Winning Fathers Program at the Pre Release Center

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2010

The Winning Father’s Program, a collaboration between the Montgomery County Child Welfare Division of Child Welfare Services and the Montgomery County Department of Correction and Rehabilitation, Pre-Release and Reentry Services Division. The Winning Fathers Program partnership uses the skills and expertise of the Division of Child Welfare and Montgomery County’s Pre-Release Center to provide parenting skills development, healthy relationship education and counseling, mentoring and support services to clients of the Pre-Release Center who are fathers. A key component in the Winning Fathers Program is the involvement of the partner/spouse of the incarcerated client in the program’s activities. The primary goal of this collaboration is to improve the parenting and relationship skills of clients reentering the lives of their children and families after incarceration. This is achieved through multiple activities including healthy relationship education, parenting education, counseling, mentoring and support services. The parenting component includes the development of a parenting plan and a skill-based parenting class. The healthy relationship component includes outreach to participants’ partners for joint participation in a healthy relationship class. Participant partners are encouraged through outreach, education, support with transportation and incentives for participations. The outcomes of the program are clients’ improved parenting and relationship skill development upon reentry to their families, greater understanding of the impact of their incarceration on their children and significant other and collaboration with the client’s identified support system to facilitate reentry planning.