Resilience of Prisoners' Children-Teachers' Voices

With school-going adolescents spending most of their wakeful hours in school, the teachers are the ones who have the best opportunity to pay attention to their day-to-day activities and recognize their problems. Teachers help in building resilience among children who are at risk for psychosocial development like the children of incarcerated parents. Resilience is influenced by factors at various levels, namely, individual, family, school, and community. The present study tries to understand the factors contributing to the resilience of the prisoner's children as perceived by their teachers. Semi-structured interviews with 12 teachers who teach prisoners' children were conducted. Thematic analysis was carried out to analyze the data. Risk and protective factors exist at individual, school, and community levels. The study's findings revealed that protective factors buffer the effect of risk factors that may affect the healthy psychosocial development of the prisoners' children. Lack of protective factors at the family level was identified through the interview. Although many risk factors and protective factors were influencing psychosocial development, the presence of emotional problems in children, neglect of these children at family and community level, and social support at school and community were noticed. The findings from the present study can inform policies to support prisoner's children and direct interventions for these children.