Supporting the well-being of children experiencing maternal incarceration can be complex and requires engagement with multiple service providers. Between 2000 to 2024, female incarceration rates have risen globally by 57%, with reported increases of 127% in Australia, 62% in Canada, and 33% in the United States (Fair & Walmsley, 2022). This substantial increase in female prisoners means that a growing number of children are experiencing maternal incarceration. Service providers from a range of agencies take on roles of responsibility for ensuring the well-being of these children. The focus of the current research was to gather information from these service providers to understand the existing service landscape and their perspectives on what is needed to effectively support children experiencing maternal incarceration and enhance their well-being. Although reducing the flow of women into the criminal justice system is critical, it is important that we simultaneously work to address the needs of children experiencing maternal incarceration. By identifying how to best address these needs, we can design and implement strategies to enhance child well-being and reduce intergenerational transmission of offending. This paper reports on an Australian study exploring service providers' perceptions of the existing services that may support children affected by maternal incarceration and identifies barriers and potential solutions for improving the coordination of support for these children.

The needs of children affected by maternal incarceration are complex, spanning multiple domains (Cho, 2011; Dallaire, 2007; Flynn, 2013; Giordano & Copp, 2015). Children who experience maternal incarceration often face poverty (Allen et al., 2010), homelessness (Western & Smith, 2018), and difficult familial dynamics, including parental substance use and conflict (Giordano et al., 2019). The complexity of well-being needs arising from these experiences may bring these children into contact with a range of social services across education, health, child welfare, justice, and community sectors. In this paper, we use the term service providers to refer to the people working within these social services—some offering direct support to children and others providing indirect support through their work with families.

Although some services are tailored to the specific needs of children who are experiencing maternal incarceration, engagement with services is more often driven by the family's broader social needs. As these social needs often predate a mother's incarceration (Giordano et al., 2019), families are likely to have prior involvement with these social services. However, the additional challenges associated with maternal incarceration may result in a greater reliance on and need for services, increasing the complexity of the systems families must navigate (Ungar, 2018). Therefore, the aims of this study are important as they seek to understand the challenges that may impede a family's ability to navigate the multiple services that variably support mothers, children, and whole families, while exploring potential solutions to improve the support available to children of incarcerated mothers.

The coordination of services is an essential element of an efficient and effective support system for children of incarcerated mothers and their families. A coordinated system is evident when different services work toward common goals and share resources and information (Abdel-Salam et al., 2017). Although some evidence-based approaches exist for overcoming service and system-level barriers for social services more generally (e.g., Ghate, 2016, 2018), there is limited direct evidence on existing barriers for coordinating supports for children experiencing maternal incarceration. Furthermore, few studies have examined the current systems from the perspective of service providers, despite these perspectives being critical to identifying effective solutions to improve support services (Axelson et al., 2020; Ghate, 2016). To address these gaps in knowledge, we draw on the perspectives of service providers to assess existing supports that may alleviate the potential deleterious effects of maternal incarceration on child well-being, as well as the mechanisms and barriers to their coordination.

Theoretical framework: Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory

Understanding what is needed for a coordinated support system for the children of incarcerated mothers requires an examination of how a mother's incarceration negatively affects her child's well-being and what is needed to support the child to mitigate these effects. Bronfenbrenner's (1995) ecological systems theory of human development provides a useful framework for this examination. In his theory, Bronfenbrenner posits that children's well-being relies on positive reciprocal interactions between the child and their environments (microsystem), strong connections across these environments (mesosystem), and an understanding of how broader contextual influences (exosystem and macrosystem) impact the individual child. Although the mesosystem connections are the primary focus of this paper, these connections cannot be understood in isolation from the child's microsystem nor the context of the exo- and mesosystem. In the next sections, we explore both how a mother's incarceration disrupts a child's microsystem and how to protect the child against these disruptions by strengthening their mesosystem.

Disruptions in the child's developmental systems when their mother is incarcerated

The incarceration of a mother can significantly affect her child at the individual level (the center of Bronfenbrenner's model), impacting the emotional, social, physical, and behavioral well-being of her children. A wide range of research links a mother's incarceration with a higher prevalence of negative outcomes for her children across a range of domains, including education (Cho, 2011; Dallaire et al., 2010; Testa & Jackson, 2021), mental health (Davis & Shlafer, 2017), physical health (Roettger et al., 2022; Testa & Jackson, 2019), and behavior (Kremer et al., 2020). These individual-level adverse outcomes are often a consequence of the separation of the child from their mother, when their existing microsystem is disrupted through the changes triggered by a mother's incarceration.

The most immediate and direct impact of maternal incarceration is the loss of regular opportunities for healthy interactions between the mother and her child—what Bronfenbrenner and Evans (2000) have referred to as proximal processes within the microsystem. Research on paternal incarceration demonstrates that incarceration disrupts both the quality and quantity of these interactions, with barriers to visitation and poor-quality visits reducing opportunities for children to engage in important developmental activities with their fathers, such as reading and playing together (Dennison et al., 2017). These barriers are likely to be even greater when the mother is incarcerated, given that mothers receive fewer visits from children compared to incarcerated fathers (Tasca, 2016). With fewer correctional centers for women, mothers are more likely to be located far from their children, and adults in the child's life are less likely to be willing or able to bring the child to a visit in prison (Poehlmann et al., 2010). An absence of visits is particularly problematic for infants and very young children, for whom these face-to-face interactions are difficult to supplement through telephone calls or letters (Sapkota et al., 2022). Even when visits do occur, they may be marked by stress or conflict (Hahl et al., 2016), functioning as inverse proximal processes (Merçon-Vargas et al., 2020), weakening the buffering role that healthy proximal processes may play in mitigating the negative outcomes of maternal incarceration.

Children with a strong mesosystem are more likely to have access to appropriate supports that can improve both the quantity and quality of interactions between incarcerated mothers and their children (Dennison et al., 2017; Rudd et al., 2019). However, maternal incarceration can also destabilize the mesosystem, particularly the connections between the home and other important settings within the microsystem, such as school and community. For example, the incarcerated mother is no longer able to attend school meetings, engage with community supports, or coordinate the child's access to services, removing the mother as a central point of communication and decision-making (Lockwood et al., 2024). This absence makes it more difficult to maintain continuity of care and to coordinate new supports for the child.

For some families a mother's incarceration may also exacerbate preexisting disadvantages such as housing instability, poverty, and structural discrimination (Giordano & Copp, 2015), which are shaped by vulnerabilities within the child's exosystem and are particularly sensitive to negative political and cultural shifts within the macrosystem. For example, tough-on-crime policies may divert government resources away from social services that could respond to the increased vulnerabilities brought about by a mother's incarceration (Mitchell Fuentes, 2022). As a result, where these policies are in play, the focus for families with an incarcerated mother tends to shift toward the policies directly related to her incarceration as a response to her offending behavior, rather than addressing the broader well-being of the family beyond the carceral system. In the absence of such supports, families bear the burden of navigating a complex array of social service systems to ensure the child's individual needs are fully addressed.

Ideally, a child's well-being would be protected through prevention strategies that target the deep disadvantage within the child's microsystem and that are associated with the poverty, poor mental health, and trauma that are predictors of incarceration among women (Kjellstrand et al., 2012). However, such prevention strategies require comprehensive policy shifts in the exosystem and are not likely to negate the need for intervention strategies in the short term that address the complex needs of these children in their micro- and mesosystem (Giordano & Copp, 2015). It is therefore essential to examine how existing supports operate across these social ecological levels and where barriers to coordination limit their effectiveness.

Understanding the existing service landscape

The microsystems of children of incarcerated mothers are likely to include service providers operating within environments common to all children, such as schools and other child- and youth-related settings. However, compared to peers who have not experienced maternal incarceration, these children may encounter a greater number or a different mix of service providers within these environments, such as psychologists, child protection workers, and police officers (Obus et al., 2024). In addition, they may be impacted by the exosystem in ways that most children are not, including by legislation and policies related to child protection, court proceedings, and practices within prisons (Rudd et al., 2019). Therefore, improving the support system for children of incarcerated mothers requires an understanding of the full scope of the existing service landscape for these children.

There are many examples of research that evaluates microsystem-level intervention strategies designed to support children experiencing parental incarceration. Such evaluations encompass interventions for infants residing with their mothers in prisons (Dodson et al., 2019; Goshin et al., 2014; Kwarteng-Amaning et al., 2019), parenting programs that are customized for incarcerated mothers (Tremblay & Sutherland, 2017), and mentoring programs designed for older children and adolescents experiencing parental imprisonment (Bruster & Foreman, 2012; Laakso & Nygaard, 2012; Stump et al., 2018). Although this evaluation research provides valuable insight into the programs that may specifically benefit children of incarcerated mothers, the availability of such programs remains limited. Therefore, it is likely that children of incarcerated mothers are being supported by services not specifically designed to meet their needs, and there is limited empirical evidence on how various services, tailored or not, can be coordinated to ensure an easily navigable system that can meet their needs.

Although service providers working within the microsystem of children experiencing maternal incarceration possess valuable insights into this system, researchers often overlook service providers' perspectives in many contexts (Ghate, 2016, 2018). There are, however, two notable exceptions in the study of maternal incarceration. Axelson et al. (2020), interviewed service providers from various agencies frequently accessed by children of incarcerated parents, including those in education, social work, and health sectors. Brown and Barrio Minton (2017) focused on school counselors' perceptions of support mechanisms for students experiencing parental incarceration. Both studies revealed that although service providers are aware of the specialized supports required by children experiencing parental incarceration, they expressed doubts about their capacity to coordinate these supports within the child's microsystem. Consequently, service providers would benefit from a critical examination of how the connections across service providers working within the mesosystem surrounding the children of incarcerated mothers can be strengthened. Our research seeks to facilitate this process and apply the resulting insights to inform recommendations for enhancing the mesosystem for children of incarcerated mothers.

Using cocreation methods to gather information about the system

Strengthening the connections within the mesosystem of children experiencing maternal incarceration requires a method that produces actionable recommendations for change. Cocreation methods, such as the approach used in this research, are well positioned to achieve such goals. These collaborative methods enable those designing support models for vulnerable populations to gather information about the local system's history, resources, and dominant attitudes before attempting to implement changes or improvements (Fagan et al., 2018; Ghate, 2016, 2018). This approach is typical in universal intervention and prevention programs, as well as in community coalitions where model developers work alongside community leaders prior to and during implementation (Anderson et al., 2015; Cooper et al., 2015; Fagan et al., 2018; Feinberg et al., 2004). However, when it comes to implementing support strategies within complex microsystems, especially those involving multiple government and nongovernment agencies, this collaborative approach is less common (Ghate, 2016). The benefits of cocreation methods for building models specifically for incarcerated mothers and their children include the opportunity to gather insights from service providers about what interventions and supports would work in the current service system landscape, and to open lines of communication between mothers, researchers, and service providers (Lockwood et al., 2024; Williams et al., 2024). It is for these reasons we adopt this approach in the current research.

METHOD

Study background

This study is part of broader work to collaboratively develop a new support model for incarcerated mothers and their children in the Transforming Corrections to Transform Lives research center. As part of this work, previous studies have examined the cocreation methods used in the collaboration and the views of incarcerated mothers (Lockwood et al., 2024; Williams et al., 2024). The current study is focused on service providers' perspectives on the support needs of children but also considers how the needs of the entire family (microsystem) impacts the child. These perspectives were gathered through focus group discussions held during a half-day workshop at Griffith University in April 2021. The research was approved by the Griffith University Human Research Ethics Committee (Ref No: 2020/777), and consent was obtained from all participants..

The cocreation method used in the current paper is based on the Design Council UK's (2021) systemic design framework. This approach unfolds in four stages: explore, reframe, create, and catalyze. This paper delivers findings from the explore and reframe stages. The explore stage is designed to better understand complex service systems by exposing the implicit knowledge of professionals; in this case those working to support children of incarcerated mothers and their families. The reframe stage includes a critical examination of the information gathered in the explore stage; these are discussed in the later sections of this paper.

The knowledge gathered through the explore and reframe stages is used to generate a cocreated model of support and an agenda for exo- and macrosystem change through improved policy and practice in relation to families experiencing maternal incarceration. The design of this cocreated model is a key part of the create and catalyze stages of the framework and is designated for future research (see www.transformingcorrections.com.au for more information on this work).

Participants

Participants were recruited through purposive sampling, drawing on the professional networks of the center director and coauthors of this paper. All participants worked in social services frequently encountered by children experiencing maternal incarceration. These social services were located across Queensland, Australia, and included child protective services, out-of-home care agencies, justice and corrections agencies, educational services, and a not-for-profit organization providing support programs that are tailored to children experiencing maternal incarceration. Prior to the focus group sessions, individual meetings were conducted by the center director. Guided by the Design Council UK (2021) approach, these meetings aimed to establish rapport, familiarize participants with the project, and discuss their role in supporting children experiencing maternal incarceration. During these meetings, some of the agencies referred the center director to other agencies. Saturation was reached when there was a good coverage of the types of agencies that work with children of incarcerated mothers. All seven service providers who engaged in these meetings sent at least one participant to represent their agencies, resulting in 21 participants overall. There was an even representation of participants from each agency. These participants held a range of roles within these social service agencies including frontline management and casework roles that brought them into direct contact with families experiencing maternal incarceration.

PROCEDURES

A half-day workshop was held at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, in April 2021. The workshop began with the center director providing an overview of the aims of the broader program of work. Following this introduction, the 21 participants were organized into four focus groups, each comprising three to six participants from different service agencies. Each group was facilitated by a member of the research team with experience in both research and service settings similar to those of the invited providers. The workshop concluded with a full-group discussion, bringing all participants back together to reflect on key learnings from each group session.

Each focus group received a different fictional scenario detailing the circumstances of children experiencing maternal incarceration. These scenarios featured children of different ages: a 16-year-old (Carla), a 13-year-old (Bryce), a 10-year-old (Lenny), and an unborn child (Layla, a mother), each with complex support needs related to their mother's incarceration. These scenarios are summarized in Table 1. The main benefit of the scenario approach is its ability to stimulate productive debate that highlights, and even generates, areas of consensus and a shared understanding of how the broader system operates. This method and its many other benefits are discussed in more detail elsewhere (Williams et al., 2024).

Additionally, each group received a worksheet for recording discussions. The structure of the worksheet was framed using the six domains essential for children's well-being from the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) Nest (2014). These include (a) feeling valued, loved, and safe; (b) health; (c) material basics; (d) culture and identity; (e) opportunities for learning; and (f) opportunities to contribute and participate. We selected this framework for its comprehensiveness and national relevance to child well-being.

Guided by the fictional scenarios and the Nest (ARACY, 2014) well-being domains, each group responded to the same three discussion questions: (a) What available services, policies, processes, or programs promote the well-being of the children of incarcerated mothers? (b) What new services, policies, processes, or programs are needed to promote the well-being of the children of incarcerated mothers? and (c) How could the outcomes be improved for each of the children in your fictional scenario across each of the six Nest well-being domains? These questions encouraged participants to draw on their own experiences, allowing them to reflect on the fictional scenarios and provide concrete responses regarding how they would address the needs of the fictional children, while minimizing the need to discuss confidential case information. Audio recordings were made for each group, and facilitators took notes on the worksheets. There were approximately 260 minutes of audio transcribed by a professional transcription service resulting in 167 pages of dialogue.

Coding and analysis

The focus group sessions aimed to reveal common experiences among the service provider participants. This assisted us in understanding the social service systems that children experiencing maternal incarceration encounter. Therefore, a social phenomenological lens was applied when coding and analyzing the transcripts (Priya, 2017). The process for coding and analysis was reflexive and iterative, using deductive methods to categorize raw data and inductive methods to explore the social phenomena common across the participants and organizations represented in the focus groups (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). The coding occurred in two phases. In the first phase, the lead author used deductive methods to categorize the information based on the discussion questions from the focus group sessions: (a) assessing the existing service landscape and its capacity to address the needs of children experiencing maternal incarceration, (b) identifying the barriers to coordinating support within this landscape, and (c) identifying solutions to overcome these barriers. These responses were tagged in NVivo (Version 1.6.0). During the second phase, four members of the research team (CW, TRM, KL, and CT) participated in a series of meetings, using inductive techniques to further analyze and interpret the coded information. This analysis was collaborative and iterative, with the aim of not only confirming the categorization of the information (deductive) but also allowing for new ideas to emerge (inductive). These sessions also ensured consensus within the team regarding the coding and interpretation. For clarity in the Results section, each focus group has been assigned a number corresponding to the specific scenario presented to them (see Table 1).

RESULTS

The existing service landscape

The first discussion question for the focus group asked service providers about the available services, policies, processes, or programs that promote the well-being of the children of incarcerated mothers. A wide range of existing services relevant to children of incarcerated mothers was identified in response to this discussion question. We categorized these services under the well-being domains of the Nest (ARACY, 2014; see Table 2). Service providers identified not only the services for which they worked as being relevant to affected children but also identified many other relevant services. Although the fictional scenarios simulated these conversations, the service providers drew on their own experiences and understanding of the service system landscape to identify suitable services that may meet the specific needs of these children. This reflected a good understanding of the broad range of services that, although not specifically designed for children experiencing maternal incarceration, provide services to children facing similar circumstances. Given the breadth of the services that were identified, we are confident that their discussions in the focus groups were comprehensive in terms of the existing service landscape.

In our analysis of the transcripts, we collated the numerous services that were identified by service providers to meet the needs of children experiencing maternal incarceration. As indicated in Table 2, these services include both those that deliver specialized services, including housing and legal support, as well as those that are important for the well-being of children more generally, including education, sports clubs, and culturally led community-based services. Table 2 also provides a summary of the ways in which the services are relevant to children experiencing maternal incarceration. Through analyzing the transcripts, we identified that services provide a range of instrumental supports such as food, shelter, and transport, but also ensure that children's well-being needs are supported through access to counseling, school-related supports, and culturally appropriate supports. The analysis of focus group transcripts suggests that there is a range of services that exist to support children experiencing maternal incarceration.

Despite this, the information in Table 2 also exposed a lack of services designed specifically for children experiencing maternal incarceration. An example of the ways in which a targeted service can better meet the needs of these children was illustrated when a participant, whose agency's core role is to support children experiencing parental incarceration, was reflecting on Lenny's situation (Scenario 3). In this scenario, the fictional teacher chose to keep Lenny's mother's incarceration a secret and refrained from discussing her incarceration with Lenny. The participant stated,

This is a really common scenario for us and whilst I think [the teacher] was doing what she thought was right, the initial thing that is a concern is the conspiracy of silence. We call it the conspiracy of silence which is not talking about it. We do offer a teacher training program where [the teacher] would have been trained in what the conspiracy of silence is and how to safely talk about it with children with a parent in prison. Part of that is a draft policy for schools on how to respond when they have a student with a parent in prison. (Service provider, Focus Group 3).

The participant's reflection revealed that although all participants could identify how their own and other services may meet the needs of children experiencing maternal incarceration, specialized services are necessary to ensure these needs are addressed sensitively. The participant was also able to identify that these specialized services can either offer direct support or enhance the capacity of other services through, for example, teacher training programs and the development or improvement of school policies for supporting children.

The focus group discussions regarding existing services provide evidence of the broad range of services that already exist to support children's well-being. Although many services are not specifically designed for children experiencing maternal incarceration, our exploration revealed that they can contribute to supporting the varied needs of these children. Despite this, our findings also expose the important role of targeted services in providing direct support to children and in assisting other agencies to do the same. Given the lack of such targeted services, it is likely that the current support service system is not meeting the specific needs of children experiencing maternal incarceration who may require additional targeted services and/or supported access to services.

Barriers to providing a well-coordinated system of support

Despite the apparent breadth of existing services (apart from targeted services), we discovered that barriers to accessing services likely arise from system-wide practices that hinder their coordination, specifically insufficient information sharing across service delivery systems and system fragmentation.

Insufficient information sharing

Insufficient information sharing was a barrier reported by participants in three of the four focus groups, posing a significant challenge to the coordination of services, especially for children experiencing maternal incarceration. One participant described this when reflecting on the fictional scenario where 16-year-old Carla experiences a cascade of negative events after her mother's incarceration, stating,

Just that it's a domino effect, really. You can just see how one thing leads to the next, to the next, and it all happens generally pretty rapidly. Also, I think because there is a breakdown in communication often between the different departments. That police might not know about this and then child protection might not know about that and so on and so on. It makes the situation even worse. Because each of us can't build a whole picture. (Service provider, Focus Group 1)

The preceding quote highlights the participant's perception of the need for information sharing, by way of communication across different agencies, to adequately address the cascade of adverse events experienced by Carla. However, the breakdown of communication often results in the inability of each agency being able to form a comprehensive picture of the child's needs, which makes enacting the right supports more difficult.

An underlying factor contributing to insufficient information sharing was considered to be the lack of clear guidelines and processes for sharing information. This issue was articulated by participants from Focus Group 4, who noted the absence of cohesive and universal processes. Illustrating this point, one participant raised the uncertainty regarding what information could be shared among government departments:

I think it would be really good if there was a clear position for each different organization, and they could tick-tack with one another and compare notes and go, you know what, currently we can't share information with you because of X, Y, and Z. All right, how do we make this work? (Service provider, Focus Group 4)

Another example of the lack of common guidelines concerning information sharing emerged during a discussion between a government agency representative and a representative from a not-for-profit service agency in Focus Group 4:

Not-for-Profit Service Provider: To coordinate care, is it clear from I guess everyone's perspective as well about information sharing and what they can and can't share? … I just, I wasn't certain about whether or not all of the partners that are involved with prisons, and if it's clear as to where the limitations are for not only their own organization but elsewhere.

Government Service Provider: I think, no. That's why I commented [previously] that … you sound like you do [information sharing] easier than us.

Both the above examples suggest that the processes vary for information sharing within and across government departments and across the wider system of support services relevant to the children of incarcerated mothers.

Our analysis also revealed that service providers may not fully understand the legislative and policy frameworks that exist for information sharing and this contributes to insufficient information sharing across the system. Participants from various focus groups highlighted specific legislative and privacy restrictions they perceived as affecting information sharing. For example, participants from Focus Groups 4 and 2 described limitations related to the sharing of information:

Because we're bound by the Child Protection Act, we have to adhere to certain parameters when sharing information with certain partners. (Service provider, Focus Group 4)

Obviously, privacy is important, but it's challenging to support a family when we're not fully informed. This can also be a barrier. We don't necessarily want to know everything about everyone, but we need enough information to provide effective support. (Service provider, Focus Group 2)

However, in another discussion in Focus Group 2 a facilitator's remarks on the typically cautious approach to sharing information prompted participants to consider the consequences of not sharing information for the mother of Bryce, the fictional child central to the scenario provided to this group:

Service Provider 1: Especially also from the mother's point of view in this scenario. She doesn't want to tell her story to five different organizations.

Service Provider 2: Yeah, that's right, that's right. So, I'm coming in to talk to her, you're coming in to talk to her, they're coming in to talk to her. It's like, “ugh, had enough.”

In the preceding dialogue, both service providers emphasized the mother's viewpoint, noting her reluctance to share her story with multiple organizations. By considering the mother's perspective, the service providers highlight the possibility of mothers disengaging from services due to the burden of repeatedly recounting their stories. When mothers disengage from support services, crucial information about their children's needs may be overlooked by service providers. Thus, although it is imperative that mothers' and children's privacy is protected and information is shared with consent, insufficient information sharing and the subsequent disengagement of mothers, as described, could significantly hinder service providers' comprehension of the child's specific support requirements, potentially leading to service gaps or duplication.

System fragmentation

Our analysis of the transcripts also revealed that system fragmentation is likely to be a significant barrier to the coordination of supports for children experiencing maternal incarceration. Indeed, the lack of information sharing is symptomatic of the wider challenge of system fragmentation. System fragmentation is characterized by the involvement of multiple agencies in providing support to children experiencing maternal incarceration without a framework or some other form of coordination in place. Each agency provides a specific service in a vacuum, regardless of other services' activities. Consequently, children and their families must deal with multiple service providers and, at times, inconsistent service provision. Although participants in all focus groups could identify how they could contribute positively to the outcomes of children experiencing maternal incarceration, only one of the service providers' agencies was specifically focused on meeting the needs of these children that arise because of their mother's incarceration. Consequently, service providers and their agencies do not always have the requisite knowledge or resources to provide a holistic service to children experiencing maternal incarceration and there are no frameworks in place to coordinate support across the various services. Consequently, children “fall through the cracks,” and this was illustrated by a service provider who works directly with children experiencing maternal incarceration:

[Service providers] just don't know what to do. It's because we have no national policy or framework for how to support children with a parent in prison. Whether it's their education or out-of-home care, there is no governance framework. They literally fall through the cracks because no one is responsible for them. (Service provider, Focus Group 3)

This participant's comment highlights the consequences of system fragmentation stemming from the absence of a framework that informs the service delivery for children of incarcerated mothers. Additionally, it exposes the challenge faced by service providers in coordinating supports for these children.

The lack of holistic supports for families experiencing maternal incarceration emerged as a recurring concern among participants who were directly supporting children impacted by maternal incarceration. The absence of a family-focused approach results in multiple agencies servicing the mother, child, and family without coordination or a specific framework; this constitutes a unique form of fragmentation within the microsystem of children experiencing maternal incarceration. One participant from Focus Group 2 discussed this fragmentation:

If we're going to be working with children, you can't really work with children and not work with the whole family. Yeah, Corrections go, “well, that's not our problem, children.” Most States, they don't even ask the inmate whether they've got children. (Service provider, Focus Group 2)

The preceding quote illustrates the inherent fragmentation when addressing the needs of families affected by maternal incarceration and the need for a family-focused approach to supporting children. Furthermore, it draws attention to the fact that whereas correctional workers are focused on the person in custody, particularly in the case of incarcerated mothers, there are children outside the correctional facility who are connected to and rely on their mothers despite the incarceration. Recognition of the connections to children by correctional institutions, as well as being aware of the services supporting children, provides opportunities for coordinated approaches to supporting mothers and their children. A lack of recognition of the maternal status of incarcerated women contributes to fragmentation by hindering efforts to streamline and coordinate support between the different agencies within the microsystem providing separate services to mothers and their children.

Moreover, our analysis of the transcripts exposed how this separation of agencies' roles and responsibilities in providing services to the child and mother further contribute to fragmentation following maternal incarceration. This was illustrated during a discussion with community-based and correctional-based service providers about supporting an incarcerated mother to engage with child protection services around maintaining custody of her child. During this discussion, a facilitator prompted consideration of the impact of maternal incarceration on the continuity of a family-focused approach in relation to child protection case management:

Facilitator: I'm wondering if [child protection] will think, well, now she's in prison, we don't need to engage with her as much as if she was out in the community?

Community-Based Service Provider: That is a possibility because she is in a different environment.

Facilitator: And they would have someone coming and visiting and generally speaking to say, hey, what's happening? Are you feeling okay? Are you being supported while you're in prison? What are you doing, in so far as the care of your child?

Community-Based Service Provider: Yes … but, yeah, I don't know how extensive that would go.

Correctional-Based Service Provider: So, I think sometimes we get the responsibility then of doing. I think [child protection] can take their eyes off [the mother] because of the workload elsewhere and in community where risk is greater, thinking that we can take care of that.

This exchange illustrates how the process of incarceration leads to fragmented service provision across community- and correctional-based agencies with little consideration given to ways in which a family-focused approach could be implemented and/or maintained. This fragmentation may lead to inefficiencies, gaps, and duplication of services as agencies work independently toward similar objectives. As highlighted by the above exchange, community-based agencies may focus solely on the child whereas correctional-based services focus on the mother; both working to support the well-being of those within the child's microsystem but not working together.

This fragmented service provision can also be seen in breakdown or absence of mesosystem connections between the mother and the child's school. Our analyses of the transcripts revealed that services do not engage with the mother as a parent while she is incarcerated even though there are opportunities to engage. These missed opportunities were highlighted by a correctional-based service provider in a discussion with a fellow participant who asked how she, as a school guidance counselor, would facilitate contact between teachers and incarcerated mothers. The correctional-based service provider stated that this barrier could be overcome by a phone call to the general manager of the prison:

You know, I just wish people would pick up the phone: “I'd like to speak to the general manager.” It's just remarkable how much can be achieved with a phone call. When people just ask the question. Like even the teacher. (Service provider, Focus Group 3).

The preceding quote further illustrates the lack of communication between service providers in the community and those in the correctional agency. As we will demonstrate in the next section, this lack of communication and engagement from service providers working in educational settings may be due to their unfamiliarity with correctional centers and their processes. We will also show in the next section how correctional agencies may be able to offer solutions to overcome this issue.

Solutions to overcoming the barriers

We sought participants' suggestions regarding mechanisms that may overcome system barriers to enhance outcomes for children experiencing maternal incarceration. Participants readily offered solutions to coordination challenges that were relevant to their own practice and achievable with their available resources. The participants also discussed the potential effectiveness of a system navigator for a more comprehensive, mesosystem-level approach to address complex issues associated with information sharing and system fragmentation. In this section, we present participant-proposed solutions in two categories: service-level suggestions that could serve as potential “quick wins” and a more comprehensive mesosystem-level approach involving system navigators. We explore how this system navigator approach could bring about broader improvements within the constraints of the existing service system landscape.

Quick wins

Our analysis uncovered a solution-focused approach among the participants when discussing how their services may address service system barriers. This approach led participants to advise and inform each other about how to use existing resources to improve support for children experiencing maternal incarceration. These solutions, if put into action, could be viewed as quick wins that may address some barriers without the demand for additional resources or significant legislative and system-level modifications.

The transcripts revealed that the participants were particularly motivated to find solutions to overcome information sharing and service system fragmentation barriers that may prevent the continuity of family-focused supports for mothers and children once a mother is incarcerated. For example, a participant who worked within a correctional service (Focus Group 3) noted that continuity in service delivery to mothers can be challenging for service providers who are unfamiliar with correctional processes, stating, “the challenge for [communicating with prisoners] is that [prisons] feel very closed.” To overcome this challenge, the participant suggested service providers visit prisons to see that “the infrastructure is as soft as it can be.” This suggestion motivated another participant in this group to seek guidance on how teachers could continue a family-focused approach to supporting the child's education by facilitating communication between teachers and incarcerated mothers, exploring the possibility of holding parent–teacher conferences through existing video-conferencing facilities. Other participants who were knowledgeable about correctional settings also provided information brochures on the experiences of children with incarcerated parents, visiting processes, and exchanged contact information to discuss the idea further. These examples provide evidence of the potential for small service-level interactions to produce quick but effective change to overcome some of the barriers related to maintaining and coordinating family-focused support for children experiencing maternal incarceration.

The exploring of opportunities to improve policies and processes was evident throughout the focus group transcripts, particularly when participants were informed of inefficient policies and processes of which they were not previously aware. Given their organizational positions, some participants offered to investigate potential solutions. Specific examples of this included reviewing telephone contact processes and improving support for children during visits with their incarcerated mothers. One participant, while thinking aloud, considered how they may provide information that is specific to mothers during the processes undertaken when women first enter the correctional center (on “induction”). These processes were under review at the time:

I just realized; we're just currently reviewing our induction. Is there something in our induction for mum about being a mum? I'm just racking my brain about. … Thinking, I can ask to stay in touch with the school. (Service provider, Focus Group 3)

Although it cannot be confirmed that participants implemented these changes, this willingness to consider solutions highlights a commitment to improving service delivery efficiency and smoothing out access to support services. The interactions within this focus group, and across all focus groups, also demonstrated the benefits of bringing service providers together to share information on processes and to problem solve, although it was apparent from the interactions and conversations with participants that opportunities for these cross-sector interactions rarely occur. Our analysis also exposed that even if these quick wins and greater opportunities to collaborate do address some barriers, additional support in the form of a system navigator may be required to work around the complex service system-level barriers of insufficient information sharing and system fragmentation.

System navigation

In all focus groups, a recurring point of discussion was the potential benefits of a service that provides a single point of contact for support—a system navigator—operating independently of government or government-funded agencies. The role of the system navigator would be to work collaboratively with the child, their family (including the mother where appropriate), and relevant service providers to ensure access to essential services that can meet the child's needs. The primary objective of this single point of contact is to streamline navigation through the complex support system for children and families. Participants (across all groups) suggested various titles for this role, such as “caseworker,” “coordinator,” and “consultant.”

The potential for system navigators to overcome service system fragmentation became evident through our analysis of the transcripts. For example, a participant emphasized the potential value of a system navigator in linking children to relevant services beyond the educational context. The participant highlighted the many responsibilities of teachers, who, in addition to meeting learning needs, may also be expected to work outside of their role boundaries, finding resources to “counsel, refer, support, [and] get [students] to appointments” (service provider, Focus Group 1). This participant's experience suggests system navigation may improve the support system for children with incarcerated mothers by providing an avenue for the coordination among diverse support services.

Our analysis of the transcripts also revealed the potential for a system navigator to address barriers to information sharing. As one participant highlighted, having a system navigator (a coordinator) could facilitate the continuous updating of information on a shared IT system:

Have a coordinator that is continually updating things on [a shared IT] system. So, if something comes up and the police have to go—and I know they always have a look before they go—there is already a flag. But what I'm also thinking about is the reduction in police workload. Because the workload involved in all of that—and a lot of the police are like, who do I ring? Or where do I go? (Service provider, Focus Group 1)

The preceding quote suggests that a system navigator may overcome the challenges associated with both the lack of a common framework for information sharing and ensure that the right services to support the child are accessed when required.

In summary, our analyses found that when asked about what was needed to improve the outcomes of children experiencing maternal incarceration, participants tended toward discussing service-level solutions that could be implemented without significant resource allocation or system-level modifications. Participants explored opportunities to make changes within current policies and practices to overcome the barriers to information sharing and system fragmentation, potentially generating quick wins. Participants also recommended working around current barriers by using a coordinator.

DISCUSSION

By presenting the findings on the explore and reframe stages of the UK Design Council's systemic design model, our current paper provides a better understanding of the service delivery landscape of children experiencing maternal incarceration, as well as provides insights for developing actionable recommendations for strengthening the mesosystem connections among social service providers to create a more coordinated support system for the well-being of these children. These opportunities include both the reduction of current barriers through quick win solutions at the service level and a broader mesosystem-level solution to implement a system navigator. We now discuss each of those in turn.

Service system landscape

Our analysis of the focus group transcripts revealed a detailed account of a social service system that has capacity to provide microsystem-level support for children of incarcerated mothers. Participants recognized how their services both currently and potentially address the specific needs of these children. What was also exposed is a scarcity of services specifically designed to support the needs of children with an incarcerated mother, and this is consistent with findings from other jurisdictions (Axelson et al., 2020; Brown & Barrio Minton, 2017). Kjellstrand (2017) suggested that an effective framework of support for children experiencing parental incarceration is one that has services tailored to meeting needs that arise because of incarceration (e.g., the need to visit a prison) and also ensures easy access to other specialized services that the child may need (e.g., psychology services). We observed the value of interactions between service providers specifically targeting children of incarcerated mothers and those supporting a broader range of children, some of which will likely include children with incarcerated mothers. These interactions are important for ensuring the connections required for a strong mesosystem when a child is experiencing maternal incarceration. Such connections can enable a continuity of supports that can adapt to the disruptions in the child's microsystem that occur throughout different stages of the mother's incarceration and beyond (Poehlmann-Tynan & Arditti, 2018). However, our findings suggest that such interactions are not the norm in the current system due to the scarcity of targeted services. Furthermore, there are challenges to coordinating support services due to the barriers of insufficient information sharing and system fragmentation.

Barriers to coordinated support

The two barriers to coordinated support identified in our research—insufficient information sharing and system fragmentation—are consistent with barriers commonly noted in the extant literature on complex systems supporting vulnerable populations (e.g., Haight et al., 2014; Petts et al., 2021; Robards et al., 2019; Ungar, 2005). Our research uncovered specific drivers of these barriers for children affected by maternal incarceration. First, we found that insufficient information sharing was driven by the risk-averse approach of service providers doing their best to balance the need to share information about a mother's incarceration to coordinate support services while respecting the privacy of the child and their family. Second, we found that system fragmentation was increased by the lack of continuity in family-focused supports and the disengagement of community-based services that occurs when a mother is incarcerated. These barriers provide a formidable challenge for the coordination of support services for the children of incarcerated mothers. Nonetheless, our analysis also revealed that service providers were quick to generate solutions and workarounds when working together to overcome these barriers, thus demonstrating the potential for a strong mesosystem to emerge despite these seemingly immovable barriers.

Service- and system-level solutions for improved coordination

Our analysis of the transcripts revealed that once service providers recognized how certain policies and practices inadvertently contributed to children falling through the cracks, they were quick to consider reviewing and updating these approaches. These findings highlighted the service providers' commitment to ensuring the service system can address the complex needs of children experiencing maternal incarceration. Our results are consistent with previous research on support systems for children experiencing parental incarceration that shows that service providers are willing to find solutions to better support children (Axelson et al., 2020; Brown & Barrio Minton, 2017). This also demonstrates a willingness among service providers to work within a well-connected mesosystem in a comprehensive, collaborative manner to meet children's needs. However, as our research reveals, the solutions are likely to be beyond the reach of individual service providers.

Given this, we argue that additional support is required to circumvent system challenges in the form of a system navigator. Our research exposes the complexity of the challenges in coordinating services, indicating the need for a more comprehensive, system-wide solution to overcome insufficient information sharing and system fragmentation. The coordination barriers highlighted by participants closely resemble those that system navigation models are designed to address (Carter et al., 2018; Valaitis et al., 2017). Aligned with the intent of the model, and as evidenced by our findings from the focus group discussions, if applied to supporting children of incarcerated mothers, this model may address insufficient information sharing, ease workloads, optimize resource allocation, and ensure comprehensive support while respecting service providers' role boundaries.

Implications for families, professionals, programs, and policymakers

Conditions required for successful system navigation

Participants in our study suggested system navigation as an approach to overcome the current barriers to providing coordinated support for children experiencing maternal incarceration. Previous findings indicate that for a system navigation approach to succeed, three key conditions must be in place: collaboration, flexibility, and a streamlined system (Carter et al., 2018; Valaitis et al., 2017). However, our research also suggests that implementing a system navigation approach could help improve these very conditions, translating to positive outcomes for families, professionals, programs, and policymakers. In the following sections, we discuss how enhancing collaboration, flexibility, and system streamlining could both support the success of a system navigation approach and be strengthened by its implementation.

Collaboration

Participants in this study were able to identify potential local-level solutions, but in doing so also identified that there were limited opportunities for the collaboration required for strong mesosystem connections due to insufficient information sharing and widespread system fragmentation. We argue that wider collaboration across the service delivery system is a crucial system-level condition for the success of a system navigation approach supporting children of incarcerated mothers. System navigation approaches thrive in environments of strong system-level collaboration, opening communication channels, expanding service reach, and providing clear pathways for navigators to identify suitable services (Valaitis et al., 2017). Given our research shows a willingness among our participants to collaborate, encouraging regular and structured opportunities for service providers to discuss common barriers and solutions at the system level may enhance collaboration (Packard et al., 2013). We believe that establishing more collaborative opportunities, similar to the focus group approach used in this study, or a community of practice model may strengthen collaboration and, in part, contribute to the conditions for successful system navigation (see Williams et al., 2024, for further discussion of collaboration opportunities). Further, because system navigators work across all the services working within the child's microsystem, they may also be able to facilitate these collaborative opportunities by identifying who to bring together. Therefore, although having strong system-level collaboration may be desirable, we argue that it may not be a necessary prerequisite in the employment of a system-navigator model because navigators can also play a crucial role in catalyzing collaboration and strengthening mesosystem connections.

Flexibility

Maternal incarceration creates and exacerbates conditions that are likely to negatively impact the well-being of children. However, individual-level circumstances and service needs vary (Turney & Wildeman, 2015) and therefore require a flexible approach. The service providers in our study identified that children experiencing maternal incarceration have a variety of needs and that services need to work in a flexible way to meet these needs. They envisaged doing this by drawing on various services that although not specifically designed for children experiencing maternal incarceration, could still meet their needs. We argue that flexibility could be demonstrated by working with children when their mothers are incarcerated and in the community to ensure continuity of care and a family-focused approach, providing individually tailored support through strong mesosystem connections, and finding ways to collaborate and reduce service duplication. Such an approach would also protect children from exposure to inverse proximal processes, ensuring that services and supports are relevant to the child and their family (Dennison et al., 2017). We believe that system navigators are best placed to identify which services best address both the child and family's needs if allowed the flexibility to access and coordinate a wide range of supports across the child's microsystem to meet these needs.

Streamlined

The service providers in our study described a fragmented service system that lacks streamlining. They identified issues such as service duplication, gaps where children and their families have unmet needs, and a general lack of clarity around who is responsible for supporting children with an incarcerated mother. Streamlining in this context refers to improving the flow of information across the mesosystem and enhancing the clarity around the roles and responsibilities of different agencies, both at the point of a mother's incarceration and throughout the period of her absence, in order to better support families. Although full standardization of service-level approaches may not be feasible, some degree of streamlining is essential for the success of a system navigation approach (Valaitis et al., 2017). The service providers proposed solutions at both the service and wider (exo- and macro-) system levels to help streamline processes and better support children and families. However, they acknowledged difficulties in achieving this streamlining, with a key challenge being the absence of clear guidelines delineating agency roles and responsibilities at all points of the mother's incarceration journey. This lack of direction seems to have resulted in a lack of continuity of care, creating significant challenges for families in accessing consistent and appropriate support. Based on our findings, we suggest that addressing this systems-level issue through clearer guidelines for improving the flow of information and delineating the role of each agency at each point of a mother's incarceration could help streamline the system. Crucially, this streamlining would then help create the conditions for a successful system navigation approach by providing navigators with a more organized service landscape to work within. In turn, system navigators working closely with families could provide insights into further streamlining and give clarity on how to best support children impacted by maternal incarceration, strengthening mesosystem connections and ensuring that all services involved within that mesosystem are operating in the most efficient way.

Strengths, limitations, and future directions

A significant strength of this study is that the focus groups were facilitated by a research team independent from the agencies from which participants were selected. Further, the team members who facilitated the focus groups have worked in various positions within similar service agencies, enabling them to elicit and interpret relevant information effectively. However, one limitation of the study is that some participants may have been reluctant to express themselves fully in the presence of senior-level service providers. Further, some participants may have focused on discussing the service provision of other agencies rather than their own, which is difficult to identify through the transcripts. We did try to minimize these issues by creating a safe space for discussion, encouraging all participants to express their opinions, and ensuring that each focus group included representatives from different agencies, with no single agency being overrepresented. Although the sample size may be considered small, we are confident that we reached saturation given the scope of the study and the extensive consultations with those within the service sector prior to recruiting focus group participants. A replication of these research methods in other jurisdictions would enable an exploration of the extent to which the service system barriers identified are universally experienced by service agencies.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, this research aimed to examine the current service systems for addressing the well-being of children experiencing maternal incarceration and to identify areas for strengthening the mesosystem connections from the perspectives of service providers. Participants highlighted the need for improving these mesosystem connections, with information sharing and a fragmented system as barriers to providing a well-coordinated system of support. They suggested quick win solutions and proposed having an independent single point of contact to coordinate services and help the children of incarcerated mothers and their families to navigate the complex service systems. The adoption of a system navigation model appears promising. However, for such a model to be successful, it needs to be implemented alongside exosystem-level changes that create a more collaborative, flexible, and streamlined support system for navigators to operate within.

This study emphasizes the critical need to coordinate service delivery to enhance the well-being of children experiencing maternal incarceration. Our approach demonstrates the value of including service providers' perspectives in identifying barriers that hinder access to services for these children and in developing effective strategies to overcome these barriers. Notably, our findings draw out service providers' viewpoints on enhancing the coordination of support systems for children affected by maternal incarceration. The quick win solutions discussed by our participants may only be applicable to the specific system of supports in the jurisdiction for which our participants were sampled from. However, the system navigation model favored by our participants both facilitates overcoming immediate barriers to service coordination and offers a versatile solution that can be adapted to a variety of contexts. The adaptation of the system navigation model to a variety of contexts makes it an ideal solution not just for coordinating supports for children experiencing maternal incarceration but also in ensuring that disruptions within the family and child's microsystem that arise because of a mother's incarceration are ameliorated. The system navigation approach contrasts with more restrictive, prescriptive strategies, which may falter in the attempt to coordinate supports across multiple social service systems to meet such complex needs. Our study demonstrates the importance of drawing on service provider perspectives to identify tangible strategies for service system change.