P R O D U C E D B Y 7 D B R A N D S T U D I O — PA I D F O R B Y P O M E R L E A U R E A L E S TAT E
PHOTOS COURTESY OF LUND
Making Connections
How Lund supports Vermont’s families
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here are roughly 100 women currently housed at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington. Some of them might be staying a few hours; some, a few years. Every situation is different.
The one thing many of these women have in common: Roughly 75 to 80 percent of them are parenting minor children. Jess Kell offers them a helping hand; she coordinates the Kids-A-Part Parenting Program, a project of Burlington-based Lund. Kids-A-Part provides incarcerated moms with parenting support and resources, as well as assists families through a difficult and potentially damaging separation. Kell, a mother of three, helps other moms fill out paperwork; schedule meetings with relatives, teachers, and Department for Children and Families caseworkers; and prepare to talk with their children about why they’re in prison. She makes sure kids of incarcerated moms don’t fall through the cracks. “I once worked with a woman who was picked up on a warrant shortly after dropping her child off at the school,” she recalled. No one at the school knew that she wasn’t going to be there at pickup time. Kell was able to help the mother identify and communicate with someone who could care for her child. Kell has been working with the program since 2007; Kids-A-Part has been part of Lund since 2011. Prepandemic, Kell supervised visits between moms and their children in the homey Kids-A-Part space at the prison. Now those half-hour visits take place on Zoom.
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SEVEN DAYS SEPTEMBER 29-OCTOBER 6, 2021
The women sit in Kell’s office and talk with their kids through her laptop. Kell facilitated 10 such visits one Thursday in September. “It’s a very common thing for someone to say, ‘Well, if she wanted to see her children, maybe she shouldn’t have done X, Y and Z.’ But that line of thinking punishes the kids,” she said. Studies have shown that having an incarcerated parent puts kids at greater risk of negative health effects and that not having contact with the parent can inflict additional trauma, she added. “We can do better by these children.” Lund, Kids-A-Part’s parent organization, endeavors to do better by Vermont children — and families — in a variety of ways. Kids-A-Part is one of several programs the nonprofit organization funds and administers. Said president and CEO Tricia Coates: “At Lund, we work to strengthen Vermont families and empower them to break the cycles of poverty, addiction and abuse.”
FROM 1890 TO 2021 Lund was founded in 1890 as the Home for Friendless Women. It was a refuge for expectant moms, a place for them to give birth that also offered adoption services. In 1927, it was rechristened the Elizabeth Lund Home, in honor of one of its founders. That later
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