The Inmate Services Unit is excited to announce a new partnership with The Place4Grace, a non-profit organization founded in 2009, with the mission to restore families and advocate for children impacted by incarceration. The Place4Grace runs two family reunification programs in 16 adult institutions within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and is very enthusiastic about this collaboration with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which will expand the scope of the organization’s programs, as this will be the first partnership with a county jail.
The Place4Grace will be stepping in to bolster and expand the PACC (Parent and Child Connection) program, which has been successfully run by Inmate Services for over 15 years. PACC is a reading program designed to strengthen literacy and parent-child relations through positive communication. Research shows that children who are read to are at lower risk for poor language development and more prepared for classroom learning.
In this program, parents record their voice reading a specially selected children’s book, the book and recording are then mailed to the child(ren). The program offers a wide-ranging book selection with over 120 titles in English and Spanish for children between the ages of 0-5, ensuring a wonderful experience for the program participants and the children receiving the books. Each book will be mailed to the family member within 10 business days, and participants may take part in the program as often as they wish.
The program is funded through a grant from First 5 of San Bernardino to serve children ages 0-5 and will be conducted by The Place4Grace staff, its volunteers, and volunteers from the San Bernardino Public Defender’s Office. Despite Covid-19 restrictions, which have put a variety of constraints on programming, preventing the recording of program participants, nearly 70 individuals participated in the October launch of the modified program at the Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center. We are very excited about this partnership and its potential for growth in the future.