Countywide : Children of Inmates Get a Party

It looked like a typical charity Christmas party. About 400 children took turns sitting on Santa’s knee, and they opened gifts, sang carols and ran happily through the large hall.

The difference was that the guests had a special reason for being invited: One or both of their parents would be spending the holidays in prison.

“A lot of them have fathers serving life sentences. They’re never coming out,” said Sandi Burns, program director for Orange County’s chapter of Friends Outside.

“So many times the kids are the real victims.”

Though the Christmas party, which took place this year at Orange Senior Center, is the biggest event of the year for Friends Outside, the statewide group provides a number of other services for children whose parents are doing time.

Its staff and volunteers arrange communications between incarcerated parents and their children, and take on such everyday jobs as making sure the kids have proper clothing.

The organization, started in 1978, is growing exponentially, Burns said.

When she took over just three years ago, Friends Outside served about 150 people. Now, using donations and state grants, it is offering help and support to 15,000.

Some of its volunteers bring a special perspective to their mission. They are ex-convicts. One man, who asked that his name not be used, recalled that the holidays were the most painful time of the year for him and his son.

The man described the frustration of trying to parent by mail and the awkwardness of rare visiting days.

“The children understand what’s going on, even at a young age,” his wife said.

Her son was there when his father was arrested, she said, “and he can tell you details. . . . The hardest part was the way other parents would react to him after he told them his daddy was in jail.”

For such families, Friends Outside offers a number of support groups for children and siblings of inmates, and also finds rehabilitation programs for those being released from prison. One of the aims is to keep youths from being drawn into crime, as their parents were.

“To some of them, it’s like no big deal if they go to jail--their dads did it, too,” said Joe Stabile, 37, who runs a Friends Outside counseling group for current and former gang members.

In the confidential group sessions, teenagers are free to talk about their anger and grief at losing parents to prison and siblings and friends to street violence.

“I make it safe for them to open up and talk,” Stabile said. “A lot of them are third- and fourth-generation gangbangers. When they come into the group, they feel homeless. We offer them friendship, love and a place to go.”