Fatherhood Case Study

Organization: Telacu

URL: www.FuturoNow.org

Program Name: FuturoNow – Fatherhood Project

Funding: Responsible Fatherhood (OFA)

Curricula used: Love Notes

Curricula benefits:

• Highly engaging to their population of young ethnic dads
• Speaks to personal challenges they encounter in regards to relationships
• LN is very interactive
• Videos and music and activities to reinforce the concepts being taught
• Starts where this population currently is with their relationships and mistakes
• Program accepts where their population is
• Helps them rethink future relationships and get to a better place

Target Audience: Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and LA counties
Goal – 225 dads a yearActual – 300 dads a year

Audience Demographics:

Gender: Male 100%

Education Level:

• 41% have no high school diploma
• 50% have a high school diploma
• remainder have some advanced education

Income:

• 70% make less than $10k per year
• 13% between $10 and $20k
• 57% of participants are currently unemployed

Primary Ethnicity:

• 70% Hispanic
• 30% everyone else
• Many Spanish only speakers – 30% of classes are held in Spanish

Age:

• 20% 18-24
• 40% – 25-34
• 30% – 35-44
• 10% – 45-54

Relationship Status:

• 33% married
• 16% committed relationship
• 45% single never married
• remainder – divorced

Class size: Classes range in size from 10-20 students (sometimes up to 40)

Location of Instruction: Recovery facilities (prisoner re-entry populations who go to a rehab facility funded by MediCal).

Community based – at churches or community centers.

Recruitment through Head Start, other pre-schools and after school programs.

Length of Instruction:
Recovery classes:

• Day
• Twice a week
• 2 weeks

Community based classes:

• Evening
• Once a week
• 2 hour sessions
• 4 Sessions

Parenting education is the pillar of the program

Case manager recommends what further instruction they may need:

• 24/7 Dad
• Love Notes
• Money Smarts

Instructors: Direct service partners – community based non-profit organizations. Each partner has 2-3 trained facilitators. Facilitators are from the community with backgrounds similar to the dads. 50% of the facilitators were prior participants. It’s a way for some dads to continue their training. They get a small stipend for doing the training.

Instructor Training: Facilitators participate in an eight-hour Love Notes training. They are taken through the curriculum. They do a full mock session to see how the program is taught.They then break into groups and prepare to present lesson themselves. Instructors demonstrate five of the sessions. Trainees present the last three lessons. The facilitators also go through 8 hours of Domestic Violence and Child Maltreatment training. The facilitators are observed periodically. Every partner gets two site visits a year. Each facilitator has a yearly Domestic Violence and and Child Maltreatment training (4 hours) by the House of Ruth in Pomona.

Utilization of teacher and student materials: Each participant gets a Love Notes workbook. Workbook are kept on site until the class is completed. Then they get to take it home with them. Each participant gets a COLORS personality sorter. Each organization gets two instructor’s manual each year.

Recruitment Process: Well-known Direct Service Partners refer participants. Trusted messengers have credibility to find participants. Recovery programs in their communities reach out to participants in rehab. Other community-based organizations promote the program to fathers already using their services. Mandatory father orientation meeting at the first of the school year. They talk about the role of fathers and sign up dads who want to go deeper.

Incentives: Direct service providers are paid for each participant that completes the program. Recovery facility participants get a certificate to use in court. The certificate shows they are striving to become a better father and a better citizen. Participants in the community program receive gift cards for completion and other incentives. The community program finishes with a potluck family meal to show what they learned.

Outcomes: From their pre and post test surveys their participants report things such as: “I am more intentional about my relationship.”

Challenges:

• Keeping participants engaged with the 40 hours of fatherhood project instruction
• Helping the participants to complete the entire program

Tips:

• Provide 8 classes of relationship skills
• 5 supplemental classes to provide the information to the participants.
• Love Notes can be used to increase English literacy.
• Partners use Love Notes to get the dads engaged in the program prior to fatherhood instruction