Supporting African-American Fatherhood is Conference Theme
At Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus, November 16

Brooklyn, N.Y. – “Supporting African-American Fatherhood through Policy, Practice and Participation” will be addressed by a panel of noted experts and fathers from the community at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus.

Ronald B. Mincy, a nationally renowned scholar and policy expert on African-American fathers and families, and David Jones, a social worker whose innovative Fathers First program helps engage fathers in family interventions in New York City, will be among the speakers.

The panel presentation will take place on Tuesday, November 16, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., in the Health Sciences Building, Room 107. Admission is free and open to the public.

“We want to remove the stereotype that African-American men don’t want to provide for their families,” said Jean Noel, father of a four-year-old son and a panelist involved with the Fathers First Program.

Another panelist and Fathers First parent, Thomas Daley, Sr., the father of a 21-year-old son, said, “Contrary to popular belief, black fathers are not invisible, it only seems that way because society is looking through a particular lens with a limited set of criteria.”

The topics discussed will include engaging fathers through intervention; relationships with peers, family and community; welfare and low-income fathers; child support and family support systems; policy on family formation and father involvement; and personal experiences of fatherhood.

Mincy, the Maurice V. Russell Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice at Columbia University’s School of Social Work, studies the effects of welfare, child support, family support, housing and employment and training policies and practices on family formation and father involvement. He is currently writing a book on fathers, families and welfare reform.

Jonesis the clinical director of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York’s Early Head Start Program. His Fathers First initiative has gained widespread attention as an innovative approach to working with predominantly African-American adolescent males.  As an advocate for fathers, he has assisted community-based organizations implement fatherhood initiatives and has addressed several national conferences on the importance of involving men in the lives of their children. 

The conference is presented by the Campus’s Social Work Department and the Common Ground Service Learning Program. For more information, call Amy Krentzman at (718) 488-3372.

Long Island University opened its Brooklyn Campus in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. Some 31,000 students currently are enrolled at the university’s three residential and three regional campuses, including more than 12,000 at the Brooklyn Campus. Located at the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, the Campus is accessible to all major bus and subway routes and the Long Island Rail Road.