Promises Of Life Presents Long Distance Dads

Long Distance Dads is now Inside Out Dad.
Download the new brochure here.

Program Overview

"Long Distance Dads™ Program of the National Fatherhood Initiative is a character-based education and support program that assists incarcerated men in developing skills to become more involved and supportive fathers. The curriculum consists of 12 modules each delivered in two to three hours. The program is designed to be facilitated by trained peer leaders in 12 weekly sessions in a small group format. The program can be delivered in a shorter time span, however, such as twice a week. This adaptability makes the program ideal for use in county institutions and other correctional facilities and programs in which men are incarcerated for a short time (e.g., halfway houses).

Long Distance Dads™ focuses on universal aspects of fatherhood as well as the unique challenges faced by incarcerated fathers. Men of all cultures, races, religions, and backgrounds can benefit from the curriculum and program. Another advantage of the universal focus is that an organization can add modules or other components to the program that focus on the unique aspects of the fathers they serve beyond those faced by all incarcerated dads. The program helps inmates to:

Recognize and describe positive family values,
Demonstrate an increased knowledge of parenting and family-relationship skills,
Identify realisitic strategies for connecting with their families through increased appropriate contact,
Identify realistic strategies for fulfulling their responsibilities as fathers while confined and upon release,
Identify and describe the effects that their behavior and incarceration have on their families,
Develop a viable family-integration plan,
Identify and use positive skills for dealing with issues of loss, shame, and guilt, and
Clearly communicate to their children the negative effects of incarceration, without glorifying the status of inmate or “ex-con.”

Essential to the success of the program is recognizing that many inmates have been raised by their mothers or grandmothers without the presence of a father or grandfather. Without a father figure to emulate, basic fathering skills, such as self-discipline, nurturing, and consistency, are foreign concepts to most men in prison. The program focuses heavily on these skills.

The learning environment for incarcerated fathers is enhanced by the program’s small-group focus and the delivery of the curriculum by trained and certified program coordinators who are often inmates. The inmate groups are limited to between 10 and 15 participants. Because peers are fellow inmates, program participants can easily identify with them and vice versa. The participants know that the peer leaders can relate to their struggles, which establishes a small-group rapport that enhances learning and growth for everyone involved.

NFI’s long-term goal in working with incarcerated men is to instigate a shift in paradigms. The isolation of an institution compounds the issues of supporting children. Some men are serving life sentences and will never attend a school function or a baseball game. But all is not lost, because inmates’ children can benefit from a father's effort to grow and change while maintaining contact with his family despite his physical absence. We believe that a positive investment of education, time, and peer leadership will produce responsible fathers who are less likely to draw upon the resources of local, state, and federal tax dollars. Use of this program will create families that contribute to their community, reversing the cycle of poverty and dependency caused by absent fathers. Ultimately, children will reap the greatest benefit: a loving father who is there for them.

Long Distance Dads™ is used in federal, state, or community correctional facilities in 19 states."

Above is an excerpt from the NFI/Long Distance Dads homepage. Content above is ^TM and ^© National Fatherhood Initiative all rights reserved. You may visit their homepage Here

Promises of Life Ministries Involvement and Perspective

The National Fatherhood Initiative, Long Distance Dads Program, is conducted all over the US inside penal facilities, yet maintains a local and personal relationship with the inmates by having small group meetings such as Promises of Life conducts in area prisons on a regular and consistent basis.

The Long Distance Dads Program is conducted locally on an on-going basis by Promises of Life Ministries personnel that really care about the spiritual, temporal and life condition of the men. We utilize this excellent program and its materials, along with our commitment to Spiritual change in the lives of the men to be facilitators of change in every area of their lives. We are required to complete 4 weeks of Long Distance Dads training in addition to Criminal Background Checks and other requirements of Promises of Life Ministries to be certified to present this program.

This program, along with the loving, strong, committed men that conduct it, seek to bring about lasting change in the inmate's life. This change is multi-faceted. First of all, it is designed to help the inmate better relate to his family. Often an inmate may not understand or realize life goes on for the rest of his family, even though he is incarcerated and not there with the family.

Often the wife and mother of the family has to assume all the family roles of breadwinner, mother, father, mentoring as well as the other things the absence of a father figure may leave lacking. This is most always a very difficult situation for the family on the outside since the inmate is fed, clothed and sheltered by the state. However, the inmate was in many instances the primary breadwinner for the family before his trouble with the law. Now the wife and mother bears the brunt of becoming breadwinner as well as dad, mom, and all the rest.

A long term inmate with a chance of release may be ill prepared to return home finding someone else has been filling his place for 20 or more years. The family on the outside often feels resentment toward a man that has been in jail for 20 years or more, yet this same man has been released and wants to return home and pick right back up where he left off prior to his incarceration. Families are generally not prepared to relinquish the reins of family management to the released inmate at all, and if so, not without great resentment.

Of equal or greater concern are those inmates that have received life sentences or are sentenced to death by some means. They often only know their children and maintain some sort of relationship with their wives by way of occasional prison visits and written communications, letters for example. LDD really comes through in helping the father express his love and devotion to his family as well as remorse for his actions that has brought about the separation they deal with daily.

Volunteers are needed to help replicate our efforts in more institutions across the Gulf Coast. If you feel the need to help others and are interested, please contact us at the links below. Return to Top of Page

You may or browse our Contact page to request more information.