“I'm the child of an incarcerated parent. I wasn't okay with sharing that with anyone until I was in my forties.
I worked for Olmsted County for nearly 20 years. In 2017, the Minnesota State Community Health Services Advisory Committee, a group of county commissioners and public health directors, formed the Children of Incarcerated Parents Workgroup. The group was charged with advancing how Minnesota and local governments can better support children of incarcerated parents. At that point in Minnesota, having an incarcerated parent was the most frequently reported adverse childhood experience.
After I heard about the workgroup, I went to Olmsted County Commissioner Sheila Kiscaden—one of the group’s co-chairs to let her know that I was the child of an incarcerated parent, and that I was willing to help by giving insight from the child’s perspective.
I felt really courageous because it's not something that we’d ever talked about. A few months later, she called and said, ‘I just talked to your boss and asked if you could participate in the workgroup.’ After I joined, I found out I was the only person with the lived experience of parental incarceration serving on the workgroup. Advocating for families and children affected by incarceration has since become a calling.
When we plan to engage communities, it’s important to include community leaders and those that care about their community, and it’s vital to hear from those who might feel disengaged, the people who have lived through the issue. In order to appropriately address systemic issues, including the voices of lived experience is essential.
Ultimately, the group did accomplish its original charge, which was to study the issue in Minnesota and come back with recommendations. The big takeaway is that we need to raise awareness in order to change attitudes and move to action. Kids with parents in jail or prison don't talk about it, and teachers don't know about the traumatic experiences these kids may have encountered. There’s a huge lack of awareness. When we you start talking about it, people say things like, ‘‘those criminals did a crime, so I don't feel bad for them.’ They assume that there are services and systems for addressing the impact of parental incarceration on the kids, but there aren’t.
Although I was set to be the workgroup co-chair in 2021, I was nearing the end of a special assignment with Olmsted County and made the leap to starting my own consulting business. I’m still working on the issue as a strategic advisor for the Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee of Minnesota and other organizations with missions in support of families experiencing incarceration.”
Dawn with her grandsons
Dawn Beck worked for Olmsted County, MN for 19 years. She currently runs New Dawn Consulting, where she helps organizations transform individuals, teams, and communities with strengths-based leadership and team development, organizational excellence via talent optimization and collaborative problem-solving.