Reaching more families than ever before!

We are excited to announce that we have a new program, Today's Dads! As a component of Supporting Today's Parents, Today's Dads is designed to assist fathers in their quest to become responsible and nurturing parents by helping them develop parenting skills, and assisting them with issues such as unemployment, education, anger management and health care.

Rosalie Manor tires to be on the cutting edge of family services, and this program is no exception. In fact, Today's Dads is one of the few programs in the Milwaukee area, which focuses solely on fathers. While we have been providing services to the entire family, our primary focus has been on the mother. Now, with our two wonderful staff members, Malcom Martin and Darrell Smith, we are able to provide services that specifically deal with issues fathers face.

Most of the fathers in Today's Dads currently have children in the Supporting Today's Parents program. However, we also receive referrals from the consortium agencies we work with, and family resource centers. Amazingly, many of the fathers we serve request to be in the program.

As a violence prevention program, Today's Dads provides unique programming. As with our other programs, we provide home-based case management, but that's not all. Fathers have the opportunity to participate in a 10 week nurturing program, focus groups, job and apprenticeship referrals, and group support activities. One of the most innovative groups that will begin is "Men Who Play," a violence prevention basketball program. Malcom explains, "This program will be conducted three to four times each year, with ten teams, and 40 men per session. This is a two part program. The first 45 minutes will be a group that focuses on eliminating violence. This will be facilitated by professional staff, and will include topics on child abuse, domestic violence, and conflict resolution. The skills learned here will be taken back to the home. Then, everyone will participate in a basketball tournament."

There are many strengths to the Today's Dads program, but the most important is that our participants have a desire to become better dads and they want to participate. Being a voluntary program, no one is required to attend or continue with their home visiting services, but we have fathers who want to be involved. Darrell states, "we have men who are literally knocking on our office doors wanting to enroll in this program. We are finding that the men are willing and motivated to find and retain jobs. There is also a willingness to co-parent, even when the father is not living with the mother and child."

Susan Sikora, Consortium Manager of Supporting Today's Parents and an active member of the Milwaukee Fatherhood Collaborative states, "Today's Dads is such an important asset to our community. So many fathers are looking for assistance, and they don't know where to go or how to access it. Our program makes it a little easier."

In addition to providing home visiting, Rosalie Manor is helping to sponsor and develop a regional conference on fatherhood issues. Join us November 1 through November 3, 2001, and hear from featured national speakers and our own Today's Dads team who will facilitate a presentation.

For more information on the conference, call Susan at 414-449-4722 ext. 300.