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When many children are little, they're told that prison is where the bad people go. So what do children feel when their parents wind up in jail? How can those relationships be repaired? Is a normal life still possible?
Questions like these often receive more definitive answers with the help of Girl Scouts of the USA, which has created a unique program called Beyond Bars.
The program provides transportation for young girls to see their incarcerated mothers every other Saturday. The mothers act as troop leaders and run scout meetings during the visits. The program has existed for about 14 years, and Troop 2026 in the Kansas City area is one of 37 participating Girl Scout troops.
Volunteers from all walks of life give their time every Saturday to work with the girls of troop 2026, who range in age from 5 to 18 years old.
The purpose of the program is to repair and maintain the relationships between incarcerated mothers and their daughters and help mothers develop skills in leadership, conflict resolution and parenting. Volunteers still spend time with the girls on weekends when they're not visiting their mothers.
Jordan Raab, a 17-year-old Girl Scout, has been working with Beyond Bars for four years. Her mother, Diane Raab, was incarcerated eight years ago for manufacturing methamphetamine.
"If I wouldn't have had this program, personally, honestly I would not be here right now," Raab said while fighting off tears. "I was very, very suicidal. I had to be watched. This program showed me that there was more girls, and that I wasn't the only one, that I wasn't the only person going through it."
Raab said she would like to be a lawyer and a foster parent later in life. She said she owes her new goals and ambitions to the Beyond Bars program, which showed her she wasn't the only person going through tough times with a parent in prison. Raab said she is proud of her mother and what she has done with Beyond Bars.
"She's become a leader that I never thought she'd be," she said. "She gets up there and she basically runs the whole program."
The opportunities to gain leadership skills and having time with their daughters makes the program invaluable to the incarcerated mothers. But mothers who wish to be involved are required to take parenting classes and have to stay out of trouble. It takes time and conscious effort to stay enrolled in the program.
"It is an honor system," said former Topeka inmate Latanya Skillern. "They're not just letting in all the riffraff. You do have to prove that this is something that you care about and something you want to be involved in."
Skillern participated in the program during her entire prison sentence, which ended in 2006. She said she owes her relationship with her two daughters to the Girl Scouts.
"It really gave a lot of us mothers our dignity back, to where we could be proud to be moms," Skillern said. "You don't really want to say, 'Well, I'm a mom and I'm in prison. I suck.'
"Girl Scouts allowed us to say, 'OK, this is a new page, I'm a mom no matter what and these people are allowing me to still be a mother and really bloom.'"
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