Catholic Health World

Fatherless young men learn what it takes to be responsible dads

Sisters of Charity program aims to break cycle of poverty

The young men gather in a classroom near an old Navy shipyard in North Charleston, S.C. Some of them have been in trouble with the law. Almost all of them grew up without their fathers. Many don't have jobs.

All of them are fathers themselves, but fatherhood hasn't been a blissful state. Almost all of them are single, and most don't see their children enough — or at all — and have rocky relationships with the mothers. About 40 percent of the men face the threat of jail for failing to pay child support, and many of the rest are falling behind on payments.

What brings them together is the South Carolina Center for Fathers and Families, a program that teaches men the skills to be better fathers. The Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina got the program going in 1998 and remains its biggest single source of financial and organizational support. Each year, about 1,500 men enroll in its fatherhood program at 11 locations throughout the state. The course teaches skills including, but not limited to, parenting.

The setting in North Charleston is called the Father to Father Project, one of seven independent agencies that conduct the local training programs through contracts with the South Carolina Center for Fathers and Families. Father to Father does its work in a former law office. To graduate, the participants attend weekly two-hour classes for 24 weeks. Staff members and guest speakers help the young men work on finding jobs, obtaining general equivalency diplomas and learning the basic skills and responsibilities of parenthood.

Gift of time
William Jenkins, director of Father to Father, grew up without his own father. He and his wife raised their two sons in North Charleston. He knows that history doesn't have to repeat itself. The first step, he said, is to give young men hope.

"These are guys who have been beaten up all their lives — by the system, their families and their friends," Jenkins said. "We encourage them to feed off each other, to share their experiences. When they first come here, they feel like the whole world is on their shoulders. After listening to the other guys, they don't feel so bad."

Jenkins said many of the men consider themselves failures because they can't afford the computer games and other gadgets that TV advertising associates with happy dads and kids. He teaches that the best gift the men can give their children is their time.

"What you see portrayed on TV is foreign to these guys," he said. "We tell them (parenting) isn't about buying things; it's about playing football with your kid, taking them to the park. Time is what counts."

Staying power
Father to Father, which graduated its first class in 1999, is the longest running of the local programs. Throughout the state, 7,438 men were served in the seven years from 2003 through 2009. They are fathers to almost 14,000 of South Carolina's children.

Pat Littlejohn directs the Center for Fathers and Families and is assistant executive director of the foundation. She said the Sisters of Charity chose this work to try to reduce one of the daunting issues of poverty in America — the legacy of poverty that is rooted in an upbringing in an impoverished single parent home. Fatherless boys may grow up to become fathers in name only to their own children. Fatherless girls suffer from the lack of father's involvement too, Littlejohn said.

"The sisters wanted to get at some of the root causes of poverty, and surely one of the big ones is absent fathers," said Littlejohn. "Surveys of juvenile centers show that 80 percent or more of the children there are from broken homes. Our society has strong stereotypes about deadbeat dads. But often these are men who desperately love their children. They want to do right, but nothing they try has worked out."

The Sisters of Charity Foundation, which is affiliated with Cleveland's Sisters of Charity Health System, has spent more than $16 million launching and maintaining the fatherhood initiative, its single largest undertaking since the foundation's creation in 1995. It still provides about one-third of the initiative's operating budget of $2.5 million. Other funding sources include state and federal social-service agencies, the Duke Endowment and the South Carolina Bar Foundation.

The Sisters of Charity Foundation compiled the curriculum used by all the centers. It closely monitors attendance and other reports from the service providers. The providers meet quarterly to help ensure that training efforts are uniform.

The fatherhood program is taught at 11 training centers located throughout the state in strip malls, converted houses and church annexes. The main requirement for locations is that they must be close to the men who need them.

The Center for Fathers and Families works closely with local court systems and advocates for changes in state law and policies. For example, it got the state to raise the minimum amount a non-custodial parent can keep in his or her paycheck before deducting child support. About 40 percent of the men who enroll in its program were ordered by judges to take the classes or go to jail for failure to pay child support.

Littlejohn said 80 percent of those men graduate and keep up on their payments. She said many report better relationships with their children.

Word on the street
One of the early challenges was letting people know the program was available. Court referrals are easy to get, but the program wanted to reach men who hadn't yet gone before a judge.

"You don't run an ad or put up a billboard. These are men who don't trust the system," Littlejohn said. "We had to do active street recruitment, get the word of mouth going."

Jenkins could do that in North Charleston because he was minister of music and an outreach volunteer at St. Peter's African Methodist Episcopal Church, which provided the fatherhood initiative its first meeting space. Jenkins joined Father to Father when it was created 11 years ago. Father to Father's office is only a block away from the church.

Littlejohn said most of the 47 staff members at the local agencies are black men, as are an overwhelming percentage of participants. "These guys need teachers they can trust and relate to," she said. "The staffs don't just run training sessions. They are coaches and mentors for these young men."

Starting blocks
One of the first things the agencies try to do is find jobs for the participants. That allows the men to resume making child-support payments. With the court system at bay, participants can concentrate on learning how to be better fathers.

Because many of the participants don't have medical insurance, the Center for Fathers and Families hired a nurse practitioner who travels the state offering health screenings. Providence Hospitals of Columbia, S.C., part of Sisters of Charity Health System, also offers health care to participants.

The program is having an impact on the lives of the men and their children. Littlejohn offered these statistics from 2003 through 2009: More than 40 percent of the men have spent more time with their children. Nearly 20 percent reported having better relationships with the mothers of their children. And of the men who were unemployed, almost two-thirds found jobs.

In December, Father to Father graduated 10 men in one of its programs. The ceremony included a speaker, entertainment and testimonials from some of the new and former graduates.

"For those 10 men, we probably had about 100 family and friends at the graduation," Jenkins said. "There were a lot of little kids running around."

Copyright © 2010 by the Catholic Health Association of the United States
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