Corrections_Today_July-August_2022_Vol.84_No.4

nEWS&vIEWS

strengthening families in a trauma informed way. Each community partner is carefully vetted. As part of this initial relationship building, Opportunity Kids hosted a music production workshop in Atlanta designed to introduce kids to dif ferent means of creative expression and career opportunities. Opportu nity Kids also recently hosted a free dental clinic for Angel Tree families in Virginia. Future developments Every year, Prison Fellowship serves hundreds of thousands of chil dren with an incarcerated parent and connects with 5,000–7,000 churches. Angel Tree Every Day, currently in its formative stages, seeks to equip such churches to extend their care of families with an incarcerated loved one. Both programs are being devel oped with a foundation of current research and best practices in trau ma-informed care. Led by Director Richelle Bryan, the Opportunity Kids/Angel Tree Every Day team includes Youth Development Re searcher Dr. Chelsea Hunsucker. Hunsucker underscores the impor tance of fostering the parent-child relationship while a parent is behind bars and describes the way sup porting these relationships builds resilience and can circumvent unde sired outcomes: “Parental rejection is one of the strongest corelates to juvenile delin quency, and it’s a causative one, not just associated. I come from sociol ogy, so we’re looking at things that are associated but maybe don’t cause each other. But this one is cause. We are starting to see a lot of research in

Photo courtesy Prison Fellowship

10 — July/August 2022 Corrections Today