Programs and Services

Fathers Building Futures provides multiple supports, through 12 different domains, to fathers coming out of prison. At Fathers Building Futures, participants are equipped with soft skills, on the job employment training, parenting and life skills, family reunification strategies, financial literacy, individual and group mentorship, as well as paths to job certifications and sustainable career placement. We help break down the numerous barriers that the fathers face when returning home from prison.

NM now, more than ever needs programs like Fathers Building Futures to help with the national, and local data in taking part of lowering the recidivism rate, ensuring lives are being built for social, emotional and financial support.

Fathers Building Futures (FBF) has been vetted and approved by Behavioral Health Services Division (BHSD) and the Office of Peer Recovery Engagement (OPRE) as a Peer led organization.  Moreover, Fathers Building Futures has been approved by these organizations as a place to achieve Certified Peer Support Worker (CPSW ) credentials.  As an approved Peer lead organization, FBF can be a destination for individuals in need of gaining pre-exposure hours to complete this process and receive certification.

Fathers Building Futures – Nusenda Community Rewards

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Sometimes, the path towards a better life is not available. The Prison Policy Initiative has parsed data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and revealed America’s prisons are overflowing with people who have not had access to the economy or higher education, leaving them without access to good jobs prior to incarceration. They found the median annual income of the prison population, pre-incarceration, is $19,185, which is about $4,000 less than 200 percent Federal Poverty Level (FPL), indicating a vulnerable population. All FBF clients have income starting under 200 percent FPL, and with 54% of parents incarcerated being the primary breadwinners, their families are almost always vulnerable, especially the children.

In regards to children, they are also affected by the prison mentality developed over years of harsh discipline from corrections officers performing their jobs. Often, the dads will see this heavy-handed approach to discipline as the only way, since it has been the only approach they have seen discipline meted out over years, if not decades. This will result in the dads taking this approach at home and applying it to their children. One of the biggest focuses of our approach is to eliminate this mentality before it destroys already damaged relationships.

Moreover, the children of incarcerated parents are severely affected by the cycle of recidivism, which develops into a multigenerational cycle. In New Mexico, 1 in 10 NM children will have a parent in prison at some point in their lives, and these children are seven times more likely to be incarcerated at some point than children of non-incarcerated parents.  At FBF, we try to break that cycle by reuniting children with parents who have financial, social, and emotional stability. Our multipronged approach is aimed at creating a better, incarceration-free future for the children. Even though we only directly serve fathers over the age of 18, we also positively impact the entire families we serve. 

A disturbing demographic trend recently arose. In fiscal year 2019, FBF’s client racial demographics skewed almost entirely towards serving a racial/ethnic minority population. Of our client cohorts, 65 percent were Hispanic/Latino, 16 percent were African American or Black, and 16 percent were Native American.

At Father’s Building Futures we recognize many of these conditions are the result of our country’s history with slavery, racism and discrimination.  Moreover, these conditions still persist today due to deep systemic conditions embedded in our government and other organizations.  These are social conditions our United States still battles with today.  Social conditions still unresolved.  We also recognize we at FBF cannot be a solution to all the factors that contribute to social injustice and its impact on incarceration.  We do, however, believe we can make a modest difference in the lives of some New Mexicans who previously were incarcerated.  Our program is built to improve the lives of former felons, their families, and with great hope generational impact as well because the cycle of incarceration has been broken.  On some modest level we at FBF can recover some justice in the lives of those who come through our program.   An admirable mission served.