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Presented by the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center on March 25, 2009, this one hour, 30 minutes webinar focuses on how severe economic stress affects couple relationships and children, strategies Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood educators can use to help couples cope with economic stress, and how Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood program providers can coordinate with the Workforce Investment Act to offer their economically distressed clients job and other financial services support. The first presentation is provided by Dr. William Bailey an Associate Professor…
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As evidence mounts that family involvement can support children's learning, there is an increasing call in the field for common data collection instruments to measure home-school communication and other aspects of family involvement. This resource from Harvard Family Research Project compiles instruments developed for rigorous program impact evaluations and tested for reliability. (Author abstract)
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This brief spotlights how six school districts across the country have used innovative strategies to create and sustain family engagement "systems at work." Our findings point to three core components of these successful systems: creating district-wide strategies, building school capacity, and reaching out to and engaging families. Drawing from districts' diverse approaches, we highlight promising practices to ensure quality, oversight, and impact from their family engagement efforts. We also propose a set of recommendations for how federal, state, and local policies can promote district-…
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Journal Article Few studies inform the frequency and type of adult male involvement in families in contact with child welfare, and even fewer explore how male involvement relates to child welfare outcomes. This study employed data from a sample of 3,978 families in contact with the U.S. child welfare system, drawn from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. The nature of male involvement in these families and its relationship to (a) caseworkers' perception of children's risk for maltreatment rereport and (b) entry into out-of-home care were explored. Results indicate that most caregivers…
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This article highlights an initiative by the Nashua New Hampshire Division of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) District Office to facilitate visitation between children in out-of-home placements and birth fathers and mothers within 24 hours of removal and to involve the children in deciding those they want to visit them. The benefits of timely initial visitations are discussed, a case study is shared, and implications for permanency planning are explored.
This evaluation report is the second objective, third-party evaluation of the InsideOut Dad Program, which was conducted using findings gathered from 219 program participants. The InsideOut Dad program classes were held in six Maryland correctional institutions and in eight Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Institutions. (Author abstract modified)
Launched in 2005, the Illinois Integrated Assessment (IA) process is designed to provide better information about child and family strengths, support systems, and service needs. In this study, we examine the extent to which fathers -- stepfathers, putative fathers, legal fathers, adoptive fathers, or biological fathers -- were interviewed as a part of the IA process and the factors associated with fathers being interviewed. An analysis of over 9,000 completed IA cases indicates that when both parents were interviewed as part of the IA, children were significantly more likely to be reunified…
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What is Coparenting? The relationship that two individuals, typically the mother and father, have in relation to parenting a child or children is called the coparenting relationship. This relationship is conceptualized separately from the romantic relationship since parents may not be romantically involved yet still cooperate to parent their shared children. This research brief discusses the results of two research questions analyzed with the Fragile Families data. First, among married and cohabiting couples who have just had a shared child: Are father involvement and coparenting associated…
This small scale survey report evaluates aspects of family learning and its benefits for adult participants and their children, their families and the wider community. Between September 2008 and March 2009, inspectors visited 23 local authority adult and community learning services that were receiving Learning and Skills Council funding for wider family learning, family literacy, language and numeracy, and family learning impact funding. The survey explores a range of delivery models, gives examples of good practice and makes recommendations for improvement.
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Journal Article The purpose of this study was to examine ethnic and marital status differences in family structure, risk behaviors and service requests among African American and Hispanic adolescent fathers participating in a community-based fatherhood program. Demographic factors, risk behaviors, and service requests were gathered at program entry. The results indicated that each group demonstrated distinct patterns associated with family structure, sexual risk behaviors, substance use, and criminal behavior. In comparison to African American fathers, Hispanic fathers were younger and were more likely to be…
