Office of Family Assistance
Promoting Responsible Fatherhood

Allowable Activity Areas: Healthy Marriage - Skill-based marriage education (#1); Enhancing relationship skills (#5); Counseling, mentoring, benefits to children (#6); Controlling aggressive behavior (#7); Responsible Parenting - Skills-based parenting (#1); Good parenting practices (#2); Counseling, mentoring and mediation (#3); Domestic Violence and child abuse (#4).

Organization Description: The mission of the New Jersey Department of Corrections is to ensure that all persons committed to the state correctional institutions are confined with the level of custody necessary to protect the public and that they are provided with the care, discipline, training, and treatment needed to prepare them for reintegration into the community. The Department of Corrections is organized into three separate divisions: Administration, Operations, and Programs & Community Services.

Use(s) of ACF Program Grant Funds: The program will be modeled after the La Bodega de la Familia program. Through family case managers, this project will make contact with participating offenders and his/her family prior to release and establish a treatment plan and goals for the individual. Components of this project include a link to licensed outpatient drug treatment opportunities, family counseling, strengthening marital relationships, parenting skills and domestic violence (batterers) education. The goals of the project are to: 1) Strengthen the marriage and family of the incarcerated individual in the custody of NJDOC; 2) Enhance the wellbeing of the children of incarcerated fathers by promoting responsible, nurturing fatherhood; 3) Motivate and prepare incarcerated fathers to maintain drug free and crime free lifestyles; and 4) Evaluate the program to determine its impact on offenders’ marriage, responsible fatherhood and improved family well-being.

Office of Family Assistance
Promoting Responsible Fatherhood

Allowable Activities: Healthy Marriage - skill-based marriage education (#1); marriage preparation programs (#2); relationship skill education (#5); and counseling, mentoring, and information about the benefits of marriage (#6). The responsible parenting components include: skill-based parenting education (#1); The economic stability components include: The economic stability components include: helping fathers improve their economic status (#1); and offering financial planning that encompasses household management, banking, and/or budgeting (#5).

Organizational Description: The Puerto Rican Family Institute, Inc. founded in 1960 is a not-for-profit organization located in New York. It is dedicated to enhance functioning and self-sufficiency of marginalized communities; prevent family disintegration; and provide culturally sensitive services including outpatient mental health treatment, foster care placement, and Head Start. PRFI is also committed to reducing the over-representation of Latino children in the child welfare system. Child and family focused activities include foster care placement prevention, marital services, as well as Head Start services that promote the involvement of fathers.

Use(s) of ACF Program Grant Funds: Program funds will be used to: adapt PREP Within Our Reach Curriculum for target population, particularly culturally and linguistically; conduct in-depth family strengths/stressors assessment of couples; conduct 28 core marriage education workshops annually with each series lasting six sessions; provide skill-based parenting skills to 160 fathers; provide anger workshops to 100 fathers; prepare 25 expectants non-married teens for the responsibilities of parenthood; and prepare 375 Latino adolescents with relationship skill education for healthy marriage/relationships

Office of Family Assistance
Promoting Responsible Fatherhood

Allowable Activity Areas: Healthy Marriage - Skill-based marriage education (#1); Enhancing relationship skills (#5); Counseling, mentoring, benefits to children (#6); Controlling aggressive behavior (#7); Responsible Parenting - Skills-based parenting (#1); Good parenting practices (#2); Counseling, mentoring and mediation (#3); Domestic Violence and child abuse (#4).

Organization Description: The Osborne Association is a nonprofit organization based in New York City which offers opportunities for individuals involved in the criminal justice system to transform their lives through innovative, effective, and replicable programs that reduce crime and economic costs. Osborne provides a broad range of treatment, educational, vocational and family services to nearly 5,000 people each year.

Use(s) of ACF Program Grant Funds: The objective of this project is to: a) promote healthy marriage, improve relationships and parenting skills at Sing Sing, Wallkill and Fishkill prisons; b) provide the Family Works Basic Parenting Course or Family Works Healthy Relationships Course serving 25 individuals each course and 150 individuals per year; c) produce a video-based Family Works Basic Parenting course & update and expand web-based and printed versions of Osborne’s “How Can I Help?”; d) provide an 8-hour Relationship and Marriage Education Course serving 12 couples per course and 216 individuals a year; and e) establish Children’s Centers to provide parenting skills training at each of the facilities, serving at least 100 adults and 100 children totaling 600 participants per year. To achieve these objectives, Osborne will: 1) establish a preparatory course for men (Healthy Relationships at Sing Sing and Parenting at Fishkill and Wallkill); 2) create a full-day in-prison Marriage Education Course for couples; and 3) offer skills-building exercises for incarcerated fathers, their partners and children at specially designed Children’s Visiting Centers at the facilities.

Office of Family Assistance
Promoting Responsible Fatherhood

Allowable Activity: Responsible Parenting - skill-based parenting education (#1); disseminating parenting practices information (#2); counseling, mentoring, and mediation (#3); disseminating information on the causes of domestic violence and child abuse (#4); and encouraging child support activities (#5).

Organization Description: Child Find has delivered an array of telephone-based services and interventions to prevent and resolve parental child abductions, denied visitations and other family/parental disputes for over 25 years. They now provide education, information and referral, advocacy, counseling and conflict resolution as prevention measures to child abduction. They are partnering with the NY State Division of Child Support Enforcement on this initiative.

Use(s) of ACF Program Grant Funds: The applicant will provide telephone-based counseling and mediation services to 780 estranged couples designed to resolve conflicts related to their parenting and to develop co-parenting agreements. The program will also provide brief interventions – information and referral, education materials on parenting and child development, advocacy with the court or law enforcement systems – for another 3100 callers. Parents will be self-referred, primarily from Child Support Enforcement Units. Staff will receive on-going training in mediation, domestic violence and other relevant areas.

Office of Family Assistance
Promoting Responsible Fatherhood

Allowable Activities: Responsible Parenting - skill-based parenting education (#1); and disseminating information on the causes of domestic violence and child abuse (#4). The economic stability components include: helping fathers improve their economic status by providing job readiness workshops (#1); and offering financial planning (#4).

Organizational Description: Family Services of Westchester, Inc. is a private not-for-profit agency that was established in 1954 to provide a broad range of social and mental health services to strengthen and support families and the communities in which they live and work. The organization has grown from one social worker to 450 professional and paraprofessional staff implementing more than 50 initiatives.

Use(s) of ACF Program Grant Funds: Funds will be used for teaching fathers parenting and relationship skills; removing obstacles that prevent stable, effective nurturing parenting; and providing financial literacy and employment readiness workshops. Curricula include the ABC Model and MoneySmart.

Office of Family Assistance
Promoting Responsible Fatherhood

Allowable Activity Areas: Economic Stability - Work services, job search and training, education (#1); Employment training initiatives (#2); Employment materials (#3); and Financial planning and household management (#4).

Organization Description: Founded 40 years ago, The Fortune Society is a New York City based non-profit organization with four sites, 200 employees and serving 4,000 men and women on-site annually. This organization has worked exclusively with the criminal justice population.

Use(s) of ACF Program Grant Funds: This project will provide a minimum of 120 criminal justice involved fathers and husbands with the following services designed to increase their economic stability: 1) job readiness training and preparation; 2) financial planning seminars; 3) connection to hard skills job training and other voc/d services; 4) subsidized work experience opportunities on-site; 5) job search assistance and job placement; and 6) job retention & advancement support for at least two years after obtaining employment. The Fortune Society will also offer other “in-kind” services to its target population. These services include: 1) parenting training; 2) individual and group counseling; 3) individual legal consultation with an in-house family law attorney for issues with child support and custody/visitation; 4) life-skills workshop, such as an eight week cooking class; and 5) other services specifically for the criminal justice population.

Office of Family Assistance
Promoting Responsible Fatherhood

Allowable Activity Area: Economic Stability - Work services, job search and training, education (#1); Employment training initiatives (#2); Employment materials (#3); and Financial planning and household management (#4).

Organization Description: The Osborne Association is a nonprofit organization based in New York City which offers opportunities for individuals involved in the criminal justice system to transform their lives through innovative, effective, and replicable programs that reduce crime and economic costs. Osborne provides a broad range of treatment, educational, vocational and family services to nearly 5,000 people each year.

Use(s) of ACF Program Grant Funds: The project will add needed financial and employment services to their already established FamilyWorks program. The project will strengthen the economic prospects and financial stability of 100 reentering and reintegrating fathers. All participants will receive a vocational assessment and, depending on results, will participate in one or more of the following: 1) job readiness training; 2) the employment-focused version of Framework for Breaking Barriers, a cognitive behavioral intervention that helps individuals adopt behaviors and attitudes needed to succeed in the workplace; 3) self-directed job search training; 4) referral to sister agencies for job placement; 5) direct placement into employment through Osborne’s job bank; and 6) referral to education or vocational training.

Office of Family Assistance
Promoting Responsible Fatherhood

Allowable Activities: Responsible Parenting-skill-based parenting (#1); good parenting practices (#2); domestic violence (#3); Economic Stability-financial planning and household management (#4); Healthy Marriage-enhancing relationship-skills (#5)

Organization Description: Youth at Risk’s (YAR) mission is to decrease the at-risk behavior of young people while enhancing the effectiveness of the adults who live and work with them. YAR serves New York City’s most vulnerable communities where the environment and family circumstances pose significant risks of failure in academics and social, emotional and/or physical development.

Use(s) of ACF Program Grant Funds: The primary focus of this project is Responsible Parenting by preparing teenage fathers to become materially responsible and emotionally engaged in their children’s lives. Elements of this project include: 1) community-based youth enrollment sessions; 2) volunteer-mentor recruitment, training and support; 3) in-depth participant interview and needs assessment; 4) two-day intensive residential retreat; 4) interview with child’s mother conducted by the Program Manager; 6) individual counseling; 7) group counseling; and 8) educational workshops in parenting, child development, communication skills as well as other enriching life skills workshops. The project will serve 80 to 85 adolescent fathers per year.