Our Mission

Redeeming the Family’s mission is to support children of incarcerated parents by providing the Oklahoma Messages Project to them and their parents to reconnect or maintain their relationships.

We are a group of people who care deeply about the fact that mothers’ time in prison is devastating their children’s lives. Since Oklahoma incarcerates more women per capita than any state in the nation, over 26,000 children are the hidden, innocent victims. As Alice Blue, with the Community Service Council of Tulsa said recently, “the children committed no crime but the penalty they are required to pay is steep.” (Daily Oklahoman, September 8, 2010.) These children suffer from multiple problems including trauma, school and behavior problems, health problems, and experience low self-esteem and shame.

At Redeeming the Family, we provide solutions to provide support to these children, help reconnect the relationship between parent and child, teach positive parenting skills, and help reestablish the bond.

The first project of Redeeming the Family was the course, “Parenting Beyond Bars,” created and taught by Cheri Fuller and volunteers at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center beginning in 2008.

Although the programs began in 2008, Redeeming the Family was incorporated as a non-profit organization by the State of Oklahoma in July, 2010.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty. - Mother Teresa