This resource provides many links to selected articles, programs, and resources that focus on engaging and supporting Native fathers.
Home visits provide a unique opportunity to assess parents’ child-rearing skills and to provide targeted services to assist responsible adults in growing healthy families. If you are a home visitor, you are probably already aware of some of the barriers that you must confront when attempting to achieve these goals. Often one of those barriers is the reluctance of fathers and men in families to recognize the importance of their participation in home visits. This tends to be true across a wide range of cultures, income levels, and educational backgrounds. In order to engage fathers and men…
During the last five years we have had the privilege of partnering with selected Parents as Teachers (PAT) sites through the Office of Family Assistance Promoting Responsible Fatherhood Grant to enhance father involvement. We learned many lessons as partner sites provided group meetings in urban, rural, and military communities that spanned a range of demographics. Our PAT sites experienced a wide array of successes and challenges, sometimes unique to their community. These experiences provide the foundation for this summary of lessons learned.
Fatherhood Summit Session
Family services programs are also in the business of serving fathers. How can they become more father friendly? This session drew on the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse’s (NRFC) Responsible Fatherhood Toolkit: Resources from the Field and the shared experiences of participants. The workshop explored the most effective ways to recruit and engage fathers to improve outcomes for families and children.
Presenters focused on hiring, training, and supporting staff, conducting successful outreach and recruitment, and delivering effective services. The presenters also shared tips…
Fatherhood Summit Session
Success in fatherhood service provision goes beyond the use of a curriculum. It requires the ability to lead a team and to create and execute a programmatic vision. This session encouraged participants to assess their own leadership styles and evaluate their impact on programming. The session provided intentional leadership strategies to enhance programming. Presenters offered nine leadership principles that build trust and empower others in order to improve morale and productivity. They described how effective leadership builds program sustainability.
Fatherhood Summit Session
The Ad Council’s images and slogans are woven into the very fabric of American pop culture, and fatherhood is part of that! This session will show how the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse’s media campaign (funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families) has spread the word nationally that fathers are essential in their children’s lives. Participants will hear how the media campaign has inspired fathers across the country to “take time to be a dad today,” and the presenter will describe the positive effect of the campaign on …
Fatherhood Summit Session
Learning how to write grant proposals is vital for funding and sustaining the important work that is changing lives in many communities across the country. Nevertheless, many new agencies—and veteran ones as well—can find it challenging to secure grant funding.
This session will provide step-by-step instructions to create stronger grant applications. The presenter will discuss proven tips and strategies, including how to prepare before a proposal is written, what advance research to conduct, and what language to use. The presentation will provide a sample sponsorship letter and a sample…
Fatherhood Summit Session
Social capital refers to the social networks and structural and environmental factors that affect the ability of individuals to succeed. Higher social capital helps to build bridges, reduce barriers, and provide leverage to upward mobility. Many fathers affected by intergenerational poverty, incarceration, and other socioeconomic challenges lack the social capital to escape cycles of crises. Often, these fathers are isolated in adverse environments and trapped in unhealthy interpersonal relationships. Program activities to improve the socioeconomic situations of these fathers must focus on…
Fatherhood Summit Session
Legislators and nonprofit funders say they are looking for evidence of return on investment. The Saint Wall Street “Program Return on Investment (PROI)” model has helped fatherhood and other family service programs across America demonstrate this important value and use it to substantially increase support for their programs.
This session sought to help fatherhood programs assess their case-making value based on three questions: What is the problem? How is my program different and better at solving the problem? Where is the proof?
Participants also learned how to use a PROI case to:
… Fatherhood Summit Session
This session will begin by asking each participant to visualize what might have been her or his dad’s joie de vivre, the glint in his eye. Participants will then consider the gap between their dad’s glint and his reality. Did he forfeit his dreams to do something that fulfilled him less but paid him more? Did “success” mean less time with his family?
While some dads address that dilemma with pride and a new glint, others may respond with fear, drug and alcohol abuse, affairs, or abandonment. This session explores a “Father’s Catch-22”: the expectation that a dad will love his family by…
