Webinar
Four presenters from three states answered the questions below and identified innovative practices states are utilizing to engage fathers in the 13th FRPN learning community webinar.
What are innovative state policies and practices to engage fathers in key family programs?
How are some child support agencies passing through more child support to families, adjusting orders for fathers with low incomes, engaging fathers to avoid court involvement and using debt forgiveness and driver’s license reinstatement to promote father engagement in workforce and parenting programs?
How are some… The purpose of this information memorandum (IM) is to strongly encourage all human service agencies including child welfare agencies, courts, offices of child support enforcement, offices of public assistance, offices of child care, Head Start programs and family and youth services programs to work together across governments to jointly create and maintain an environment that prioritizes father engagement as a critical factor in strengthening families and adopt approaches to enhance paternal involvement in all family support and child welfare related programs. (Author abstract)
Families on limited incomes can struggle to navigate low-wage jobs or education and training programs while also searching for quality early care and education for their children. Some programs provide integrated services to parents and their children in an effort to solve this problem. This practice is sometimes called a two-generation or whole-family approach. This report provides: (1) key findings from a literature review, an environmental scan, and field work to identify and describe existing program models; (2) development of a conceptual framework to inform program design and research;…
The evaluation of the Community-Centered Responsible Fatherhood Ex-Prisoner Reentry Pilot Projects (“Fatherhood Reentry”) documented the implementation of six programs designed to help stabilize fathers and their families, help move fathers toward economic self-sufficiency, and reduce recidivism. This report presents the findings from the evaluation and provides an overview of the activities implemented by the programs, describes their various approaches to implementation, and identifies the implementation challenges they faced and the solutions they used to overcome those challenges. We…
This report describes in detail how researchers, policymakers, and program administrators can recognize opportunities for experiments and carry them out. Specifically, the report focuses on opportunistic experiments, defined as randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that study the effects of initiatives, program changes, or policy actions that agencies or programs plan or intend to implement – as opposed to studying an intervention or policy action that is developed and implemented specifically for a research study. (Author abstract)
This methodological report focuses on the development of qualitative instruments designed to better understand family engagement in Head Start and Early Head Start. The report draws on pilot data collected during the 2012-2013 program year and provides information about the performance of the piloted interview protocols, revisions made to instruments based on their performance, and the best methods for gathering qualitative information about family engagement experiences from families and staff in future studies. The report also includes an instrument package with the revised set of interview…
This framework is a road map for progress in achieving the kinds of outcomes that lead to positive and enduring change for children and families. It is a research-based approach to program change that shows how an agency can work together as a whole--across systems and service areas--to promote parent and family engagement and children's learning development. (Author abstract)
This report discusses findings from an evaluation of eight organizations that implemented the Building Strong Families (BSF) program, a program designed to teach relationship skills to unmarried, romantically-involved couples who were expecting or had recently had a baby. For the evaluation, over 5,000 interested couples were randomly assigned to either a BSF group that could participate in the program or a control group that could not. Data was collected on BSF's impacts on couples about 15 months after they applied for the program, focusing on the stability and quality of the couples'…
This report is a technical supplement to the 15-month impact report for the Building Strong Families (BSF) evaluation, a study that explored the effectiveness of providing services to improve the relationships of unmarried parents. It provides additional detail about the research design, analytic methods, and variable construction that were used for the 15-month analysis. Chapter 1 begins with an overview of the research design. It then describes BSF sample intake procedures, including eligibility determination and the random assignment process. The eight local BSF programs enrolled couples…
This report discusses the implementation of the Building Strong Families (BSF) program in eight organizations. The BSF project was launched in 2002 to develop, implement, and rigorously test voluntary interventions aimed at strengthening the families of unmarried couples with children. BSF programs were implemented by non-profit and public agencies at 12 locations in seven States, and enrolled more than 5,000 volunteer couples, who were randomly assigned by the BSF research team to an intervention or control group. The intervention featured up to 42 hours of multi-couple group sessions led…
