TPC Journal-Vol 10- Issue 3-FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 3 323 training experience specific to families of the incarcerated. Finally, one (3.3%) participant described the topics being integrated into their doctoral program that was combined with rehabilitation counseling. Discussion The purpose of this research was for counselor educators to articulate whether topics relevant to mass incarceration and the effect on families were addressed in their classrooms, and if so, how they were addressed. Because no similar research has been reported, this study was singular in seeking to investigate how or if counseling faculty prepare their students to work with families affected by incarceration. This study did not aim to produce generalizations that apply beyond the research sample. Nevertheless, it is essential to compare what was discovered in this study with what is documented in the literature. This study found that the majority of counselor educators were not covering mass incarceration or families of the incarcerated in their coursework, nor had they received training to do so. The findings of this study also provide the beginnings of a blueprint for what counseling programs and faculty can do to prepare students to work with children and families affected by incarceration. For this study, comparing our findings with a body of literature is difficult because such literature does not exist, excepting the study by Wachter Morris and Barrio Minton (2012). Wachter Morris and Barrio Minton reported that 57.51% of professional counselors reported having minimal to no training in working with individual or family-level trauma and crisis preparation. Although Wachter Morris and Barrio Minton’s research did not target families of the incarcerated, this population does fall under the umbrella of individual and family trauma. Like that study, the present study demonstrated that a majority of counseling students are likely not receiving intentional, purposeful training on working with the trauma associated with incarceration. Although close to 30% of our participants did include mass incarceration and families of the incarcerated in their courses, the majority of how the topics were addressed was based on whether it arose out of discussion of broader multicultural topics. It also is reasonable to conclude that because a counseling literature search focused on training students to work with children of incarcerated parents only resulted in one webinar (Brown, 2016), a large majority of professional counselors are not adequately prepared to work with this population. The findings of the present study may generate discussion of future recommendations and directions that counselor educators and supervisors may explore and implement. The majority of faculty in this research were not trained in the topics of mass incarceration and counseling children and families of the incarcerated, and unsurprisingly the majority did not include any training for their students. As with any topic under the umbrella of multiculturalism, counseling faculty should incorporate mass incarceration and working with children of incarcerated parents when addressing implicit bias with students (Boysen, 2010). In light of the massive numbers impacted by mass incarceration, we recommend this topic be included as required content in counselor education training. One way to ensure its inclusion would be to include persons who are incarcerated and their families in accreditation standards. At a minimum, the topic should be included in textbooks and used in case examples throughout training programs. Counselor educators should highlight the stigma and spoiled identity that children of incarcerated parents experience and describe stigma management techniques (Luther, 2016) counselors can teach when working with these children. In addition to exposing students to data on mass incarceration and discussions of implicit bias (e.g., Alexander, 2012; Kaeble & Cowhig, 2018; Phillips & Gates, 2011), specific treatment modalities and protocols need to be developed and validated that fulfill the education and