BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The Birmingham Fatherhood Initiative, an outreach program of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Treatment Alternatives for Safer Communities (TASC), has received a new grant to continue operations in 2010. The $68,000 grant from the Alabama Department of Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention, also known as the Children's Trust Fund, continues the initiative's efforts to increase non-custodial fathers involvement with their children.

Begun in 2002, the Birmingham Fatherhood Initiative provides non-custodial fathers in the Birmingham and Bessemer communities with parenting education and provides services such as employment assistance, job development and continuing education. It works to involve fathers in their children's lives and increase payment and collection of child support.  This past year the initiative served 978 participants.

Studies show that children involved with their fathers are more confident, more likely to have high self-esteem and better able to gain a sense of independence. Youth raised without the presence of a father are at increased risk for poverty, drug and alcohol involvement, academic failure and emotional problems. Up to 70 percent of long-term prison inmates and up to 72 percent of adolescents charged with murder grew up in fatherless homes.

The Children's Trust Fund award will support the hiring of group facilitators to lead fatherhood groups within community agencies and faith-based organizations and offer more intensive courtroom services for fathers who are delinquent paying child support.

Community partners include Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, New Vision Ministries, Alabama Pardons and Parole, Shepherd's Fold, New Creation Ministries, Popper's House, Beacon Addiction Treatment Center, Aletheia House and New Beginnings Christian. 

Key stakeholders include Presiding Circuit Judge Brian Huff, Family Court of Jefferson County; District Judge Jill Ganus, Family Court of Jefferson County, Bessemer Division; Senior Trial Court Referee John Halcomb, Family Court of Jefferson County, Bessemer Division; Senior Trial Court Referee C.H. Brantley, Family Court of Jefferson County; Circuit Judge R.A. Sonny Ferguson, Jefferson County Domestic Relations Court; District Judge Elise Barclay, Family Court of Jefferson County, Birmingham Division; and the Jefferson County Department of Human Resources.

About UAB TASC

The University of Alabama at Birmingham TASC program is the only university-sponsored TASC program in the country and one of only two programs with partnerships in both substance-abuse treatment and community corrections. UAB TASC serves a variety of adult and juvenile populations in all phases of the criminal justice system.