Before, During, and After Reentry: Children and Families Impacted by Addiction, Parental Incarceration, and the Faith Communities That Walk the Whole Road

Session Description: More than 2.7 million children in the United States have a parent behind bars, and the majority of justice-involved parents have a substance use disorder. Yet reentry systems typically meet the family only at the moment of release, as if the family's story begins there. In reality, children and families live three distinct chapters: the before, marked by parental addiction, instability, and often trauma, sometimes involving both parents; the during, shaped by separation, stigma, ambiguous loss, and disrupted caregiving; and the after, when a returning parent navigates supervision, housing, work, and sustaining recovery, while reunification asks a child to rebuild trust and the whole family, including the caregiving parent, renegotiates every role and routine. Each chapter carries distinct risks and opportunities that most systems miss. This session maps all three phases, then makes the case for a resource present in nearly every community and uniquely suited to walking alongside families across the full arc: faith communities, whose presence, trust, and longevity outlast any program cycle. The presenters bring lived experience, deep personal faith, and decades of professional expertise spanning child welfare, behavioral health, addiction and recovery, reentry, and faith-and-community partnership. Attendees will leave with a practical, replicable framework for engaging faith communities as continuous family-support infrastructure, including both a partnership framework and practical, ready-to-use resources: an evidence-informed program kit for supporting children, trainings that equip faith leaders, faith-based organizations, and communities to respond, available funding pathways, and ground-level strategies for building the relationships that put these tools to work.