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SC Bar Foundation to Receive National Award

September 8, 2008   |   Back to News and Events

Foundation to receive national award

 

The South Carolina Bar Foundation will receive the 2008 National Conference of Bar Foundations (NCBF) Award for Bar Foundation Excellence in Public Service Programming.

 

The Foundation’s project, Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI), is an initiative conducted by the South Carolina Center for Fathers and Families and serves non-violent, low-income fathers who are underemployed or unemployed and behind in their child support payments.

 

The program allows participants to find employment, resolve legal issues and receive instruction on money management. Seven program sites throughout the state offer fatherhood classes that cover topics such as job readiness and retention, parenting, legal rights and responsibilities, communications skills and child support/visitation issues. Successful completion of the program is defined as a father who works full time and has paid child support consistently for six months. Fathers may be ordered to participate by the court or may enter the program voluntarily.

 

During its first year, the SC Bar Foundation made a grant award of $72,000. In that year alone, $61,000 was paid by participating fathers in child support. In addition, the fathers also earned $186,000 in gross wages. Without this program, most of these fathers would have spent time in jail at the expense of taxpayers.

 

In the 2008 grant cycle, 207 participants paid more than $345,113 in child support payments, earned $1.35 million in gross wages and saved an estimated $1.5 million in incarceration costs.

                        

The ATI effort funded by the Foundation has served as a model in the importance of investing in ATI programs for non-violent offenders. The programs put much needed child support dollars in the hands of the neediest citizens and saves millions of dollars in incarceration costs.

 

The SC Bar Foundation will receive the award at the Joint Luncheon of the National Conference of Bar Presidents, the National Association of Bar Executives and the National Conference of Bar Foundations, on Friday, August 8 at the Annual Meeting in New York.

 

For more information, visit the SC Bar Foundation Web site.