
9 decision. That to me was amazing.
10 That's what we want to see happen. We want to
11 see it happen in government agencies, we want to see it
12 happen in social service agencies, we want to see it
13 happening in schools. But then I quickly got disappointed
14 because it's not the reality for many of our families, in
15 fact, most of our families. It's a luxury to have that
16 type of consideration. But I think we're making some
17 progress here even having this hearing and having a
18 conversation and challenging ourselves to look at some of
19 the ways we really haven't been responsible in considering
20 how our policies and decisions are impacting children who
21 are our future.
22 So as I thought about that case, it really
23 inspired me to move forward with this work and to move
24 forward with this hearing, but it's the reason we're here
25 today and it's the reason that we have these young people 22
1 behind us learning how they can make a difference and make
2 a change in our communities.
3 So as you know, over the past several decades
4 there were so many laws and policies enacted in
5 Pennsylvania and across the Nation that stiffened
6 punishment for crimes and particularly nonviolent drug-
7 related crimes, which you just mentioned. It's been like a
8 frenzy. We're just madly passing all of these laws but I
9 just don't believe anybody was really thinking about the
10 children and how the children and families would be
11 impacted and how those negative effects would kind of have
12 a ripple effect in the community. So many of our
13 communities are struggling with so many issues because at
14 the individual level we haven't addressed the needs of our
15 community members.
16 When you look at incarceration rates, the United
17 States is number one in the world, far surpassing the
18 incarceration rates of any other nation. On the flip side,
19 when you look at education and graduation rates, we fall
20 way below many developed countries, and this is really
21 embarrassing to be quite honest.
22 The ways that children suffer are multiple and
23 complex, and losing a parent to prison is quite different
24 from the separation of a parent due to divorce or even
25 death or military service, for example. There's a certain 23
1 shame and stigma attached to parental incarceration, and
2 kids in this situation are less likely to receive
3 compassion from society members in the same way that a
4 child of military personnel would.
5 So I think that shame and societal stigma is what
6 keeps these families hidden from our view. It makes them
7 reluctant to want to talk about it, to seek services. In a
8 school setting our students have shared with us some
9 negative experiences they’ve had where perhaps someone
10 found out about their parent’s incarceration and it was
11 dealt with in a very insensitive manner. And there’s a
12 level of training that needs to happen not just for social
13 service workers and court officials and law enforcement but
14 also for school officials and for everyday people need to
15 understand the sensitivity that these young people need.
16 I ’m not going to continue to talk about -- we
17 have plenty of testimony about the different ways that
18 children are affected, but I would like to talk a little
19 bit about the cycle, the intergenerational cycle and how
20 the Department of Justice has put a statistic out there
21 that approximately 70 percent of children with an
22 incarcerated parent will follow that parent’s footsteps.
23 And we take exception to that. We believe that, as I said
24 earlier, that every child has the potential to be great and
25 we believe that with adequate support and guidance and 24
1 resources that children will not follow the path of the
2 incarcerated parent. And that's the kind of success we've
3 seen at Amachi Pittsburgh.
4 I'll tell you a little bit about our programs.
5 We have three core programs: One-on-one mentoring, and
6 that's for children ages 4 through 18; we work with
7 community partners, faith-based organizations, community
8 groups, fraternities, sororities, anybody who cares about
9 children, and that's where we recruit volunteers. And we
10 get these volunteers trained and matched up with kids. We
11 only require a one-year minimum commitment. That's where
12 the data shows positive outcomes with mentoring, but our
13 mentors stay for an average of three years with these
14 children.
15 And we've been around for about 11 years now and
16 we actually have mentoring pairs that have been together
17 from the very first year of Amachi's existence in 2003, and
18 I think that speaks to the commitment of community members
19 and how people care so much about the issue. And if we
20 give them opportunities to step up and volunteer and make a
21 difference, they will get involved.
22 We also have a youth leadership development
23 program. That's the Amachi Ambassadors program that I
24 mentioned earlier, and that's where young people are being
25 trained on how to conduct trainings, how to provide public 25
1 education, how to produce educational materials that will
2 be helpful.
3 A few years ago we had a group of ambassadors
4 that created audio recordings of young kids' voices and
5 these voices of young kids, they were asking questions to
6 their parent. They were envisioning that their
7 incarcerated parents were standing in front of them and
8 they would ask the question on the tape why did you do this
9 to me? Were you thinking about me? When are you coming
10 home? Will it ever be the same? Will I see you again?
11 These kinds of questions, and this tape ended with one
12 young boy saying, you know, no matter what you've done,
13 though, we still love you.
14 And we used these types of recordings in
15 parenting classes so for parents that are returning home to
16 community and even parents during the time of incarceration
17 when we have an opportunity to participate in a parent
18 training we like to share this because we think it's
19 important that they hear the voices of kids and think about
20 kids when they have an opportunity to make a different
21 decision. Same thing we're asking you to do as
22 policymakers, think about the children. We want the
23 parents to do the same thing. Everybody makes mistakes and
24 should have second chances, but don't forget the children.
25 That's our repeated message. Remember the children. And I 26
1 think these tapes have been very helpful.
2 They’ve also produced reports which I hope we
3 brought copies today. It’s our first publication in fact
4 that was published in a national mentoring journal, the
5 Chronicles of Evidence-Based Mentoring and it’s called
6 "What W e ’ve Learned from the Children.” And it’s a report
7 similar to the Joint State report. It captures a lot of
8 the same information, what are the negative effects, what
9 are their needs, what are some of the strategies and
10 programs that are working, except that this report is in
11 the voice of the children so it’s their unique perspective.
12 They had an opportunity to work with university
13 evaluators to learn how to pull themes from the report and
14 to help do a little bit of the writing on the report and
15 that’s available for your use. I think it’s a unique
16 perspective to hear directly from the kids what this feels
17 like, how they think. Some of them admit to lying about
18 their parents and being tired of lying about where their
19 incarcerated parent it. Some of them talk about how "take
20 your daughter to work" day or "bring your parent to school"
21 day and their parent is absent and how embarrassing and
22 hurtful that is for them. So there’s a lot of things that
23 we don’t think about every day that they carry with them
24 every single moment.
25 And I ’m going to be closing here pretty soon. 27
1 Oh, the second program -- I ’m sorry; I forgot -- was family
2 strengthening and reunification support because we
3 recognize kids can’t be served in isolation. And mentoring
4 works best when families are also supported because you’ve
5 already heard there’s a lot of complex issues. A lot of
6 our families are struggling with mental health issues and
7 children have special needs, and when we are able to go
8 into the home and provide case management support and
9 provide resources for the families, then it only makes
10 mentoring relationships stronger and it helps us to see the
11 positive outcomes that I ’ll share with you today.
12 But I also feel that it’s really important to
13 examine the way that our systems and policies perpetuate
14 the cycle of poverty. So when you look at families just
15 in, say, State institutions, just when a parent is
16 incarcerated, the first thing is there’s a loss of income.
17 There’s no child support coming into the home during that
18 parent’s incarceration. If somebody’s incarcerated for 10,
19 15 years, by the time they’re out, the children are adults.
20 And on top of that the families, even though
21 they’re living on limited resources, are taking from their
22 limited resources to care for the incarcerated loved one,
23 to remain connected to the incarcerated loved one so
24 they’re engaging in a lot of phone calls and visiting if
25 they’re lucky enough to afford a visit to an institution 28
1 that's far away from where they live. And I think these
2 families are so desperate that collectively across the
3 State they're spending in excess of $11 million just in
4 phone calls and in putting money on the books of their
5 incarcerated loved ones. And they're already struggling
6 themselves to survive. And I can't tell you how many times
7 our families change their phone numbers because one month
8 they're missing the phone bill to keep the lights on and
9 missing the light bill to keep the phone on and it's really
10 a cycle that needs to be broken.
11 Our kids get caught in it. When we look at youth
12 in the juvenile justice system, many of them have as
13 teenagers start to do what they see in the community, which
14 might involve selling drugs. Sixty percent of youth in
15 juvenile justice system have an incarcerated parent. So
16 that's the cycle that we want to break.
17 The University of Pittsburgh evaluated our
18 programming, our mentoring programming, and they looked at
19 adults, individuals who are now adults but that
20 participated in Amachi programming for at least three
21 years, and they took an assessment of how many of these
22 individuals became involved in the criminal justice system
23 either as juveniles and as adults, and only 8 percent of
24 young people who participated in our programming became
25 involved in the system. And that's incredible considering 29
1 that 70 percent that I mentioned DOJ talked about earlier.
2 So in closing I'd like to challenge you as our
3 Representatives to look at new strategies, to invest in
4 what we know is working, to support the current bills,
5 Senate Bill 163. I know Representative Tom Murt is working
6 on the House version of that bill and it addresses policy
7 issues that were recommended in the Joint State report. We
8 have someone testifying later today that will provide more
9 detail on that.
10 But I think we should take this one step further.
11 We really should look at how we can scale up. If we've
12 been able to demonstrate a 92 percent success rate with
13 keeping kids out of the system, don't you think we should
14 do more of this? This is where we should be investing our
15 dollars because that kind of success rate translates into
16 cost savings. So for every person that we're keeping out
17 of the system -- you heard the cost of incarceration for
18 adults -- that's what we're saving our communities. And
19 our programming is a fraction of the cost of incarceration.
20 So Pennsylvania has the opportunity today to
21 rewrite the narrative for children, families, and
22 communities. We also urge you to look at other States and
23 what other States have done to invest in the type of
24 outcomes-based programming that Amachi provides through
25 legislative orders and executive orders. States like 30
1 Arkansas and Connecticut, Ohio, California, and New York
2 are putting more resources into prevention programming and
3 I challenge you today to think the same way. Amachi
4 Pittsburgh and our Amachi ambassadors can help you
5 accomplish that.
6 And we are asking you to help us continue to save
7 money by taking our outcomes-based programming to scale so
8 that we can truly move the needle on breaking cycles of
9 poverty, crime, and incarceration while empowering our
10 young people to thrive. We need your help to do that.
11 Thank you.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Anna, I want to
13 clap for you, too. That was very powerful, terrific job.
14 Next up we have Kayla Bowyer and Devin Winters,
15 who are siblings and Amachi participants. Welcome.
16 MS. BOWYER: Thank you.
17 MR. WINTERS: Thank you.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: And whenever
19 you’re ready, you can begin.
20 MR. WINTERS: Was I going first? Okay.
21 Good afternoon, Chairman -- I can’t pronounce
22 your last name -- DiGirolamo.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: DiGirolamo.
24 MR. WINTERS: And that’s you.
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: That’s me. 31
1 MR. WINTERS: I'd like to thank you personally
2 for your strong, attentive eye contact as Anna was
3 speaking. Chairman Cruz and Members of the House Human
4 Services Committee, my name is Devin Winters. I want to
5 thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I hope that
6 my testimony will make a difference. I hope that I can do
7 something to help kids with parents in prison. I hope I
8 can do something that will make a difference in the lives
9 of a young person who's facing trouble.
10 When I was a teenager, I went down a path that
11 I'm afraid has become all too common. My mother was in
12 prison and we didn't communicate often. My dad couldn't
13 offer me support either, not in the way that I needed
14 because he had an alcohol addiction. And growing up, the
15 lack of support from my community also made it far too
16 convenient for me to make the wrong choices. I made all
17 the wrong choices and I paid for them.
18 I wanted to attend Penn State but I didn't have
19 the proper guidance or advice on the college application
20 process in order to make this into a reality. There was no
21 Amachi or any similar prevention programs available to me
22 as a child. I can only imagine what a difference Amachi or
23 another program could have done for me. I would have
24 greatly benefitted from that kind of help. And I come from
25 an area where I know plenty of others who would have also 32
1 benefitted.
2 At 18 I was arrested for robbery and inflicting
3 serious bodily injury on another person. I was sentenced
4 justly to a term of 10 to 20 years. Now, my first 15
5 months in prison were the hardest. In that time span I
6 picked up 13 misconducts. And during this time,
7 communication with my family was incredibly difficult. I
8 would receive a visit maybe every six months, an occasional
9 phone call, but the cost of maintaining contact is a tough
10 financial burden that inmates' families have to shoulder on
11 top of other costs surrounding incarceration.
12 After those 15 months I began to change. I
13 started to get involved with every single training program
14 being offered by the DOC, every single one. I wanted to
15 prepare for my release and I set myself up for success
16 after prison. I would complete every training program in
17 any institution that I was in and I would put in for a
18 transfer. I would go to the next prison and I would finish
19 every program in that prison.
20 Now, at my 10-year parole hearing I presented the
21 board with a small envelope containing all of my
22 misconducts and a large envelope containing 70 training
23 certificates I earned. The board saw my improvement and
24 potential and I was released three weeks later.
25 Now, not to really sidetrack, but I quite frankly 33
1 become incensed when thinking of incarceration rates and
2 the underlying circumstances that cause some crimes to be
3 considered felonies where in other situations they’re
4 diminished to misdemeanors, effectively removing a parent
5 from a child, and thus half the economic stability needed
6 in raising a child and half the emotional support. This
7 dynamic is not a class issue; it is more appropriate to
8 call it a caste system unless we can prevent because the
9 remedy is often too late. We must prevent the situation
10 from happening. We must prevent the parent from being
11 removed from the child.
12 Life after prison has been hard for me. With my
13 record, it is difficult to find a job, limited by curfews,
14 transportation problems, often walked 11 miles to get home
15 from my job at 3:00 in the morning in January in a
16 blizzard, banking restrictions. I was even denied a job
17 because it involved cleaning beer taps, and was even
18 returned to prison for a nine-month stint because my pay
19 was on a PNC pay card rather than a paper check.
20 Nobody seems to have the patience to help inmates
21 make the transition back into society. Without this
22 support, it is easy to see how many people wind up back in
23 prison after release. The seeming hopelessness of finding
24 a job and getting a life going after prison contributes to
25 a high recidivism rate. There’s a real need for prevention 34
1 programs like Amachi, which Amachi does well.
2 As Anna has stated, only 8 percent of the people
3 who have participated with Amachi had returned to prison or
4 went to prison thereafter. Eight percent, it's a very low
5 number that serves to prove that something there is
6 effective.
7 There's a real need to reunite fathers with their
8 families to provide good role models for our children.
9 I've been talking to kids in juvenile justice systems, ones
10 that I attended when I was a juvenile because I was found
11 guilty of crimes as a juvenile. Trying to help them make
12 the right decisions, but these kids really need individual
13 attention and mentoring. They need it early before they
14 get into trouble. Amachi attempts to provide that one-on-
15 one attention with its every endeavor.
16 Sometimes I feel like an ant fighting a dragon
17 between what kids see in the media, on television, movies,
18 video games, lack of community, family support is hard to
19 incur self-discovery and education. These things are
20 simply not cool enough to these kids. The need for
21 personal attention is real. It's an uphill battle to reach
22 out to these kids and keep them out of the prison system
23 but it is a battle that must be fought. Hopefully my
24 personal experience can vouch for the necessity of programs
25 like Amachi. 35
1 Again, thank you for the privilege of speaking
2 with you all today.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Kayla.
4 MS. BOWYER: Good afternoon, Chairman
5 DiGirolamo -
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Very good.
7 MS. BOWYER: -- Chairman Cruz and Members of the
8 House Human Services Committee. My name is Kayla Bowyer
9 and I ’m currently on staff at Amachi Pittsburgh, and I am
10 also a former Amachi program participant so I have two
11 perspectives I ’d like to share with you today.
12 As you’ve all heard, Devin here is my brother and
13 we both have a very broken relationship with our mother as
14 a result of her drug addiction and incarceration. And
15 although we did not grow up together, we both lived in low-
16 income communities. The major differences between us are
17 the types of opportunities available to us and the level of
18 support we had as we were growing up.
19 You heard his story and every roadblock he
20 encountered from the time he experienced difficulty
21 applying for colleges in high school to the time he
22 continued to experience difficulty applying for jobs 10
23 years later after his release from prison. Fortunately for
24 me, my experience was much different, which I largely
25 attribute to my grandmother and to my participation in 36
1 Amachi Pittsburgh's mentoring program. I had been matched
2 with the same mentor for three years and this truly
3 strengthened my support network and the system that I had
4 to help me develop. I was able to finish high school and
5 then graduate from Carlow University without any
6 involvement in the criminal justice system.
7 The same has been true for others who have gone
8 through Amachi's mentoring program, which is the type of
9 program that could have really helped my brother before he
10 started following a negative path. Granted, Amachi
11 Pittsburgh was not yet in existence when Devin was a young
12 teen but now that Amachi does exist, it's much more
13 beneficial to invest in our organization to ensure that
14 children are provided with support, guidance,
15 opportunities, and are connected to resources so they can
16 have positive experiences like mine and avoid what my
17 brother had to experience. We know that families and
18 communities thrive and function best when its children and
19 adults are educated, become employed, and avoid
20 incarceration.
21 As Amachi Pittsburgh staff, I have the privilege
22 of working with promising young people who are determined
23 to be successful in spite of the challenges they face.
24 These are the young people behind me. They just need
25 resources, support, and opportunities to make it their 37
1 reality. And you’ll hear from a couple of them directly
2 later on.
3 So I ’d like to thank the House Human Services
4 Committee for dedicating time to hear from us and to learn
5 about how incarceration impacts our children, our families,
6 and our communities across Pennsylvania and also throughout
7 our country. Thank you.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Thank you both,
9 terrific testimony. Thank you.
10 MR. WINTERS: Thank you.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Next up we have a
12 panel from Amachi. We have Marisa White, Kaylee Morgan,
13 and Mary Ann Grant, if they would like to come up.
14 Welcome to the three of you. And who’s going to
15 go first?
16 MS. MORGAN: I ’ll go first.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay. You can
18 begin whenever you’re ready.
19 MS. MORGAN: So good afternoon, Chairmen and
20 Members of the House Human Services Committee. My name is
21 Kaylee Morgan and I have to admit it’s pretty hard being
22 here today. And not only am I nervous but it’s hard to
23 talk about my family like this.
24 My father is in prison serving a life sentence,
25 and that means I really only have one parent, which is my 38
1 mom. It's really hard and it's a touchy subject having a
2 parent in prison. There are some times when I feel there
3 is no hope to get me through certain things I'm going
4 through because of his absence. And I can't just pick up
5 the phone and call him when I want and he's not around for
6 the kind of father-daughter talks that I would like to
7 have.
8 When I try to reach out to my father, sometimes
9 the letters aren't enough and he's not always able to talk
10 on the phone. It's really hard to even see him. The
11 facility that he's in is really far away and it makes it
12 hard because of the distance and the visiting hours and all
13 the schedules, and money plays a big factor in that as
14 well.
15 The distance makes the communication different
16 and it's difficult. He's not there to experience what our
17 family is going through and the good things that happen and
18 just the ordinary stuff that happens day-to-day.
19 When I want to communicate with him, I always
20 feel the need to try to impress him with the good things
21 that are going on in my life, but when I have my down
22 points I don't ever want to tell him because I don't want
23 him to feel down or make him feel bad.
24 The relationship between us will never be the
25 relationship I want it to be because of where he is, but 39
1 it's because of his actions and my whole family suffers.
2 Amachi has helped me realize that I'm not alone
3 and there are other people who are in similar situations
4 and who are going through the same things that we are going
5 through. Amachi is helping me to realize that things can
6 be okay. It means a lot to me, and being in a youth group
7 with others in similar situations inspires me.
8 We are all smart, strong-minded young adults and
9 have come to realize that though having a loved one in jail
10 is a struggle, we can't let it hold us back from achieving
11 our goals and going about our daily life.
12 Thank you.
13 MS. GRANT: Thank you. Hi. My name is Mary Ann
14 Grant. I'm here to represent Amachi and support their
15 program and hope it continues on. I'm going to share my
16 experience and what happened with me. It seems like it
17 just happened yesterday. At the time, my kids were seven
18 and eight and now they're 34, 33. I have a 22-year-old
19 stepson, a 12-year-old grandson, a 7-year-old grandson, and
20 a newborn that was just born November 22nd. And it feels
21 like it was just yesterday to speak about this and the
22 impact that happened to myself and to my children.
23 Ours was rare. I had parents that cared. My
24 husband had parents that cared. We worked like dogs. I
25 started working at 10. I came from a family of 10. My 40
1 work ethics were off the charts. I was always into sports.
2 I always took pride in being the best I could be. I got
3 married at a young age. We built our home together. We
4 had these two beautiful children together and we helped my
5 father-in-law at the bar on the weekends. And this was in
6 the ’80s and somebody introduced us to cocaine. And like a
7 fool, we tried it. Next thing you know, we started using
8 it.
9 And we were responsible, screwed-up human beings.
10 W e ’d put the kids to bed at night and screw ourselves up at
11 night. We screwed our lives up. I was with him for 26
12 years. It took two years to really destroy our lives. And
13 I want to tell you, two loving people mentally, physically,
14 spiritually, financially, sexually we were awesome and what
15 drugs did to us made us inhuman. And I think people were
16 disillusioned, the power of ugliness, and the acts that you
17 do to one another when you use. You can’t control it.
18 So finally, I think prison is a gift from God.
19 Thank God there is a prison system because the prisons did
20 for us what we could not do for ourselves. They came,
21 handcuffed him away. It was the scariest, most profound,
22 the most incredible day of my life. And what I did the
23 first year was horrific. Everybody ran from me. They
24 thought they were going to catch it.
25 So I worked with the worst abused children and I 41
1 learned everything from these kids. I was the teacher's
2 aid, house parent in charge of activities, created and
3 facilitated programs, taught them how to cook, clean, not
4 screw every guy and girl they saw, and I learned so much
5 from these kids. So I took what I learned from those kids
6 and really implemented it with my kids. And I dove in. I
7 started my company. Thank God my father came from Poland
8 and escaped prison camp and I had the same strength as he
9 did and I started my own company in 1988 because you do not
10 make any money on social work.
11 And I had to keep the mortgage, I supported my
12 husband. I went back and forth to prison. I promised my
13 husband I would stay with him for the rest of my life if he
14 never relapsed.
15 So I started my company in '88, worked with the
16 rich people, did in-home training, and still continued to
17 give support in the prisons. And for me I dove into
18 therapy. I took advantage of all the programs out there.
19 I got my kids into therapy so they would not repeat this
20 ever again. And I wish I knew the Amachi program back then
21 because I worked like a dog and after a year I had to lock
22 myself up into an institution just to calm down and regroup
23 because I was having a breakdown doing it all, getting up
24 at 4:00 in the morning, running my company, going back and
25 forth to prison, being strong for my kids. It was rough. 42
1 I cried for a solid year, in between clients, put my makeup
2 in the car, put on my sunglasses, and nobody knew he was in
3 prison because I had kids to feed. I did not want that
4 stigma.
5 And then finally, as I started to heal, I started
6 to write and I gave all my clients a book. It’s called
7 Life in Harmony: A Guide to Healthier Thinking. And my
8 mission is to get into as many hands as I can because we
9 have to change our thinking. And we need programs. We
10 need programs for these kids.
11 So what I learned in prison was -- it was
12 amazing. We drove back and forth. We made it positive.
13 When he came home, he was clean for six years, had pain in
14 his shoulder, went to the doctors, they gave him pain
15 pills. Then he went into relapse. And that’s when I had
16 to get the strength to go back into therapy to walk away
17 from him.
18 I was able to remarry again. I ’m with my second
19 husband for 16 years. It’s absolutely amazing. My kids
20 are doing well. My one son runs his own company. He has
21 five employees, three vans. He fixes appliances. And
22 everybody has insurance. My other son Blain, he runs the
23 company with my husband and he’s a developer and he’s doing
24 amazingly well. And my stepson just graduated from
25 Haverford and he’s working at the lab working on cancer 43
1 treatments.
2 I want to tell you if I didn't dive into
3 recovery, dive into getting better, dive into all the
4 programs out there, Amachi is a very important program for
5 families. It should be mandatory because it's so much work
6 doing it all on your own. We need to have these programs
7 right there built in as soon as whoever's incarcerated so
8 it's there for them.
9 And when he went into relapse, one of the things
10 that I've learned, we can't save everybody that's in prison
11 but at least we can save the children. When I worked with
12 the abused children, they were receptive and they're
13 malleable and they want to learn. They don't want to
14 repeat it. And all those kids loved their parents and
15 those parents were inhuman with these kids because of the
16 acts of what drugs do to you. And these were parents that
17 were loving at one time. It is insidious what drugs can do
18 to you but we have to save the next generation. We have to
19 teach the next generation.
20 We will save some of these prisoners that are
21 already in there but it's a lot of work when they come out.
22 It's a lot of work. And even to be not even a drug addict
23 it's a lot of work to live a day-to-day life, to live a
24 clean life, to do the next right thing. Each and every one
25 of us come from some form of dysfunction. We all have to 44
1 do the work but it’s much harder when you’re exacerbated
2 with stigmas and having a parent incarcerated and to stand
3 with your head and stand up and be proud and have high
4 self-esteem.
5 And this is what Amachi is teaching these kids,
6 to stand proud, to not be ashamed, and to be an example.
7 And it doesn’t have to be repeated. But if we don’t have
8 this, this cycle is going to go on and on and on. And it’s
9 programs like Amachi that are going to do this. We need
10 the money to do it. It’s up to us to do it and the
11 government is there to help us to be able to do that.
12 Thank you.
13 Here, sweetie.
14 MR. WEAVER: Thank you. My mother Marisa White
15 is not here today. And I was supposed to be speaking but I
16 guess I wasn’t on whatever was given.
17 My name is Tiger Weaver. I ’m an ambassador at
18 Amachi and I advocate for incarcerated youth. I don’t
19 think my testimony is going to be like anybody else’s. I
20 don’t really have a sob story to tell, no disrespect. No
21 disrespect of course. Because I never really knew my dad.
22 He went to jail when I was two months old so you don’t
23 really know what you’re missing out on. Everything I ’m
24 wearing I bought myself. Because my mom was strong, she
25 taught me to be strong just like her. 45
1 The way I was brought up is that you don't look
2 at the bad things; you look at the good. But there's only
3 so much you can do to stay away from those bad things that
4 are basically set in place for you, because when you're
5 coming up around so much bad, it's really hard to block out
6 all those things.
7 A lot of people I'm around sell drugs, involved
8 with real bad people, got firearms with them at all times,
9 and these are people that I'm in contact with every day.
10 When you look at me, I'm just like any normal kid. I go to
11 school. I do bad stuff. But as you can see, I'm here
12 today trying to make a difference. And any other kid just
13 like me could make a difference, too, if there were things
14 set in place like Amachi.
15 My granddad, he got me involved in this when I
16 was about -- I think I might have been 10 or 11. At that
17 point I didn't exactly know what Amachi was, although I was
18 going to it all the time, I went to the events. I couldn't
19 exactly grasp what it was doing for me because at that
20 point you don't really know what's going on. You just know
21 that things are bad and things are good. But when you grow
22 up, you start to understand that certain people aren't
23 always bad people. They're just brought up in bad
24 situations.
25 My dad, he was a great father, he was a provider, 46
1 although he sold drugs. The way he got it was bad but his
2 intentions were very good. We always ate dinner together,
3 at least I'm told. We always ate dinner together every
4 night. He always was home. But the way he was doing it
5 was just all in the wrong ways. If he would have maybe
6 been brought up in a better situation because his dad
7 wasn't there. His mom, she was in the correctional
8 facility but she worked there, which is really ironic. But
9 since she wasn't around so much because she had to work, he
10 hit the streets and it brought about really bad things. So
11 he had to do what he knew. He only had an eighth-grade
12 education, so when you're brought up around so many bad
13 things, you start to think, well, maybe I could turn these
14 bad things into good things. But unfortunately, he
15 couldn't do that and he went to jail.
16 I myself, I don't feel as though I'm really
17 affected by it but I don't know that because I haven't even
18 had a father to show me. I haven't had a father there and
19 I don't know what I'm missing out on. I think maybe if my
20 dad was there before and he was gone now, I would probably
21 know maybe I had this guidance, maybe he could show me
22 this, maybe he could show me that, but I don't. I just
23 have a really strong mother there. She put really good
24 morals in me, really good manners, which made me the person
25 I am today. 47
1 As you can see, I don’t really have a paper here
2 and that’s because I wanted everything to just come out.
3 A lot of people I ’m around, their dads are in
4 jail. My brother’s dad has been jail. My dad’s been in
5 jail my whole life. I have two other brothers; their dad
6 is in and out of jail. He uses drugs. I say "drugs"
7 because there’s too many drugs to name. Such things that
8 you’re brought up around may or may not influence you if
9 you don't have the correct people pushing you toward the
10 right goal.
11 And me being in Amachi is pushing me towards the
12 right goal but there are so many kids out there that don’t
13 have things like Amachi or don’t have parents like I have
14 and don’t have mentors. So they don’t know whether or not
15 they’re doing the bad thing or the wrong thing because when
16 you’re in the wrong situation for so long, you start
17 thinking this is all I have so I got to make do with what I
18 got.
19 I don’t really have a lot to say. I ’m going to
20 be short and sweet. It’s simple. If you don't have a path
21 to be on, you’re going to go down a really windy road and
22 that’s never easy. Amachi is the path that shows people
23 that whether or not you’ve come from a bad or a good
24 situation, everything could be turned around.
25 So, yes, that’s all I have to say. 48
1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay. Thank you.
2 That was, again, terrific.
3 I've been here 20 years and I don't know how many
4 hearings I've sat at but probably at least 100, and there's
5 five new Republican Members of the Committee right here and
6 I just want to let you know the last two panels that you
7 heard are the best testimony that I've ever heard in 20
8 years up here in Harrisburg, absolutely. They've just done
9 a terrific, terrific job. Believe me; you will be here 20
10 or 30 years, you will not hear testimony, compelling
11 testimony like you just heard.
12 I'll bring up our next testifier, Harold Dean
13 Trulear, who is a Ph.D. professor from Howard University.
14 Is Harold here? Harold is not here.
15 MS. BROWN: There was an emergency.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay. Next, we'll
17 go to Kathleen Creamer, who is a supervising attorney for
18 the Family Advocacy Unit for Community Legal Services. And
19 I think I would be remiss if I did not recognize a
20 gentleman friend of mine, former colleague Bill DeWeese,
21 who's joining us here today. And I know Bill has a genuine
22 and serious and keen interest in what's being discussed
23 here today. Bill, good to see you.
24 Kathleen, whenever you're ready.
25 MS. CREAMER: Great. Thank you. 49
1 Good afternoon, Chairmen and Members of the
2 Committee. My name is Kathleen Creamer and I ’m a
3 supervising attorney in the Family Advocacy Unit at
4 Community Legal Services of Philadelphia. In my current
5 role and in my recent role at a Stoneleigh Foundation
6 Fellow, I’ve had the opportunity to work very closely with
7 the Pennsylvania Prison Society on issues relating to
8 children of incarcerated parents and their families. We
9 for over a decade have convened a Working Group to Enhance
10 Services to Incarcerated Women, and that’s really been a
11 multidisciplinary cross-system effort in Philadelphia and
12 across the State of Pennsylvania to really look at the
13 needs of children of incarcerated parents and their
14 families.
15 In partners with the Prison Society, I was very
16 honored to participate in the advisory committee to the
17 Joint State Government Commission’s report on children of
18 incarcerated parents. This report was made possible by
19 Representative Cherelle Parker in the House and Senator
20 Stewart Greenleaf in the Senate who sponsored a resolution
21 calling for study of this really ignored and unfortunately
22 diminished population of kids whose needs have been crying
23 out for decades.
24 I hope that you all have a cite to your report;
25 there is a cite in my testimony to the report. It’s 50
1 available online. The report has been cited nationwide for
2 its really comprehensive look at the needs of children of
3 incarcerated parents and it included over 50 really solid
4 and concrete recommendations to address the needs of these
5 kids.
6 The taskforce, the advisory committee to the
7 Joint State Government Commission was comprised of experts
8 from across the State of Pennsylvania. We had Judges, we
9 had people from the Department of Corrections, we had
10 people from the Department of Public Welfare now the
11 Department of Human Services. We were really thrilled to
12 be working together and I feel that the report is a
13 testament to the very hard work of the members of the
14 committee.
15 So today I really want to spend my time focusing
16 on the legislative recommendations that came out of that
17 report. So there is some legislation currently pending. I
18 want to spend some time talking about that. One particular
19 population that we really looked at in our work was a
20 really unique population of children of incarcerated
21 parents, and that's children of incarcerated parents who
22 end up in foster care. What we know pretty clearly is that
23 most children of incarcerated parents are able to live with
24 another parent or go stay with grandma or another relative,
25 but for about 1 in 10 children of incarcerated parents, 51
1 there’s not a family resource and the only alternative for
2 those children is unfortunately foster care.
3 These children in foster care face some of the
4 most serious consequences that our children of incarcerated
5 parents face and that consequence is the permanent
6 severance of all relationship with their incarcerated
7 parent through termination of parental rights. This is
8 largely as the result of the Adoption and Safe Families
9 Act, which is a very good act that was passed in 1997 by
10 the Federal Government and has been implemented in every
11 State in the country.
12 The Adoption and Safe Families Act, which was
13 passed in 1997, essentially said w e ’re limiting the time
14 frame for family reunification to 15 months. And with very
15 few exceptions, if a family can’t reunify within 15 months,
16 we are moving to termination of parental rights for that
17 family.
18 At the same time that the Adoption and Safe
19 Families Act was passed, our Legislature in the
20 Commonwealth and also at the Federal level was really
21 increasing the use of penalties, including incarceration.
22 So this resulted in what I call a perfect storm of
23 unintended consequences for children of incarcerated
24 parents because what we were saying to these children -
25 without ever intending to say it -- is w e ’re going to put 52
1 more of your parents in jail. We are going to put them
2 away for longer and we are going to make it way more likely
3 that you are going to forever lose your relationship with
4 your parent. That is not the message any of us wanted to
5 send to these kids but this is the message that children in
6 foster care have received loud and clear.
7 So a lot of States across the country have really
8 looked at the impact of the Adoption and Safe Families Act
9 on children of incarcerated parents and have taken steps to
10 kind of ameliorate some of this really blunt impact on
11 these children. So a number of States have said in their
12 statute that parental incarceration alone could not be
13 grounds to terminate parental rights. Other States have
14 looked at it and said we are going to make parental
15 incarceration inappropriate circumstances an exception to
16 the 15-month time frame so we're not going to require that
17 parental rights be terminated at 15 months. And some
18 States have done both.
19 Unfortunately, in the Commonwealth we haven't
20 acted and we've done neither. And one thing that the Joint
21 State Government Commission strongly recommended is
22 legislation to address this very severe impact on children
23 of incarcerated parents. So we have recommended that the
24 Adoption Act be amended to clarify that incarceration alone
25 would not be grounds to terminate parental rights and also 53
1 legislation to modify the Juvenile Act to allow for an
2 exception to the 15 out of 22-month time frame for
3 termination of parental rights consistent with the best
4 interests of the child where there's an incarcerated
5 parent. So that legislation has been introduced in the
6 Senate by Senator Greenleaf as Senate Bill 163. There is
7 not currently a companion bill in the House.
8 But there is a companion bill in the House on
9 another very important topic that I want to turn to now.
10 Another issue that the Joint State Government Commission
11 really grappled with is what happens to children at the
12 time of arrest? What we know is that all too often
13 children are present at the time that their parent is
14 arrested or they're not present; they're at school and they
15 return home to an empty house because nobody was thinking
16 about them when the parent was being arrested. There is
17 currently no statewide protocol. Some counties have done
18 some great work trying to develop protocols. There is no
19 current statewide protocol for police to ensure the safety
20 and well being of children at the point of the parent's
21 arrest.
22 So Senator Greenleaf in Senate Bill 163 and then
23 Representative Cherelle Parker this week in House Bill 763
24 introduced legislation to really tackle this issue. So
25 what both bills call for is the development of a very clear 54
1 arrest protocol to ensure the safety and well being of
2 children at the point of a parent’s arrest. This protocol
3 would be developed with the input of the State Police, with
4 the input of the State Department of Human Services, and
5 with other stakeholders and advocates for families.
6 The goal of this would be to ensure that there is
7 a consistent protocol to ensure safety and well being of
8 children at the point of parent’s arrest. All too often
9 the police aren’t even asking the parent is your arrest
10 going to result in your child coming home to an empty
11 house? Is there a child who needs to be placed somewhere
12 safe with a family member as a result of your arrest? So
13 our hope is that this legislation would go a long way to
14 really supporting these kids.
15 Finally, I just want to highlight one other kind
16 of recurrent concern that the Joint State Government
17 Commission noted, and that’s a real lack of cross-system
18 collaboration between all of the people that are trying so
19 hard to serve the families in our Commonwealth.
20 As a Stoneleigh Foundation Fellow, I was honored
21 to have a two-year pilot project in Philadelphia where I
22 work very closely with the Philadelphia Department of Human
23 Services and the Philadelphia prison system to look at ways
24 that we could communicate and collaborate better. And the
25 result of that was incredibly promising. We developed a 55
1 joint protocol to really ensure the well being of children
2 of incarcerated parents in foster care, and we also
3 developed a pilot videoconferencing system between the jail
4 and DHS so that parents could be Skyped in to any important
5 meeting that's going on about their child.
6 So in summary, I hope that the kind of work that
7 I was able to do as a Stoneleigh Foundation Fellow could be
8 a model for the kind of work that is possible statewide,
9 really looking at ways to communicate and collaborate.
10 And I would be remiss if I also didn't mention
11 the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts and the
12 great work of the Children's Roundtable. They have done
13 tremendous work in bringing together the Department of
14 Corrections and the Department of Human Services to look at
15 ways that we can address the needs of children in foster
16 care who experience parental incarceration.
17 So I thank you for the opportunity to be here
18 today. I'd be thrilled to take any questions and I urge
19 your attention to this really important legislation.
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay. Good job.
21 If I could ask you, Kathleen, to stay right there.
22 MS. CREAMER: Sure.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Maybe I can bring
24 Anna up also to the table and maybe Shirley. Would you
25 mind coming up and then we can open it up for questions 56
1 from the Members.
2 Representative Sims first.
3 REPRESENTATIVE SIMS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
4 I have more of a comment than a question. I want
5 to thank the Chairman again for pulling together a really
6 stellar panel. I ’m a second-term legislator. This is the
7 beginning of my second term, and although I don’t have the
8 years of experience, I can certainly echo the sentiment
9 that the testimony here today was just fantastic.
10 I’m an advocate myself and I ’m reminded when I
11 hear each of you speak that one of the frustrations that we
12 always have is that you feel like the people who are making
13 the decisions don’t know your path, don’t know your plight,
14 don’t know your story. All too often it feels like all of
15 the people that are deciding your futures don’t know what
16 your past and your present look like. And I ’m reminded of
17 a quote by my favorite Congressman Barney Frank. He says
18 that "Unless you have a seat at the table, you’re probably
19 on the menu." And that is my call I suppose to the youth
20 in the room.
21 There are legislators here in Harrisburg that are
22 in their 20s. I hope that none of these positions feel so
23 foreign to you that you wouldn't consider running for one
24 of them yourselves. Being a champion, being an advocate I
25 think is one of the best paths to a Legislature and I ’d 57
1 hope that you each continue to use your voices in the way
2 that you've used them here today, but that you also
3 consider perhaps using them here in this building one day.
4 I think one of the most important things we could
5 do for the capital is to have more nurses, more moms, more
6 single parents, more people who have a history of dealing
7 with mental illness, dealing with incarceration. I think
8 that what's lacking desperately in Legislatures across the
9 country is a lack of empathy. And so I would urge you all
10 to make sure that perhaps you are seated at the table next
11 time. So thank you very much.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Representative
13 Murt, I know you were writing feverishly through much of
14 the testimony so I recognize you for questions.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
16 I just want to mention that there is a companion
17 bill to Senate Bill 163 out for cosponsorship now. The
18 bill is not introduced but I would ask my colleagues that
19 are here today to please sign on as a cosponsor. The
20 cosponsor memorandum went out on February 25th. We have
21 eight cosponsors and we're hoping to get a few more before
22 the bill is actually introduced. But I would be very
23 grateful for a few more people signing on before we move
24 ahead with that bill. So thank you for that.
25 Representing part of Philadelphia, my question is 58
1 is there an equivalent for Amachi in the Philadelphia area
2 in southeastern Pennsylvania?
3 MS. HOLLIS: Yes. Yes. Amachi originated in
4 Philadelphia and there is an office there. Our work in
5 Pittsburgh is a little more expansive but there is work
6 being done in Philadelphia. There’s an Amachi office.
7 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: Is the program as big in
8 Philadelphia as it is in Pittsburgh?
9 MS. HOLLIS: I don’t believe so but I can’t
10 verify that.
11 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: The demand is certainly
12 there but -
13 MS. HOLLIS: Absolutely.
14 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: -- we don’t have as many
15 participants.
16 MS. HOLLIS: Yes.
17 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: Okay. Thank you, Mr.
18 Chairman.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: You got number
20 nine right here, Tom. I ’m signing right on to the bill as
21 soon as w e ’re done.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: Great. Thank you.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Representative
24 Diamond.
25 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 59
1 I want to thank you all for coming here to
2 testify, especially some of you who are telling your
3 personal stories. I know how hard that must be to tell
4 your stories to a room full of strangers. You got a lot of
5 courage. Thank you for coming.
6 I don't know if it's in any of the materials here
7 but I'm looking at the Amachi handout, and underneath
8 Amachi Pittsburgh it says Hands of Faith in Action. I want
9 to ask two questions. Number one, are you a faith-based
10 organization?
11 MS. HOLLIS: Yes.
12 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: And number two, what is
13 your funding stream? Are you funded by DHS?
14 MS. HOLLIS: We are faith-based, meaning we do
15 partner with churches and other faith groups but also
16 community groups and secular groups as well. And our
17 primary funding streams now are made up of foundations. We
18 were federally funded. There was a Federal Mentoring
19 Children of Prisoners program for about seven years started
20 under the Bush Administration, and all of the funding went
21 away. The program was eliminated back in 2011. So since
22 that time we've been relying on foundation support and for
23 a period of time United Way provided significant support
24 for us. But it's why we're here. We've been trying to
25 find alternate funding streams to help us continue this 60
1 work.
2 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Is there any particular
3 denomination, faith-based denomination -
4 MS. HOLLIS: No.
5 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: -- or is it kind of
6 like -
7 MS. HOLLIS: No. I think the part of that
8 feature of the Amachi model is meant to appeal to people
9 who -- this is our low-hanging fruit so people who want to
10 give back naturally because of their commitment to their
11 faith and we don't proselytize. We don't encourage any
12 particular faith. We're open to all members. I think
13 something like 40 or 45 percent of people who volunteer do
14 so through institutions of faith. So it's a smart
15 decision.
16 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: All right.
17 Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Any of the other
19 Members?
20 Representative Ward.
21 REPRESENTATIVE WARD: I just want to thank the
22 young people who came here today who gave their testimony,
23 and I want to thank you and I want to tell you how
24 impressed I was, how poised and pulled together you all
25 were, and so thank you. And for the others who didn't 61
1 speak, thank you for being here. It made a huge impression
2 on me so thank you so much for being here.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay. Anybody
4 else?
5 Representative Murt.
6 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: Secretary Smeal, thank you
7 for your testimony, very, very strong, powerful. And my
8 question is, Secretary, does every correctional institution
9 in the Commonwealth have programs like the ones you
10 described for us for the children, for parents, and so
11 forth?
12 MS. MOORE SMEAL: Yes. All the male facilities
13 have their Fatherhood Initiative. Both female facilities
14 have the parenting. All facilities have the Read-to-Your
15 Child program. They all have the Sesame Street books
16 available to them so there’s a strong recognition for
17 reunification with family and making sure that that
18 interaction is maintained to the extent that we can while
19 the parents are incarcerated.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: Collectively speaking, have
21 those initiatives been successful for the system, for the
22 participants, for the inmates, and the families?
23 MS. MOORE SMEAL: I would say so. Most
24 definitely the parenting programs particularly for the
25 females because certainly once the females are 62
1 incarcerated, that becomes their primary function for those
2 that are mothers is to make sure that their children are
3 taken care of. So they're very active. Project IMPACT
4 that I talked about for Muncy is very well attended so I
5 believe our initiatives are successful. And Fatherhood
6 Initiative just went into place within the last two years
7 so we're waiting to see the results of that, but it's
8 definitely well attended.
9 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: Is there anything holding
10 us back from expanding those programs, making them bigger,
11 more successful, and so forth? Do you need more funding
12 and so forth? That's what I'm trying to get at.
13 MS. MOORE SMEAL: We can always use more funding.
14 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: Okay.
15 MS. HOLLIS: And we can, too.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: Secretary, just one other
17 question. I'm curious; does the system work closely with
18 Amachi? Is there a collaboration there? Is there a
19 relationship?
20 MS. MOORE SMEAL: We do have a collaboration.
21 Part of the restructuring for our Bureau of Community
22 Corrections last year was to come out with a services lot
23 is what we refer to it as that includes a mentoring lot,
24 family reunification, and it's through those services that
25 we do contract with Amachi for mentoring programs. 63
1 So it’s a year old or so so we need to really
2 take more advantage of the programs that are available
3 through the Amachi organization, and that is our hope to
4 make it more widely known to the children of incarcerated
5 parents and even those children who are in the community
6 because you don’t have to be released from prison; you can
7 be on probation, on parole in order to take advantage of
8 those services. So we just need to make sure that people
9 are aware that the program exists and make sure that we
10 take advantage of it.
11 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: And just one final comment.
12 It was nice meeting you in Pittsburgh, Anna. I appreciate
13 you coming forward and asking for this hearing and to
14 explore the topic and so forth. So I ’m very grateful for
15 that -
16 MS. HOLLIS: Thank you.
17 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: -- advocacy on your part.
18 Thank you.
19 MS. HOLLIS: Yes, thank you.
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: I have a couple
21 questions. First, I want to thank the staff for putting
22 together this hearing. They did a terrific job. Mel and
23 Val, good job. Terrific job.
24 Secretary Smeal, it was mentioned about Senate
25 Bill 163 and I believe Representative Murt is going to 64
1 introduce a similar bill here in the House. Has the
2 Department taken a position on the Senate Bill do you know
3 in the past?
4 MS. MOORE SMEAL: I do not know if we have or
5 not.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay. And I know
7 it’s a new administration also. And also you mentioned
8 Cherelle Parker’s bill and I know she has a real keen,
9 serious interest in this issue and she wanted to be here
10 actually today I think, Mel, right, but could not make it.
11 And she’s introducing that bill.
12 Anna, really great testimony.
13 MS. HOLLIS: Thank you.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: The comments about
15 children if they get no help at all that up to 70 percent
16 of them will follow their parents into prison, and children
17 to get into your program, I mean you’ve got that 70 percent
18 down to 8 percent. I mean that’s just incredible to hear
19 that. I mean what are the main facts that you attribute
20 that to?
21 MS. HOLLIS: Well, I think it boils down to what
22 you heard the children say today, just having the one-on-
23 one attention, somebody to help them sort through the
24 complexity of this parental incarceration. So when you
25 have this report what w e ’ve learned from the children, 65
1 you'll hear them say that they need to work this through.
2 They need to process what just happened to them. They need
3 to understand that what just happened doesn't have to
4 happen to them. So there's this fear that, oh, my God,
5 this happened to my dad, this happened to my uncle, this is
6 going to happen to me.
7 D'Angelo told this story before about how he just
8 walked around in fear. He was so petrified that he spent
9 more time focusing on that than he did his schoolwork, his
10 grades started to go down, and then when he started to have
11 these more positive conversations with his mentor and being
12 able to express what his challenges were, then it helped
13 him have a different perspective. It helped him expect to
14 be successful and believe that success was possible for
15 him.
16 So I think having that person to walk alongside
17 you on a consistent basis and on a long-term basis, I think
18 also being an open ear because a lot of the kids also say
19 that they don't like to discuss this at home. They
20 recognize it's a really sensitive subject. They feel like
21 it's going to be hurtful for the custodial parent. They
22 hold it inside. They need to get that out. They need to
23 be able to talk about it. They need to be able to cry if
24 they feel like crying.
25 They need to connect with other young people so 66
1 that they feel I'm not alone; I don't have to be ashamed.
2 And so I think having exposure to cultural and educational
3 activities in the community, giving them things to think
4 about, a future to think about. I mean there are lots of
5 things that -- kids don't leave the four-block radius of
6 their neighborhood in a lot of cases so just having
7 somebody to help you explore your city and to learn about
8 opportunities, to talk about college as an option like
9 Kayla did with her mentor.
10 We had a 13-year-old boy that was matched with us
11 and boys in his community -- there was no after-school
12 program in his neighborhood, no Boys and Girls Club, and
13 they just started hanging out and then they were starting
14 to smoke and drink. And when he was matched up, his mentor
15 was actually in grad school at the time and he never
16 thought that college was for him. He expected at age 20 to
17 be in the grave. So if you believe that your future, your
18 destiny is death at 20, then you make decisions differently
19 than you would if you believed that success -- that you can
20 be at this table as a Representative as your career choice.
21 I think how kids view themselves and how they
22 view the world around them will help them make better
23 decisions. And that's what Amachi is about, helping them
24 understand they do have control over their futures. It's a
25 decision you make -- 67
1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Yes.
2 MS. HOLLIS: -- and helping them understand that,
3 helping them understand how to develop skills. And the one
4 kid with his mentor, they take swim classes together.
5 There's barely swim classes, so just those kinds of things
6 I think are helpful when kids understand that people in the
7 community care about them and are going to help them find
8 their way through difficult circumstances.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: I'm just curious.
10 I mean in Bucks County I don't believe we have any kind of
11 program like Amachi, but does the county Children and Youth
12 Services sometimes step in and try to help out with
13 children whose parents are incarcerated? Do you know if
14 that's the case? Maybe Secretary Smeal, do you know if
15 Children and Youth in some of our counties help out with
16 some of this?
17 MS. MOORE SMEAL: I'm not particular about the
18 Children and Youth but I know that through the Criminal
19 Justice Advisory Boards there's a number of communities and
20 counties that are getting on board with after-school
21 programming and trying to make sure that the children have
22 a constructive place to go after school, that some of the
23 mentoring opportunities are available to them to try and
24 reduce and create -- just recognize that there's an issue
25 that needs to be addressed in the community and to provide 68
1 resources for it.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Yes.
3 MS. HOLLIS: I believe in Philadelphia -- I don’t
4 know if this is under that department -- but TANF dollars I
5 believe are supporting mentoring. In Allegheny County
6 w e ’re working on it.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN DiGIROLAMO: Okay. Okay.
8 That’s all I have. Anybody else have any questions?
9 Well, I don’t know what to say. First, thank you
10 for being here and God bless you for the incredible work
11 that each and every one of you is doing. It’s really,
12 really so important and I think it was good for the
13 Committee Members to hear the testimony today, really,
14 really important. So thank you for being here. God bless
15 you, and have a safe trip home, everyone.
16 MS. HOLLIS: Thank you so much.
17
18 (The hearing concluded at 2:32 p.m.) 69
1 I hereby certify that the foregoing proceedings
2 are a true and accurate transcription produced from audio
3 on the said proceedings and that this is a correct
4 transcript of the same.
5
6
7 Christy Snyder
8 Transcriptionist
9 Diaz Data Services, Inc.