Transcript for Episode 100: Empowering Men To Be Better Fathers

NASW Social Work Talks podcast

Announcer:
This episode is sponsored by Connect to End COVID-19.

Greg Wright:
Welcome to Social Work Talks. My name is Greg Wright, and on this episode, we're going to have a conversation about social work and fatherhood, and how social workers can support fathers. Our guest today is Dr. Charles Daniels, co-founder and CEO of Fathers' Uplift in Massachusetts. Welcome to Social Work Talks, Dr. Daniels. How are you?

Charles Daniels:
I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to the conversation.

Greg Wright:
Yep. Absolutely. So, how did you get interested in fatherhood and the role of social workers in helping fathers in the first place?

Charles Daniels:
Well, I grew up without my father, so I experienced a lot of the issues that children that do not have fathers in the household experience, from substance use to challenges with mental health and substance use. That was me. So, you know, when I got to school, seminary school and social work, had an opportunity to go fellowship. And then, when I did my fellowship, I met these groups of dad who were absent from their kids' lives. And they taught me all about what it is that fathers feel who are absent from their kids' lives.
So, what I thought I knew about fathers, I didn't know what was going on. And what I thought I knew was that fathers that didn't love their kids when they were absent, but when these dads talk, it's just fathers that love their children despite being absent. And there are challenges that prevent them from being in their kids' lives. So, that's the origin of why I'm doing work.

Greg Wright:
Yeah. So, could you tell me a bit more about the group that you met with? Were these social work professors, were they your friends? Who were these fathers that you met?

Charles Daniels:
Yeah. So, I had a fellowship, $3,000 fellowship, to do a community project, and I chose fathers. So, these dads were dads at a sober home, at the Dimock Community Health Center, and all of them were absent currently because of substance use and poverty, but also, there was a lot of shame there. They didn't know how to pick up the phone after not seeing their kids for a couple years, right?
So, that's a challenge that ... Picking up the phone is a huge challenge, but when you think about how light a phone is, you don't think how hard it is to actually pick it up. If you haven't seen your kids in a long time, it's extremely difficult. So, those are the dads that taught me all about fatherhood.

Greg Wright:
Yeah. So, in our society, motherhood is played up more. Mother's Day is, I think, a bigger holiday than Father's Day is. Look, I'm a father. On Mother's Day, take them out to eat, gifts. I might get a pair of socks if I'm lucky. So, does our society kind of downplay the role of fathers? And also, how important are fathers in a child's development?

Charles Daniels:
Absolutely. I would say, yes, society has downplayed the role of fathers, especially fathers of color. You know, I think when we look at the history of slavery, we also look at the history of parents been separated from their kids, I mean, there's a lot of trauma there, right? So, when you think about the media and the role that it plays in fathers being absent from their kids' lives, that's a huge role.
I can say that society is becoming a little bit more compassionate over the years, more compassionate than they ever were. I do see progress in that regard. Nonetheless, we still have a lot of work to do when you look at child support policies. We still have a lot of work when we look at the child welfare department and how they treat, mistreat, Black and Brown fathers at alarming rates.
When it comes to why fathers are important, we see it in the research. Fathers contribute to the positive educational outcomes of their children. We also see that when the father is involved, the child is less likely to have behavioral issues, engage in substance use, mental health-related issues. A father's presence is transformative, not just for the child, but generationally transformative. And that's what we see in the research.

Greg Wright:
Yeah. So, if we look at our child welfare system and how it treats men and also men who are Black or Brown, what are the inequities that you have seen there?

Charles Daniels:
Oh, my God. It's so much. It's so much. I think the child welfare system is deeply embedded in that traditional masculine way of looking and viewing fathers. And there's already this perception of what a man should be doing. Just like with child support, there's already a perception of what a man should be doing. He should be paying his child support bill. Or he should have his house, he should be doing this, this, and that, to have access to his children in the child welfare department.

But those unrealistic expectations are not reachable for a lot of fathers who lack adequate resources, opportunities, and things of that nature. It seems like you're being set up to fail when you don't necessarily have those opportunities or even know how to navigate challenges associated with fatherhood.
So, yes. I think there's still that archaic way of viewing men which really challenges them with being able to be in their kids' lives.

Greg Wright:
Yeah. So, in other words, the system is focused more on a materialistic end of fatherhood and not the emotional support that a father may provide.

Charles Daniels:
Absolutely. And I think that's, overall, one issue that we're seeing in society as it relates to fathers. Emotion is secondary to what it is you can provide and do for the person. And fathers learn that when they become fathers for the first time. Some common things that you hear from family members, from relatives, "Hey, you need to take care of the child and the parent that's baring the child." Right? Everything else is secondary. Work, get that money, and make sure your children are taken care of. But what about you? You don't really get much information about what you need to do for yourself.

Greg Wright:
Yeah. So, you have an organization that's called Fathers' Uplift. I want you to talk to us about what was the idea for creating that, and how many folks are you serving now?

Charles Daniels:
Yeah. I just came from me and my wife, who is a co-founder and an accomplished social worker herself at Fathers' Uplift. She had her father. Her father made her feel as if she was a princess while she was in Haiti and her father was in Florida, and she was inspired by the fact that fathers could be engaged in their kids' lives even though they're a thousand miles away. So, she takes her experience of having positive father in her life and she brings it to her work. On the flip side, I didn't have my dad. Really navigate a lot of challenges that children experience where you don't have your father is a [inaudible], and children's experience that do not have their fathers.

So, we came together to really figure out, how a we support dads who are struggling to be the fathers they've always dreamed of being? We both say that no father dreams of being a dead-beat when he's a kid. And that's true. "I'm going to grow up and be a dead-beat to my children and not be present," no father looks at their child for the first time and thinks that.

Announcer:
Announcer: Engage in NASW's National Connect to End Covid-19 campaign today. It's a CDC-funded initiative to support social workers and their clients in informed vaccine decision making. NASW and The NASW Foundation are partnering with the University of Texas at Austin, Steve Hicks School of Social Work to provide national webinars, chapter trainings, tools and information that promote vaccine confidence among social workers, and equip them to support clients in informed vaccine decision making. Visit NASW's website to learn more and join the campaign.

Greg Wright:
Yeah. So, what kind of services are offered there, and is your staff all social workers, or are there other professions mixed in? What is your team looking like, in other words?

Charles Daniels:
Yeah. So, we serve over a thousand men and families direct services. That doesn't include what we do externally through other avenues. Training social workers for unengaged fathers, that number has amplified dramatically. Since our existence, we've served over 12,000 men and families with various functions.
In terms of the breakdown of our group of people that work for us, they're social workers, but they're also peer-to-peer. There are peer service workers as well. We have a lot of fathers that graduate our program and they end up becoming a team member, supporting fathers that are experiencing similar challenges as they experienced. So...

Greg Wright:
Yeah. So...

Charles Daniels:
Oh, I'm sorry.

Greg Wright:
Oh, no, no, no. I'm sorry. Are your services only in the Massachusetts area, or are you also extending those trainings out nationally?

Charles Daniels:
Absolutely. So, currently, the clinic directly, we're providing there to fathers of many families in Massachusetts, but we do have a national drop-in group of father nationally where it occurs every Tuesday at 4:00 via Zoom and fathers everywhere could come and join in and get support that they need. We also have a national fund for fathers supporting them with any issues that they may have, be it child welfare, court case, and fathers regardless of their location could take advantage of that fund. So, we have different services that are geared towards fathers locally and nationally.

And kicking off in the fall, we have a therapist recruitment fellowship that we're starting that will be available to students nationally who are in graduate school, preparing them to be future therapists in the field, serving men and families. So, we're doing that too.

Greg Wright:
Yeah. So, I was wondering if you could give me a scenario of your typical client. And I know that everyone's different, everyone has a different story, a different background. But tell me about a case of a person, a father, who walked in. What were the issues that that person faced, and how did your organization help them?

Charles Daniels:
Yeah. So, I'll give you one dramatic issue. Very dramatic, also very painful for this father. So, he adopted this child. He's an adoptive father. Adopted his child, he was his child. Someone called and made a false allegation against him that wasn't true. He ended up having to go to court, he ended up having to wear ankle monitor. Also, he ended up on the verge of losing his job over these false allegations. He also lost his child, who ended up in foster care due to these allegations.
So, when we think about the challenge, that was the challenge. "There was a false allegation against me. I lost the child that I love, who's mine, that I raised, and I want him back." Right? So, much of how we supported him was through advocacy, but also through therapy. Validating him, but also supporting him with navigating these challenges and getting the court to overturn the case, which eventually occurred. They overturned the case. They realized that these were false allegations, and now he's with his son again, who was taken away from him because of these false allegations.
And you know who was involved? Child welfare and the legal system. So, the proper navigating that was what we were able to do. And a lot of our constituents have child welfare involvement and they have histories of incarcerations and trauma. And most likely, they're Black men. So, that's [inaudible] population. Yeah.

Greg Wright:
Yeah. So, if a father is incarcerated, does your organization help them maintain a tie in any way?

Charles Daniels:
Absolutely.

Greg Wright:
With their children?

Charles Daniels:
Yeah, but here's the thing, maternal gatekeeping is real big in our community. If you have a man going in and out of prison and jail, there's a lot of distrust, and the majority of the work is geared towards getting the family to let down that guard so we can maintain those relationships. But that part takes a lot of time before we even get to the piece with fathers being engaged in their kids' lives.

Greg Wright:
Yeah. So, if you look at the makeup of the social work profession, it's about 70% female. And I was wondering, how can you advise a female social worker to be more sensitive to an issue that a father is facing? Because I mean, we all have our biases, and a lot of times they're an unconscious bias, so you might act toward a person in a way without even thinking of it. I know that our association, we really do a lot of training on the issue of cultural competency. But how can you use that to help Black and Brown fathers, though?

Charles Daniels:
I think the core of that is to really start off with their relationship with their father and the men in their life. Typically, the nature of that relationship will play off in their work in the field. So, that's where we start. We really rap and have to grapple with that. What is my expectation of men in my life, and also, what is the trauma that I experienced from men in my life, if present? And that's a piece that they have to spend a lot of time on before they actually do the real work.

Greg Wright:
Yeah. Got you. Well, look. I want to thank you for being our guest, and as a final question: As far as how our society treats fathers, if you could have a wish of how things should be in, like, 15 years or 20 years even, where do you want us to be then?

Charles Daniels:
Yeah. I really want fathers to have the opportunity to define and typify where they want to be, and for a lot of these systems to be okay with that definition of what the father want to be. I think that's the hard part, getting the system to be okay with that, and meeting them where they are. There's the hard piece. And I hope that that's no longer an issue in 15-20 years. Yeah.

Greg Wright:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. This is Dr. Charles Daniels. He is the co-founder and CEO of Fathers' Uplift in Massachusetts. Thank you for being our guest on Social Work Talks, Doctor.

Charles Daniels:
Thank you. I appreciate it.

Announcer:
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