Grantee Profile: Center for Urban Families

As often as four days a week, between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., you're likely to find a street outreach team from the Center for Urban Families walking through some of the roughest Baltimore neighborhoods. The men knock on doors, hang out on corners, and walk through the park and into barbershops to bring access to jobs and social services to community members who are unlikely to seek support on their own.

"We're working with the hardest people in the community," said Joe Jones, president of the center. "Most participants have serious barriers to entering and staying in the labor market," including many men with criminal records, a lack of education and job skills, and a history of drug addiction.

Jones relates to the realities and stories of the men his organization seeks to serve. He grew up without a father and struggled with drug addiction for more than a decade before turning his life around.

By positioning the Center for Urban Families at the intersection of direct service and public policy, Jones has emerged as a national leader advocating for policies that help noncustodial fathers take an active role in their children's lives. Through the center's Baltimore Responsible Fatherhood Program, men develop the skills to become good caregivers, providers, and partners. STRIVE-Baltimore, the center's job placement program, provides three weeks of employment training and up to two years of career services.

"If we can get dads to understand the long-term importance of a relationship with their children that respects education and self-worth, then we can reduce our dependence on other support systems, like child welfare and criminal justice," says James Worthy, director of the Baltimore Responsible Fatherhood Program.

With support from the Open Society Institute, the Center for Urban Families will be able to devote more resources to empowering black men to take a positive role in family and community by combining direct-service programming with policy advocacy activities that prioritize affected communities.

The Center for Urban Families is building a case for policy change. Through the research of the National Fatherhood Leaders Group, of which Jones is chair, and collaborative studies with Ronald Mincy and his affiliate, the Columbia University Center for Research on Fathers, Children and Family Well-Being, the organization is showing the return on investment for responsible fatherhood initiatives.

The fruits of such work are plainly evident for Jones and his colleagues. They see it on a daily basis, in the scores of lives that have been turned around. Dale Gholston, a career-retention specialist at the center, overcame a background of drug dealing and jail two years ago and came up through the center as a client. He is now providing for and spending time with his child. "When I was younger, if I really had someone to help me conduct myself as a man, I would've been a lot further along with my life," Gholston said.

Joe Jones works every day to make sure the next generation of fathers and their children has that "someone."