This fact sheet lists inappropriate and appropriate responses to children who are behaving badly. Caregivers are urged to provide children with choices, validate the feelings of the child while stating the inappropriate nature of the behavior, communicate how the behavior is making the caregiver feel, and reaffirm their commitment to the child even when the child is making bad choices.
This brief offers practical tools to agency attorneys on their role in better engaging fathers in child welfare court cases. It includes guidance on: Identifying and locating fathers; Resolving paternity issues; Assessing whether the father can be a placement or other support to the child; Establishing agency policies that promote father engagement.
Other, Fact Sheet
Designed for judges, this bench card contains steps that judicial officers can take to help fathers participate in the child protection court process and case planning. (Author abstract modified)
Other, Fact Sheet
Designed for judges, this bench card contains ways in which judicial officers can help better engage fathers by understanding how men seek help and learn differently from women. They can also encourage the child welfare agency to work with fathers as often as mothers, offer services geared toward men's learning styles, and work as hard to find and engage fathers as mothers. (Author abstract modified)
Other, Fact Sheet
Identifying and locating fathers early helps children establish or maintain important connections with their fathers and paternal relatives. It also reduces delays in permanency, if the goal is adoption. Establishing paternity quickly after a putative father is located is critical to ensuring the case moves quickly and the father can assert and protect his constitutional rights to the care and custody of his child. Designed for judges, this bench card contains ways in which judicial officers can assist in this process. (Author abstract modified)
Federal law sets timelines for states' decisions about placing foster care children in permanent homes, and, in some cases, for filing to terminate parental rights. Some policymakers have questioned the reasonableness of these timelines for children of incarcerated parents and expressed interest in how states work with these families. GAO was asked to examine: (1) the number of foster care children with incarcerated parents, (2) strategies used by child welfare and corrections agencies in selected states that may support contact or reunification, and (3) how the Department of Health and Human…
Circle of Parents offers tips for parents in both English and Spanish. The tip sheets cover a range of topics including: Say What You Mean - Mean What You Say, Setting Rules and Consequences with Teens, Winning the Chore War, Tantrums, The Power of Choice, Parent Magic!, Swearing, To Discipline Means to Teach!, Defying Defiance, Lying, Handling Resistance, Schoolwork, Time Out!, Making Mealtimes More Pleasant, Sibling Rivalry, Hugging, and Rules: What's Fair?
New York state implemented a pilot employment program from 2006 to 2009 for parents behind in their child support. These pilot programs, part of the Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative, provided employment-oriented services, fatherhood/parenting workshops, case management, and other support services to nearly 4,000 parents behind in their child support in four New York communities. Our evaluation shows that these programs successfully helped participants find work, increase their earnings, and pay more child support. These gains continued for at least a year after…
This paper is designed to deepen the conversation by identifying the key readiness factors, overall capacities, and practices of both TANF agencies and FBCOs that have led to successful partnerships in eight communities. By examining important elements of these partnerships, we hope to provide guidance to other TANF agencies and FBCOs interested in collaborating to improve outcomes for families and low-income individuals.
Part of a series of fact sheets that discuss how and why the child support program provides innovative services to families across six interrelated areas to assure that parents have the tools and resources they need to support their children and be positively involved in raising them, this fact sheet focuses on family-centered innovations to improve child support outcomes. The need for family-centered child support services is explained, child support program accomplishments are shared, and the evolving child support program policy agenda is described. The collaboration of the child support…
