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Journal Article The Father-Friendly Environmental Assessment is designed to help prepare your program to provide services to fathers and support their involvement in the lives of their children. Completing this form will help to steer your program toward successful father involvement efforts and help establish a firm foundation for building the rest of your work with fathers. (Author abstract)
This brief is based on extensive in-person observational data, as well as survey data, from 55 unmarried low-income African-American mothers and fathers who were part of the Fragile Families study. Given that 70 percent of African-American children (compared with one-third of all children) in the U.S. are born to parents who are not married, this is a particularly important group to study. The present study is one of the first to collect in-depth observational and parent-reported data from unmarried mothers and fathers regarding their couple relationship and the fathers' involvement with…
A fundamental principle of child development underpinning early childhood practice is that children need stable, nurturing relationships with both men and women to develop strong gender identities. With more than 60% of young children in non-parental care during part of their day, it is of serious concern that less than 5% of the early childhood workforce is comprised of males. The low wages typically paid to early childhood teachers is often cited as the reason for this under-representation. However, this explanation only partly explains the phenomena as there are numerous low paying…
This guide includes five sections to help you think about how to work effectively on policies that can improve outcomes for fathers and fragile families: (1) A checklist of state and local policies that can help fathers become more engaged with and responsible for their children. Some involve state level action; others fall within the purview of local government. (2) Stories of community foundations that have successfully influenced public policy at all levels. While six of the stories relate to fatherhood policy, they all illustrate effective strategies for influencing policymakers. (3) A…
Since its beginnings nearly 40 years ago, Head Start has understood that loving, intentional parental involvement is an essential factor in healthy child development. Head Start works with parents because it believes that a healthy family is a child's best and most powerful resource. Strong families help to ensure positive outcomes for children and that they enter school ready to learn and succeed in their years there. However, getting children prepared for life-long learning is typically viewed as mother's work. Dads are too often seen as optional in this part of their children's lives.…
The Texas Fragile Families Initiative (TFF) is the only statewide, collaborative demonstration project aimed at increasing the capacity of local organizations to serve "fragile families," defined by the Ford foundation as young, low-income never-married parents and their children. Started in 1999 as a partnership between the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health and the Center for Public Policy Priorities, TFF brought together more than 30 local, state, and national funders to test promising practices in responsible fatherhood in eleven Texas communities.
By reading this particular volume in The Intermediary Development Series, intermediary organizations and the faith and community-based organizations they work with will learn the key elements involved in building capacity through effective partnership development including: how to increase the quality of outputs and outcomes; how to increase the quantity of outputs and outcomes; and how to increase funding acquisition. This guidebook will help organizations answer these key questions: why are effective partnerships important? What are the different forms that partnerships can take? What…
By reading this particular volume in The Intermediary Development Series, intermediary organizations will learn the key elements necessary to effectively design and deliver training and technical assistance (T/TA) in order to build capacity in faith-based and community-based organizations as evidenced by: increased funding; increased effectiveness; increased efficiency. This guidebook will help organizations answer these key questions: How do we develop a training and technical assistance plan? What is the best way to deliver training to nonprofit organizations? What technical assistance…
Father involvement has a unique impact on children's outcomes, including cognitive development, achievement, math and reading scores, as well as behavior. Father involvement coordinators, parent involvement specialists, and other staff members who work with families can find this handbook useful as it provides insight into why fathers are important in their children's lives. Many studies conclude that children with highly involved fathers, in relation to children with less involved fathers, tend to be more cognitively and socially competent. (Author abstract).
Head Start staff members are well-trained and accustomed to building trusting relationships with families and their children. However, working with fathers may be less familiar. As observed in earlier Building Blocks, staff may need to change some of their notions and attitudes about fathers that stem from lack of or negative interactions with fathers in the past. Staff need to realize the deep extent to which fathers can make unique, positive contributions to their child's development because of the various ways fathers differ from mothers. All staff members should be aware, celebrate, and…
