The San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents (CIP) Program evaluation, for the period of October 2006 through December 2007, was funded by the Zellerbach Family Foundation to assess CIP’s effectiveness and identify areas for improvement.
With generous funding by the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the CIP Program aims to promote healthy relationships between children and their incarcerated parents. The CIP Program is part of the Public Defender’s Office Reentry Unit, which provides our clients with a combination of legal and social support. The CIP Program staff works with clients, their families, deputy public defenders, and a network of community-based treatment providers to respond to the needs of incarcerated parents and their families.
For the past two years, the CIP Program has operated as a pilot with the goal of creating a self-sustaining program in the future. Some of the key findings of the evaluation include:
- The CIP Program served 148 CIP clients and provided over 178 distinct units of service to these clients.
- The average age of clients is 32, the average age of children is 5.8, and the average number of children is 1.7.
- The majority of CIP clients are African-American (68 percent), while Latinos and Caucasians each make up 10 percent of the population.
- The largest share of service requests were for visits with children.
- The CIP social worker attempted over 81 percent of services requests and provided over 64 percent of service requests to clients and their families.
- In collaboration with the Sheriff’s Department, the CIP staff has achieved key changes in jail practices, resulting in the availability of breast milk to infants and expansion of access to visitation for incarcerated parents and their children.
Download the full CIP Program evaluation or executive summary:
