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Related story: Fathers at Work graduate Chris Graves works toward a better life for his family.

Fathers at Work The program's design and facts about it and its participants.

    One child requires, say, $700 for health insurance, day care, medicine and other needs. Dad's child support payments are perhaps $250.

    "It ain't fair," groans one of the dozen men watching her tabulation. "After taxes, he'll only have like $300. Oh man, what's he going to do?"

    A Roanoke child support case manager, White acknowledges the system isn't perfect.

    "But you've got to think about how much it costs to raise a kid." She said the minimum child support payment "is $65 a month. That doesn't even pay for a pair of tennis shoes. There are women who take care of it all, by themselves."

    A few years ago, these men — all younger than 30, many unemployed, some who rarely visit their children — would have been called "deadbeat dads" for failing to keep up with child support payments.

    Now, social scientists say they fall into a new category, "dead-broke dads," and they're receiving help from a program called Fathers at Work.

    It's a new approach to child support, one that helps fathers find jobs, set goals and be role models for their children. Funded by the Flint, Mich.-based Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Fathers at Work is being attempted at six sites across the country; Roanoke's Total Action Against Poverty runs the only site in the southeastern United States.

    The state manages child support payments in cases where a parent has failed to pay or the custodial parent receives public assistance. In those cases, the state receives just 62 percent of what it is owed. The cumulative debt is almost $2 billion, and that number will increase by $200 million next year, according to Nick Young, director of the Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement.

    The success of these men - to pay child support, find jobs, be responsible dads - is being watched closely by state officials and national policy makers. If results are good, the approach toward fathers in child support debt might change significantly.

    In 1975, Congress passed legislation that required states that provided welfare benefits to also help parents obtain child support. But by the 1990s, the government saw an increase in need for both welfare programs and child support.

    Posters of the "10 Most Wanted" started appearing in Virginia and other states as a tool to track down the most egregious deadbeat parents.

    In 1995, welfare reform legislation included a requirement that women receiving benefits must name the fathers of their children. The state then tried to collect child support by garnisheeing wages of those who were legitimately employed.

    Young said states had to get a handle on violators and came down tough. Punishments ranged from revoking a parent's driver's license to sending him to jail for several months.

    Neal Hegarty, a Mott Foundation program officer who oversees Fathers at Work, said child support policies were developed under the assumption that all parents were able to pay and some just chose not to.

    Slowly, though, researchers started discovering a group of parents who faced major obstacles to paying child support. Some never finished high school or lacked job skills, others were addicted to drugs or had a criminal record.

    TAP's Fathers at Work Director Jon Morris said these men need the guidance they never received as children.

    "They'll say 'My dad wasn't around when I was growing up, but I'm all right,'" he said. "And I want to say, 'You don't have a job, you're $5,000 in debt for child support, you have limited education. Are you all right?'"

    Morris and his staff provide both carrot and stick. If the men attend support group meetings, they learn about everything from how to dress for a job interview to how their children's self-esteem improves by spending time with their dads.

    Through agreements with several companies such as Valleydale, the men get offers of employment. They hear about the basics of responsible living, such as using an alarm clock - rather than relying on their mothers - to wake them in the morning.

    If the men don't follow through, Fathers at Work staff don't help when it's needed. Morris has gone with participants to court hearings about their failure to pay child support, but then they never return to the program.

    Joni Tables, the fatherhood services coordinator, struggled to find a landlord who would rent to an unemployed father who recently got evicted. She found out later the participant hadn't paid rent for the new house in months, even though he told her otherwise.

    But the program, in its third year, has had successes, too: the participants who followed the program with almost religious fervor, the ones who graduated from 12 weeks of support groups and employment consultations and are involved as alumni.

    A few have even applied for custody of their children.

    Juvenile and Domestic Relations Judge Joseph Bounds said that without Fathers at Work, his options are limited.

    "If person is in the program, I'll continue the case and allow the person to take complete benefit of it," he said. "I want to give the person a chance."

    The program's influence has gone beyond the participants. Young said the program's close working relationship with the local Child Support Enforcement office is highly unusual. Case manager Felicia White works directly with the Fathers at Work participants; they even have her direct phone number in case they need her.

    "For far too long, [the department] has viewed itself as strictly an enforcement agency," support enforcement director Young said. "The Roanoke office led the way, and helped us understand that there is a place at the table for us to build healthy families."

    Nationally, Hegarty said the results seem positive. Child support payments and the number of men acknowledging paternity have increased among participants. The biggest challenge has been helping the men find jobs; about half are working.

    A final report, which will include follow-up interviews with participants nationwide, is expected to be released in 2005. The data, Hegarty said, should provide some valuable insight.

    "We think the data will show that child support policy does need to be reformed or tweaked to account for these men," he said.

    But in the meantime, Morris is working to find replacements for the Mott funding, which ends in June. Young said the state is helping Morris so that the program can continue serving fathers in Roanoke.

    "Their statistics are undeniable. They've brought in close to $100,000 in paid child support. But the main thing they've done is they've helped a lot of [men] become great dads."