By 8 a.m. sharp every weekday, Phil is in the kitchen making breakfast and packing school lunches for his 10-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter so they start their day off right.
“Seeing their happiness is what makes me happy,” he remarks. “They’re my everything right now.”
Fatherly pride lights up his face as he lovingly talks about his kids—how creative they are, the friends and good decisions they’re making, their dreams and plans for their future.
“My daughter wants to be a ballerina and a UFC fighter,” Phil grins, “and my son wants to be a football player or a UFC fighter.”
Today, Phil is right where he wants to be—far from where he once was.
Only a few months ago, the Winnipegger didn’t have a place to live or know when he’d eat his next meal. He’d begin his day with alcohol or drugs to distract himself from grief and numb the lingering ache of intergenerational trauma.
“I was going through a lot of hurt,” said Phil, explaining his father died in 2020. Tragically, his brother was murdered the following year.
It was a burden too heavy to bear. Yet his courageous attempts to find the support he needed felt like one dead end after another.
“I remember going to [look for help], and it was ‘Sorry, we don’t serve men,’” Phil said. “I was like, ‘Really? I’m homeless. I’m starving. I have no income.’”
Yet Phil wasn’t an anomaly. A first-of-its-kind national study shows First Nations, Inuit, and Métis men are among the most socially excluded groups in Canada, facing disproportionate levels of poverty, unemployment, and other challenges—without the support needed to break the cycle.
"It was really accepting."
Feeling lost and depleted, Phil sensed a glimmer of hope upon hearing about Acorn Family Place—a home-away-from-home in the West Broadway neighbourhood.
“As soon as I came in here, it was really accepting,” he shared. “The whole vibe was a safe place.”
Part of United Way Winnipeg’s For Every Family initiative, Acorn Family Place is a community living room with an open door to people from all walks of life.
Here in this family-centred space, you’re welcomed with a friendly smile and a cup of coffee as you find the help you need, with the ease of knowing your children are safely playing in the licensed nursery.
The family resource centre has become a lifeline to Phil—and he’s thrilled it’s become a refuge for his son and daughter, too.
“My kids want to be here all the time,” laughed Phil. “They love everybody here.”
The multi-service agency is widely celebrated for its broad variety of evidence-based parent and caregiver services, specializing in group training and individualized support to help families reach their fullest potential.
“Acorn Family Place has been around for 25+ years, and it’s always been the case that all of our programs are open to all caregivers of all genders,” explained Executive Director Emma Fineblit.
“But even if it was never a policy, there might have been a feeling that family spaces are women’s spaces. So, it’s long been an idea that we should create a space dedicated for dads.”
"It's kind of like a healing process."
Launched last August, Caring Dads is a free, voluntary, 17-week program designed for men to help them connect better with their kids—and themselves.
The group meets on Wednesday afternoons and is open to any dad looking to embrace new skills to bring safety and stability to their families through child-centred parenting.
“It’s a parenting group, but it’s also about safety, accountability, and healthy relationships,” Emma explained. “So, I think for a lot of folks, it’s kind of like a healing process.”
Phil, who eagerly joined the very first cohort, said he had major takeaways every week.
“There’s parts of the program that get really deep, and you have to be vulnerable,” he shared. “There’s times we speak and get teary eyed and stuff like that, and you don’t feel judgment.”
Learning about the neuroscience of childhood development especially resonated with Phil. Looking at his kids through this lens, he feels more patient and now sees stressful moments as opportunities to build trust, understanding, and connection.
He also valued the way the program is an incubator for fellow dads to connect, share what’s working for them, and learn from each other.
“I think what really helped was being around people who genuinely wanted to change, you know?” he said. “That’s what made the vibe so positive.”
"I feel like a psychologist now!"
The peer support aspect is something Matthew Shorting, the Caring Dads facilitator, wishes he’d had when he became a young father 15 years ago.
“We can’t feel like we’re alone in this,” Matthew insisted.
“We recognize that fathers are doing the best they can with the resources available, what they picked up in their family environments, what their normal is.”
He says that’s why Caring Dads is “a strength-based, trauma-informed, culturally safe [program] to meet people right where they’re at.”
Participants identify and work towards goals, such as managing frustration, developing age-appropriate responses, and learning communication and co-parenting strategies.
“My favourite was at the end of our first cohort, an older gentleman said, ‘I thought this was all phoney baloney when I first came in, but I actually learned something,’” Matthew chuckled.
“He said, ‘I feel like a psychologist now!’”
“These cycles need to be broken.”
Caring Dads is also an entry point to an array of other help and resources at Acorn Family Place—from tackling challenges with navigating the child welfare system to nourishing bodies and souls with hot meals and free counselling sessions.
For Phil, joining the program was a bridge to the support he needed to find a job. He’s now on the payroll at a local restaurant, working as a cook.
It’s also become a space for him to heal. Raised in a home scarred by the devastating consequences of colonization, Phil inherited the deep wounds of his parents, who were traumatized by the residential school and child welfare systems.
A survivor of abuse, Phil says he was “parentified as a child” and forced to grow up way too fast. Gradually, he turned to gangs to find the love and belonging he didn’t have at home, triggering a precarious lifestyle and a path to addiction.
“These cycles need to be broken. It needs to end with somebody,” said Phil. “It feels good to know that I’m breaking cycles and to hear other people acknowledging it.”
With lessons often rooted in traditional Indigenous ceremony and teachings, Caring Dads is helping more fathers like Phil reclaim their culture, restore balance, and rebuild their lives.
“Come walk with us, and we’ll listen,” Matthew says to any dad feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to go for help. “We want to help you and grow with you.”
He added, “We all need help—there’s no shame in that. We want to meet you where you’re at. We have radical acceptance here.”
