CBC: Being a mom ‘doesn’t go away’ for prison inmates, program shows: Stride Symposium:

You may not know it, but at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, you might see something out of place: children. The prison on Homer Watson Boulevard in Kitchener has been home to a handful of children under the age of five, who live with their mothers in detached buildings known as cottages.

Patrice Butts, the mother child coordinator at Grand Valley and a professor of social work at Conestoga College, said people tend to have one reaction when she tells them about the children in prison.

“People think ‘What? You’ve got babies in cell blocks?’ Well, of course not,” she said, adding that the children have their own rooms, and, frankly, have no idea they’re in a prison.

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