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. 2020 Mar:110:104804.
doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.104804. Epub 2020 Jan 27.

Parent and Provider Perspectives on Recently Incarcerated Youths' Access to Healthcare During Community Reentry

Elizabeth S Barnert  1 , Laura S Abrams  2 , Nathalie Lopez  1 , Ava Sun  1 , John Tran  1 , Bonnie Zima  3 , Paul J Chung  1   4
Affiliations

Parent and Provider Perspectives on Recently Incarcerated Youths' Access to Healthcare During Community Reentry

Elizabeth S Barnert et al. Child Youth Serv Rev. 2020 Mar.

Abstract

Incarcerated youth have numerous healthcare needs, yet access to healthcare following community reentry is limited. Healthcare and juvenile justice providers, along with parents, strongly influence access to care for youth undergoing reentry. However, their perspectives are often missing from the literature. We examined parent and provider perspectives on youths' access to healthcare during community reentry. We conducted 72 longitudinal interviews with parents of youth undergoing reentry (n= 34 parents) and cross-sectional interviews with health and juvenile justice providers (n=20 providers). We performed inductive analysis of interview transcripts to identify the major themes related to access to healthcare during reentry. Respondents identified key leverage points that influence access to healthcare along the spectrum of individual, community, and policy-level factors. Parent and provider perspectives demonstrated substantial overlap, strongly concurring on the essential role of parents in linking youth to care and the external factors that limit parents' ability to connect youth to care. However, providers discussed parents not buying-in to treatment plans as a barrier to care, and parents uniquely described feeling powerless when their children were not motivated to receive care. Parents and providers agreed on priority solutions for improving care access during reentry. Immediate solutions centered on: 1) increasing reliability and continuity of providers, 2) providing free or low-cost transportation to healthcare visits, and 3) eliminating gaps in Medicaid coverage post-incarceration. Findings also signal the broader need to pursue strategies that increase family engagement in healthcare during reentry. In doing so, health and juvenile justice providers can partner with parents to overcome barriers to healthcare for youth during reentry.

Keywords: aftercare; healthcare access; incarcerated youth; juvenile justice; reentry.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. Declaration of interests The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. WE DECLARE THAT WE HAVE NO COMPETING INTERESTS.

Figures

Figure 1:
Figure 1:
Leverage Points Operating as Facilitators or Barriers for Youths’ Access to Care During Community Reentry
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