Featured Research

Improving the parenting skills of incarcerated parents

27 June 2018

This article was originally published in July 2017.

The effectiveness of parenting programmes when it comes to improving the well-being of incarcerated parents, their parenting knowledge and skills, and the quality of their parent–child relationships, is the topic of a paper by Life Course Centre researcher Ms Elizabeth Eggins and newly accepted LCC Fellow Dr Paul Harnett, along with co-authors Ms Eleanor Armstrong, Dr Natasha Reid, and Professor Sharon Dawe.

They undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis that considered the effectiveness of parenting programmes undertaken during incarceration, prior to the parents being released. The paper, ‘Parenting interventions for incarcerated parents to improve parenting knowledge and skills, parent well-being, and quality of the parent–child relationship: A systematic review and meta-analysis’, was published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology in June 2017.

Evidence suggests that parenting interventions completed while parents are incarcerated can have a small to moderate effect in improving their knowledge and skills, and the quality of their relationships with their children; however, more methodologically robust research is needed to more confidently establish the effectiveness of these interventions.

You can read the full paper here.