The COPING Project

The COPING Project is child-centered research that aims to investigate the characteristics of children with imprisoned parents, their resilience, and their vulnerability to mental health problems. This research has been conducted over a period of three years, involving four European countries, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, and Romania. This research is intended to reflect the various aspects and procedures associated with incarceration in these countries and how they affect the children of imprisoned parents.
Background
The Children of Prisoners, Interventions and Mitigations to Strengthen Mental Health (COPING) project began on January 2010. Over the period of three years, 700 children between the ages of seven and seventeen and 600 parents or care givers have been involved in this study. The research has been conducted primarily through the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale to survey the target group. Although these studies are conducted in only four countries, they are expected to produced results that will have implications throughout the European Union in regard to children who have imprisoned parents.
MyCOPING
Launched in April 2012, MyCOPING is an online forum designed by the COPING project that aims to create a dialogue with children of imprisoned parents. There are two objectives for this forum. The first is to create a medium to collect more data for the project, by using the responses to forum. Secondly, children are encouraged to participate in it because it allows them to anonymously voice their opinions and thoughts about different situations they face due to their parent's imprisonment. More importantly, it gives them a chance to interact with other children who have the same circumstances.
 
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