First Ind. prison nursery opens today

By Tom Spalding

Indystar.com

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200880416009

April 16, 2008

Call it the Department of Correction's version of day care.

The Wee One’s Nursery officially will open today as a special wing of the Indiana Women’s Prison on the Near Eastside. The nursery is billed as the first facility in the state to permit nonviolent offenders to reside with their infants. A grand opening will occur at 10 a.m. at IWP, 401 N. Randolph St.

Indiana is one of just six states to have a prison nursery program, said Doug Garrison, spokesman for the Department of Correction, in a news release.

The program was funded by grants from the Women’s Fund for Central Indiana (an arm of the philanthropic Central Indiana Community Foundation) and the Indiana State Department of Health. In a prepared statement, Ind. Lt. Governor Becky Skillman said the program "gives new mothers the opportunity to form a critical bond with their child in the first months of life."

The nursery program will require women to participate in several parenting classes, a service that will teach them the responsibility of motherhood, she said.

Participating mothers are pregnant women scheduled to deliver while incarcerated and who will be released less than 18 months after delivery.

The mothers agree to participate in additional child-related programming, such as child development and child needs, and are provided opportunities to develop their parenting skills and strengthen the bond with their infant children. The participants live with "offender nannies" in a unit staffed with correctional officers who have received additional training in child safety.