Family Support
For over twenty years, the mission of the FCC has been to strengthen the connection between parents who are incarcerated and their families while facilitating ties to their communities through education and support.
The FCC, under the Division of Rehabilitative Services, is a family resource center located in all three NH State Prisons and Minimum-security units including Shea Farm Transitional Housing Unit for women. The Family Connections Center has provided family support services and parenting education in the NHDOC since 1998. The FCC has expanded from providing support inside the prisons to also partnering with community agencies to provide education and support for families affected by incarceration.
Please watch the short video's about the Family Connections Center created by WMUR’s NH Chronicle in 2017 and a follow up and the follow up NH Chronicle episode from March of 2022.
The Annie E. Casey foundation estimates that more than 15,000 children in NH have a parent who is incarcerated:
The Expansion
The Family Connections Center has always recognized the need to support families not only in the prison, but in the community where the children and their caregivers are living. In 2020, the FCC partnered with Waypoint and the NH Attorney General’s office to apply for the Second Chance Grant. Waypoint was awarded this grant, Second Chance Grant #2020-IG-BX-0002, to expand reentry programming in the Family Connections Center and to create systems of care in New Hampshire for children who have a parent who is incarcerated. The program we created under this grant is called “Family Ties Inside Out”. This program connects all newly incarcerated parents in NH jails and prisons to their local family resource centers. It also creates various support groups for children of different ages and two groups for caregivers.