Learning how to be a father first

They are newly sober. They are in treatment for drug and alcohol addictions that have threatened to destroy their lives.

And they are fathers — all three of them.

In the eyes of the state, they are also their child’s best hope for a healthy and positive future despite their histories of addiction.

When marriages and relationships don’t work out, children more often than not remain with their mother, especially if the father has a history of substance abuse.

But a new program, the Dads Program, at Eugene’s Willamette Family treatment center aims to shed new light on the notion of the father as primary parent.

“I think it has been a blessing,” says the program’s inaugural resident, Erik Olson, who has recently been joined by two other dads in treatment, Harrison Ishmael and David Brown.

“I think it’s going to help a lot of men who don’t have a clue how to raise a kid,” Olson says.

He is raising his seventh child, a daughter who turns 3 at the end of this month, in an old house in the Whiteaker neighborhood that Willamette Family leased at the end of summer, just a few blocks from its main Cheshire Avenue facility.

This time, though, Olson, 39, with two prison sentences behind him and an on-gain, off-again battle with methamphetamine addiction that’s haunted him since he was 13 now under control with eight months of sobriety, wants to do it right.

“The Dads Program offered us the option to get our daughter out of foster care,” Olson says.

“It’s a blessing”

Willamette Family, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, has had since the early 1990s a well-known program for mothers undergoing addiction treatment. The Cheshire Avenue facility has a child development center with as many as 40 children ages 6 weeks to 6 years.

“But we didn’t have anything for dads,” says Eva Williams, Willamette Family’s deputy director.

Not many treatment centers do.

Willamette Family has partially modeled its program, which launched Oct. 1, the day Olson moved in, on a program with the same name at OnTrack, a Medford addiction recovery center.

Willamette Family staff members did two tours of OnTrack’s Dads Program earlier this year, Williams says.

The Willamette Family Dads Program has the capacity to house five men, each with one child, in the five-bedroom house on Monroe Street.

The program is designed to take men from families involved with the state Department of Human Services whose children are, or have been, in foster care; and for whom the state is considering as the primary parent.

Olson’s daughter is the only child now living in the house, while Brown’s 3-month-old son and Ishmael’s month-old daughter are in foster care. Both men have regular visitation with their babies at the Dads Program house.

Whether they are ultimately awarded custody of their children is contingent on their progress in treatment and up to a judge, Williams says.

The men get intensive day treatment at Willamette Family’s new Springfield treatment center, four hours a day, five days a week, and also parenting education and coaching, family preservation support, child and family counseling and life skills training.

“I think it’s awesome,” Ishmael, 42, says of the program. “I think it’s a blessing for men to be fathers … in this life. It’s a blessing to be a part of this program.

“I think it’s going to be a big step in society as a whole,” says Ishmael, who has been sober since Oct. 23.

His daughter was born Nov. 14 at McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center. He and the baby’s mother had not spoken in four months when he was invited to meet his daughter the day after she was born, Ishmael says.

He doesn’t want to talk about why the mother does not have custody. “That’s her story,” he says.

“She’s awesome,” Ishmael says of his baby girl. “Beautiful. Sweet. Very delicate. It’s hard to let her go.”

So, his hope is that he won’t have to, if he can stay sober — his longest period of sobriety since age 11 is three months — and win custody.

“I had a long go with alcohol, and that didn’t get me anywhere. So, I tried drugs, and that didn’t get me anywhere,” says Ishmael, who grew up in the Lake Oswego area and says he never had a positive father figure in his life.

“Let’s create a space”

The supervisor for the Dads Program is Jake Spavins, a Willamette Family employee who specializes in parent coaching.

“Let’s reunify these parents,” Spavins says during a tour of the house. “Let’s create a space where men can do this.

“It’s about the dad being the one to make the meals. It’s about the dad getting them to school.”

It costs the state $24,000 a year to keep a child in foster care, Spavins says. If the Dads Program can house five men, each with one child, that’s “a substantial amount of money,” he says.

Treatment plans vary at Willamette Family, as they do at most treatment centers.

The Dads Program plan is for the men to live in the home for four to six months while they are focused on recovery. Once they’ve graduated from the treatment program and have found work or returned to their employer, they can then transition to other housing.

“We’re taking a risk,” Williams says. “We’re saying, ‘This is a need we’ve found, and we’re jumping into it.’ ”

The program is taking only treatment cases covered by health insurance, she says.

Most Willamette Family treatment cases are covered by the Oregon Health Plan, the state’s version of the federal Medicaid program for low-income people, Williams says.

Willamette Family is paying the lease on the house, but occupants could be charged rent in the future, she says.

An eraser board in the corner of the home’s dining room includes the three men’s names written next to a box with check marks for “floors, bathrooms and kitchen.”

A note below their names says “Everyone must get recycling done!”

A list of books and authors includes Mark Twain, Cormac McCarthy, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”

“Harrison likes books,” Spavins says, indicting that Ishmael made the list.

A note written by the list says “Think bigger!”

Spavins talks about wanting to create “a community of fathers.” He talks about parents who both have addiction issues.

“But if I have a parent who wants to be sober, that parent’s going to be the best parent,” he says.

Brown, 29, says he has been sober since Nov. 17.

He spent six years in prison on an assault charge and was released last year.

His goal now? “To give my son the life he deserves. I never wanted it enough before, to change my life.”

Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkBakerRG . Email [email protected] .


Mark Baker has been a journalist for the past 25 years. He’s currently the sports editor at The Jackson Hole News & Guide in Jackson, Wyo.