Ten Years of Nurturing Fathers: Building Stronger Families in Hampshire County

What began as a Nurturing Fathers group for incarcerated dads has grown into a decade-long partnership supporting fathers during incarceration, reentry, and beyond.

For a decade, a partnership between the Children’s Trust and the Hampshire County Sheriff’s Office has demonstrated what can happen when fathers receive support that helps them strengthen their parenting and their relationships with their children.

In 2015, the Children’s Trust partnered with the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction to bring the Nurturing Fathers curriculum to incarcerated dads. The first cohort graduated the following year. What began as a parenting program inside a correctional facility has since become the Children’s Trust’s longest-running Nurturing Fathers partnership.

Nurturing Fathers is a 13-week, strength-based parenting group that helps fathers build and strengthen positive parenting attitudes and behaviors. The program encourages fathers to reflect on their own experiences as children and consider how those experiences have shaped the fathers they are today, helping them make intentional choices about the relationships they want to build with their children.

For Hampshire County Sheriff Patrick Cahillane, that reflection is one of the program’s greatest strengths.

“The workbook for the Nurturing Fathers program examines the little boy in each of us and helps to understand the father they become,”

Cahillane said while accepting the Children’s Trust’s Governor Paul Cellucci Fatherhood Award in 2023.

Support That Continues Beyond Incarceration

In 2019, Nurturing Fathers expanded into the community, allowing fathers to continue receiving support as they transitioned back to their families and communities – and worked to rebuild relationships with their children. Today, groups are offered through the Northampton Recovery Center in addition to the program at the House of Correction.

Since the partnership began, more than 200 fathers have graduated from Nurturing Fathers. Among the 118 fathers who participated while incarcerated, only five have returned to the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction.

But the program’s impact extends beyond those numbers.

Brandon Downey completed Nurturing Fathers while incarcerated and continued showing up to support other dads after graduating. Eventually, the Children’s Trust trained him as a program facilitator. Today, he continues to support each new cohort of fathers in the program. And he’s not the only one with this story. In 2020, we met Tyler, who experienced a similar journey moving from incarceration to family reunification to continuing to work with the program as a volunteering support of other dads in the same shoes. And Luke DeRoy who became a regular at the Northampton Recovery Center and began bringing other fathers he met with him, extending the impact throughout his community.

These journeys illustrates how supporting one father can have an impact that extends outward—to other fathers, their children, and their communities. Research shows that father involvement is associated with positive outcomes for children, from cognitive development and academic achievement to stronger social skills, self-esteem, and relationships.

Strengthening Families and Communities

The HHOC partnership reflects the Children’s Trust’s approach to preventing child abuse and neglect by strengthening families and the systems around them.

In December 2025, staff from the Children’s Trust and Hampshire County Sheriff’s Office joined program graduates for a reunion at Union Station in Northampton during the partnership’s 10th anniversary year. The reunion brought together people who have been part of the partnership, while the milestone offered an opportunity to recognize how the work has grown over the past decade. Its lasting impact can be seen in the fathers who have completed the program, the graduates who continue supporting one another, and the families and communities strengthened along the way.

“the Children’s Trust helps fill a void in the job of Fatherhood.”

Hampshire County Sheriff Patrick Cahillane

Ten years later, the Children’s Trust and HHOC partnership continue to give fathers the opportunity to reflect on where they have been, strengthen the relationships they have today, and build a different path forward for their children.

About the 30 for 30 Fatherhood Series

This story is part of 30 Stories for 30 Years, marking 30 years of the Children’s Trust Fatherhood Initiative. The series highlights how professionals and organizations across Massachusetts support father involvement, healthy co-parenting, and stronger parenting partnerships as part of upstream prevention.