Sentence Unseen: Children of Incarcerated Parents Funder’s Briefing

u Carol F. Burton

Co-Chair of ACCIPP and CEO of JEWELD Legacy Group

Carol Burton, LMSW, has been working with an on behalf of incarcerated parents and their children for more than 25 years. She currently is coordinator of Alameda County Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership (ACCIPP), Professor of Social Work and Criminal Justice Administration at CSU East Bay, and Founder of Jeweld Legacy Group where she provides a range of capacity building services for public and private institutions, organizations and individuals serving the criminal justice population. Formerly, she served as Executive Director of Centerforce, Inc. and Associate Executive Director of the Osborne Association in New York City. Her responsibilities have included the oversight of the expansion of services in jails and prisons ranging from HIV/HCV prevention, transitional planning, family visiting centers, parenting education, youth services, employment and career readiness and other special projects. Additionally, Carol is the Principal Investigator for the country's first comprehensive program and longitudinal study on children of incarcerated parents in Flint, MI, and she serves as an advisor on several initiatives including the newly released Sesame Street toolkit “Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration”. In 2013, Carol received a White House Champion of Change Award for her outstanding work on behalf of Children of Incarcerated Parents.

u Crystallee Crain, PhD, Coordinator of San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership (SFCIPP)

Dr. Crain began her career in public service with a passion for justice, equity, and access for low income communities and communities of color. For the past ten years, she has taught political science and sociology at various schools in California and Michigan. She also has more than a decade of professional experience in leadership development and capacity building for organizations that work to prevent violence. Dr Crain currently is the coordinator of SFCIPP, a member of the Alameda County Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Commission, and a member of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE). She is also an adult with an incarcerated parent. Crystallee earned a Doctorate of Philosophy in Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. She also holds a Master of Arts in Social Sciences (sociology) from Eastern Michigan University, and a Bachelors in Political Science from Northern Michigan University. In 2013, she received advanced training in Health and Human Rights in the School of Public Health at Harvard University, and in 2011, she received the Norman Lear Leadership Award from People for the American Way (Young People For).

u Armondo DePina

Parent Advocate, ACCIPP Member, PCAG Co-facilitator, A Better Way

Armondo DePina is the father of four children, a full time single parent to his four-year-old daughter, and a lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. For the majority of his life, he struggled with an array of problems including drug addiction, gang involvement, incarceration, and being a runaway at a very young age. In March 2015, Armondo became a full time employee as a Parent Advocate with A Better Way and Alameda County’s Parent Engagement Program. He feels privileged to take on an active role in the lives of parents as they navigate the Alameda County child welfare system. As a formerly system involved parent, Armondo knows the challenges that these parents may face and is very committed to supporting them as they make changes to improve their lives. Armondo uses his personal experiences of incarceration to help inform his work as a new member of ACCIPP and as a co-facilitator for PCAG.

u Cecilia Galeano, Youth Speaker

My name is Cecilia Galeano and I am a youth advocate for children with incarcerated parents. My stepfather was incarcerated when I was 14 years old and since then my life has never been the same. I lost a loved one to incarceration which had a detrimental effect in my life. I am 20 years old now and I currently attend City College of San Francisco and I am a San Francisco Youth Commissioner. I am doing great things for my community and myself and hope you can all do the same for this growing population who deserve the support and respect. Help us break the norms that are generalized by others who don’t understand what it’s like to lose a loved one to the system.

u LeeAnna Howell, Parent Advocate, ACCIPP Member, PCAG Co-facilitator, A Better Way

LeeAnna Howell is a mother of four who has made a dramatic transformation in her own life and still continues to do so. In her lifetime she has overcome severe trauma, parental mental illness, drug addiction, gang involvement, homelessness, child welfare involvement and incarceration. She is now employed as a Parent Advocate with A Better Way and Alameda County’s Parent Engagement Program where, since 2013, she has had the opportunity to support parents who are navigating the Alameda County child welfare system. LeeAnna is passionate about her work with previously incarcerated parents and their families. She is a member of the ACCIPP and facilitates the Parent Caregiver Advisory Group (PCAG, a subcommittee of ACCIPP). LeeAnna is an inspiration to others. Her past experiences that were once a liability are now her greatest asset as she courageously uses her story to affect system change.

u Katie Kramer

MSW, MPH, The Bridging Group

Ms. Kramer has been designing and providing public health and social services since 1990. For the past 20 years, she has focused on the development, implementation, and evaluation of social service and health programs that serve individuals, families and communities affected by incarceration. She is an experienced agency manager with comprehensive knowledge in program oversight, agency policy development, grant writing and staff supervision. She also has experience as a clinical social worker, providing direct service for clients and clinical supervision for direct-line staff, and she is a professional trainer and curriculum developer, with more than 15 years of experience in the creation and facilitation of skills-based training. Presently, Ms. Kramer is the CEO of The Bridging GroupLLC in Oakland, CA, where she provides evaluation, training, technical assistance and capacity building for community organizations, government agencies and grant-makers working in correctional settings. She also currently serves as the Statewide Director for the California Reentry Council Network, and she is an appointed member on the Subcommittee on Assessment and Connections of the San Francisco County Re-entry Council, Chair of the Data and Evaluation Committee of the SFCIPP, and Executive Steering Committee member of the ACCIPP. Ms. Kramer also currently serves on the Executive Editorial Board as a Criminal Justice Expert for the Journal of Clinical Research in HIV/AIDS and Prevention. Previously, Ms. Kramer served as a Criminal Justice Expert for the National Working Group and Planning Committee for the U.S. Women and Girls Gender Forum on HIV Prevention for the Office of Women’s Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and as Program Committee Chairperson for the Board of Trustees for Broadway Children's School in Oakland, CA.

u Amy Price

MPA, Program Executive, Zellerbach Family Foundation

Amy Price, MPA, has been Program Executive at the Zellerbach Family Foundation (ZFF) since 2011. In this capacity, she oversees ZFF’s Improving Human Service Systems program, which focuses on improving policy, practice, and the workforce in public child welfare, mental health, and justice systems, particularly as these systems intersect to serve vulnerable children, youth and families. Prior to joining ZFF, Amy spent 18 years as Senior Research Associate and Associate Director for the National Abandoned Infants Assistance Resource Center at the University of California at Berkeley. There she conducted training, technical assistance, policy analysis and resource development to support comprehensive programs throughout the country that work with families affected by perinatal substance abuse and/or HIV. She also worked with Families First and Contra Costa County Children and Family Services to help develop and then evaluate a shared family care (aka whole family foster care) program for families involved in the child welfare system, and she evaluated Contra Costa County’s differential response program. Amy also served as a fellow for the Maryland Governor’s interagency Office on Children, Youth and Families; as a Program Assistant with the Massachusetts Committee on Criminal Justice; and as an advisory consultant to the California Department of Social Services, Child Welfare Services Stakeholders Workgroup on Permanency and Child Well-Being. Amy has an master’s in public administration from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s of social work from Skidmore College.

u Zoe Willmott

Project WHAT! Program Manager, Community Works West

Zoe is the Program Manager of Community Work’s Project WHAT!, a youth-led, leadership development program that raises awareness about the effects of parental incarceration on children, with the long-term goal of improving services and policies that affect these children. Zoe’s work is at the intersection of youth empowerment and community-based approaches to addressing the injustices that result from mass incarceration. With a background in youth development and a passion for fighting for the rights of prisoners and their families, Zoe first started this work as a youth advocate while in high school when she joined the first cohort of Project WHAT! youth in Oakland, CA in 2005. She then went onto receive a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University, before returning to coordinate and later manage Project WHAT! Zoe received. Last year, Zoe won a Superbowl 50 Fund’s Playmaker Award, and in 2014, she received the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture Fund Young Activist Award, which recognizes young adults who are engaged in positive activism on behalf of communities they are a part of.