Winnipeg fathers improve family relationships with help of parenting group specifically for dads

Caring Dads is exactly what Phillip Mann needed in his life.

The program allows fathers to come together to heal and learn parenting skills, filling a gap in community resources geared towards men.

Mann, an ex-gang member who has since turned his life around, has struggled with homelessness, unemployment, alcohol addition and drug abuse.

“They were just accepting,” Mann said. “Understanding that we’re humans, we’re people. As a father, to find a program that is designed specifically for fathers, it’s really hopeful for the future.”

Mann says he grew up in a house where family members were impacted by the residential school system and intergenerational trauma.

“You understand that when you take the program, that everyone has trauma,” he said. “Everyone has some sort of issue that they need to deal with. For a program like the Caring Dads program, it was easy for me to step out of that negative past and to become a better person because it was all fathers talking together.

“All fathers who came together and said ‘hey, we want to become better dads’ for their kids.”

He says the program not only helped with his confidence, Acorn Family Place also helped his family with housing, which led to him finding a job as a cook – which he starts soon.

“It’s a part of breaking the cycle,” he said. “That’s what needs to be done, these cycles need to be broken. The intergenerational trauma needs to end with somebody. I would like to say, ‘hey, I was part of that intergenerational trauma ending.’”

It didn’t always look like Mann could break that cycle. He says he would start his day at 9 a.m. and go to the Liquor Mart or vendor, going another two times before he went to work, then immediately go back to the vendor again when he got off work.

Now Mann wakes up at 8 a.m., makes breakfast and packs lunch for his children and brings them to school, then picks them up after school and cares for them. He is currently co-parenting – with his ex-partner – his 10-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter.

The first Caring Dads program at Acorn Family Place began in August last year. The day before his first meeting, on Aug. 16, Mann took primary custody of his two children.

“Aug. 15, I was drunk,” said Mann. “Every day before that I was drunk or high on something. Pills or cocaine.”

“I wasn’t ready at that time and I saw Acorn Family Place as a stepping stone to help me in the right direction.”

—Caring Dads participant Phillip Mann

Mann says the program, which sees participants meet once a week for 17 weeks, has changed the lives of his entire family. Mann was part of that first installment of the program from August to December.

“I was really self-centred, parent-centred before I became a full-time father,” said Mann, who would like to get into more parenting programs. “Now that I am a full-time father, everything is child-centred. I look at what my kids need first. I look at what benefits them, what’s gonna help them in the long run and I focus solely on that.

“I understand now that I’m allowed to make mistakes. As long as I understand that and accept it and move on and find a way to better that, I’m doing great now. I’m going to continue to do great because I wake up in the morning, I see my kids smile, that’s really good. It’s food for the soul.”

Mann says his kids are now his life.

“Seeing their happiness is what makes me happy. I never looked at it that way before because I didn’t care enough to understand.

“They’re my everything right now. I’m on a path where I need to fix myself.”

Fathers historically left out of parenting programs

Caring Dads program facilitator Matthew Shorting says his goal is to keep families together – focusing on the fathers.

“They came in with lots of stress, lots of fear in their eyes and come out with a brighter look in their eyes,” Shorting said. “Happier and smiling and more in control of their environments.

“I’m a father of a 15-year-old. As I was raising her there were few support groups. I wish there was more because I did co-parent and I just wanted to keep indulging in information and there wasn’t as much available.”

Shorting describes Caring Dads as a “strength-based, trauma-informed, culturally-safe (program) to meet people where they’re at.”

“We recognize that fathers are doing the best they can with the resources available and what they picked up in their family environments, what their normal is,” he said.

“I don’t judge. I’ll accept you where you’re at. We want to walk with you. We honour your story. Come on down.”

Shorting believes historically there have been many programs for mothers and caregivers, but the fathers are left out.

“If they’re involved with the justice system they’re kind of just deemed (and) labelled a criminal and they’re kept out of the family dynamics,” he said. “They don’t have a chance to come back. A space like this is to help them become a better person.”

Acord Family Place executive director Emma Fineblit said they wanted to create an environment where fathers could feel safe and have a sense of belonging.

“All of our programs have always been open to families and caregivers of all genders, but the majority of participants historically have been women and mothers who have participated in our programs,” Fineblit said.

“That’s something that we’ve heard a lot in community, that that’s a gap and that people are looking for that.

“We recognize that men maybe historically haven’t been seen in that primary-caregiver role in all families. We really think that it benefits everyone – the women and the children in their lives – to empower fathers to be active, responsible, informed and equipped fathers and play a critical role in their children’s lives.”

Shorting says the results speak for themselves.

“It was incredible,” he said. “We had fathers who gained more access to their children, who got their very first apartment.”

The program changed the life of Tommy Durand, a full-time musician and part-time carpet cleaner, who has struggled with substance abuse issues.

Durand, a father of five, says Caring Dads helped him realize the impact of his actions and words.

“We’ve kind of been left in the dust over time, left to the devices of being told that we’re just men and we need to man up. Which is a very toxic phrase for men,” said Durand, whose kids range in age from four to 24.

“I was very much in shock that I was using some of the stuff thinking I was just being joking and…. this is on a list of stuff that’s abusive if it’s used all the time. I’m like, I was just using this stuff thinking I was joking. I didn’t realize I was doing this damage and that realization was really a big one.”

Learning to engage with his kids

Durand says he’s changed some personal habits and is “better for it.” He also says he’s more involved in engaging with his children and has gotten into more contact with his eldest son.

“(My kids would) come, they’d tell me stuff and I would be, ‘That’s good. Can we talk about it later?’ And forget about the subject altogether. Now we actually talk about it.

“They come home from school and they want to tell daddy about their day right away. They want to be like, ‘daddy I did this at school today.’ They know daddy’s going to sit there and listen intently, no matter what it is they’re talking about or what happened at school that day… daddy will listen to them.”

Part of that comes from gaining “more tools added to the toolbox of parenting.”

“Things I didn’t even think about and validations for things that I had been doing right all these years that I may have been being told that I wasn’t doing right,” Durand said.

“Vocal encouragement was a big one. I didn’t get a lot of vocal encouragement. I got the occasional, ‘good job, buddy.’ That was it. There was never a big celebration if I did good with grades or anything like that.”

Durand says the impact is also obvious in his interactions with his ex-partner.

“We’re able to sit and have a conversation over coffee and the kids can just play around us while we’re doing that, instead of arguing or complete silence,” he said.

He says the program got better and more intense as each week went by, and a big part of it was speaking to and learning from other fathers.

“Being here at the centre, talking to different parents and that, I was coming across a few things that I discovered that, maybe I should be working on a little bit better. More attention, more playtime. And actually be really involved in the playtime instead of just, yeah, you’re playing. Cool, I see you’re playing. Now it’s more involved play.”

Caring Dads at Acorn Family Place – formerly known as Wolseley Family Place – is starting a new round of programming starting Jan. 24. The group meets every Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. for 17 weeks.

Acorn family Place also offers drop-in services, child care, group programming and personal development workshops

“We’ve got childcare on site, we’ve got food, we offer bus tickets to try to reduce barriers to access,” Fineblit said, adding volunteers and donations are always welcome.