The Effectiveness Of The Potential Intervention Essay

Women who are incarcerated can be overwhelmed with the intense shock and change of lifestyle that goes along with entering prison. They can spend hours daily thinking about how their lives will be different when they are released, and what they will and will not be able to fix when they return to life outside of prison. There are numerous issues that these ladies will have to deal with when their time is up, which could be devastating for most people. Many people will have to worry about their friends and family being unhappy, difficulties returning to work or finding a job, and financial situations.
The design of the one-on-one sessions will be to help women deal with matters that are focused more intensively on each of their problems, such as parenting and self-efficacy. This will assist them in coming up with solutions that they will be able to follow through with. These sessions should also be able to keep the attention of the inmate, as they will be the only other person in the room with the counselor at the time of the session. Guiding the women in these sessions will help show them that there are people in the world who believe that they can succeed in life, and overcome difficult obstacles that may seem unbearable at first. At the beginning of the sessions, particular problems can be listed, and methods of solving them can be discussed throughout the intervention. This reason that this design was chosen is that it can support the inmates in mapping out their life after prison.
One of the ethical concerns with the intervention that the counselor should consider is the fact that she and the inmates may have different values. Before the sessions go too far in depth about what the counselor believes is expected of the inmates, and what their possible problems might be, it could be useful to get to know the ladies. In addition to simply knowing why they were arrested and information containing their demographics, learning more about their values and beliefs is something that could contribute to the overall success of the inmate’s parenting and self-efficacy skills.
Another concern that the counselor should be aware of when speaking with the inmates is that of religion. While some inmates will not have a problem with this and could actually benefit from it, there are others who may be uncomfortable with this topic, and even offended. However, to overcome this problem, discussions about these matters at the beginning of the intervention could take care of this problem. This could be advantageous, as religion can help not only with one’s self-efficacy, but parents can be encouraged to take their children to church for a family activity. Because of this, when doing one-on-one interventions, the counselor could bring this topic up.
When women are in one-on-one counseling, they are likely to be more comfortable speaking about particular issues that they do not like discussing in front of large groups, or at all. The counselor is also able to give more attention and advice in these sessions to the person. Because parenting and self-efficacy skills are extremely significant for these members, more time can on this, and less time on matters such as drug addiction, abuse, and violence. While these issues are important, it might be better to just speak about these in the group counseling. However, the validity of this may not measure up with some of the ladies because their parenting skills could have been ruined due to these issues, so they need to be discussed during the one-on-one intervention sessions to inform the women how they are damaging their relationships with their children. Another problem with this method is that if women become too comfortable with the counselor, they might follow through with everything that is asked of her, and act as if she was just having a regular conversation with another random lady, rather than a person who is trying to help her. However, although they may not actually become friends, it can help the inmate feel better and more confident if they can feel better around other people. Because of this, when the counselor encourages them to do particular things, the inmate may be more likely to listen, and their self-efficacy could improve, as well. Additional information could be shared between two women about children and comparisons could be made, helping raise the possibility of success in parenting for the inmate.
Possible threats to this design is that the inmates might feel uncomfortable or threatened in one-on-one settings. They could refuse to speak, and not listen to the counselor. Also, even though these inmates may be relaxed during their sessions, they might not understand exactly what they are supposed to do, or what is expected of them. There is the possibility that they may have done what they have been told, but are still unsuccessful. For example, an inmate’s children may have come to the prison to visit her, and she has interacted with them exactly how her counselor told her to. However, the children are still not behaving and speaking to her like she was expecting them to. The advantage of one-on-one counseling is that when problems such as this arise, more time can be spent to determine what the inmate may need to change or act differently, or if there are other factors that need to be taken into consideration.
A web search that could be used as a measurement tool for research data for this intervention is Mothers Behind Bars: A state-by-state report card and analysis of federal policies on conditions of confinement for pregnant and parenting women and the effect on their children (Rebecca Project for Human Rights, 2010). Not only does this contain statistical information on mother-child relationships, but also interesting additional information on things such as nurseries in prisons. The women being counseled could be shown these numbers, and the rates of success of other ladies, so that they could see that there is a chance for them, as well. These numbers could be looked at again in the future by the counselor to improve new intervention sessions.

References

Rebecca Project for Human Rights. (2010). National Women’s Law Center. Mothers behind
bars: A state-by-state report card and analysis of federal policies on conditions of
confinement for pregnant and parenting women and the effect on their children. Retrieved from: http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/mothersbehindbars2010.pdf