Believing that a strong family connection maximizes a child’s stability and a woman’s chances of success upon reentry, Hour Children works to nurture happy, healthy, and caring relationships between incarcerated mothers and their children.
Hour Children provides programs for women at incarcerated at Bedford Hills and Taconic Correctional Facilities, both located in Bedford Hills, NY.
Hour Children operates the Nursery inside Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, where mothers can live with their infants for up to 18 months, providing infants born during their mother’s incarceration with critical bonding time with their mother. During the day, while mothers are attending school, mandated programs, or working, the infants are cared for in the Child Development Center, which is staffed by Hour Children employees and specially-trained inmates.
Visits are essential for maintaining mother/child bonds during a period of separation due to incarceration. Travel logistics and expenses are often insurmountable barriers for children and families. Hour Children provides transportation to children who reside throughout New York State, and beyond. Children might visit for one day, or take advantage of our multi-day visiting programs, during which they stay with local host families.
The Children’s Center Playrooms in the visiting rooms at Bedford Hills and Taconic serve to enrich family visits by providing a child-friendly environment, with age-appropriate games and seasonal creative arts projects that are designed to encourage mother-child bonding and the creation of valuable memories. Children also celebrate their birthdays with their mothers in the Playroom.
Hour Children helps women to use their time in prison to improve themselves as parents and as people. In our parenting education classes, women explore topics that impact their role as mothers.
The Advocacy Program helps mothers to maintain vital communication regarding issues that may impact her children. Mothers have regular opportunities to reach out to their children, family members, guardians, teachers, social workers, counselors, and doctors.
For more information:
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Jane Silfen, 914-241-3100 ext. 4050.
Taconic Correctional Facility, Karen Graff, 914-241-2019 ext. 5603.
Hour Children runs visiting programs several times a year at the Bedford Hills and Taconic Correctional Facilities. We provide transportation for unaccompanied children from across the state—and sometimes beyond—to Bedford Hills so they can visit with their mothers for an extended period of time. We pick the children up at their homes, and while in Bedford, they stay with local host families. The families bring the children to the facility each morning and return to pick them up when visiting hours are over. Host families are the glue that holds this program together, year after year. Host families are needed during the summer and also during long weekends and school breaks. To learn more, please email Deb Rigano.
On November 21, 2019, Hour Children staff and volunteers served a Thanksgiving meal to the women incarcerated at Taconic Correctional Facility, in addition to staff at the facility. We served 460 hot meals, which included all of the traditional Thanksgiving fixings. We are grateful for the support of the facility’s administration and to the donors who made this celebration possible.
These services could not run without our volunteers.
Hour Children believes that a woman can be an effective and loving parent from prison. We also believe in a child’s right to receive love and attention from his or her incarcerated mother, and a family’s right to prepare for their mother’s release and potential reunification with her family.
We couldn’t do it without your support.