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Training Materials The one-day Social Worker Training Curriculum: Engaging the Non-Resident Father was designed to provide participants with knowledge to support a practice shift toward engaging non-resident fathers in child welfare cases involving their children. The need to engage fathers initially resulted from the federal Child and Family Service Reviews (CFSRs) and the “What About the Dads?” report, which identified a lack of meaningful engagement of fathers by child welfare systems. This curriculum was funded by the QIC-NRF, which was designed to develop knowledge and research that determine how…
Children who grow up in single-parent families are more likely to be poor, have trouble in school, and become teen parents themselves. Additionally, children who are born to a mother who is a teenager, who hasn't finished high school, and who isn't married are nine times more likely to be poor than a child whose mother is even a few years older, is married and has at least finished high school. Thus, strengthening families through both teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) and marriage and relationship education (MRE) programs is an effort to decrease out-of-wedlock childbearing and increase the…
Intended to assist organizations who have received federal funding for Responsible Fatherhood programming, this guide provides information on the evaluation of Responsible Fatherhood initiatives. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of program evaluation and presents the reasons for evaluating a project; what information organizations can expect to gain; and how to use evaluation information to inform a project. Chapter 2 includes an overview of the Office of Family Assistance's (OFA's) Responsible Fatherhood initiative; introduction of the Responsible Fatherhood conceptual model; and a…
This resource guide is designed to assist social service programs in developing evidence-based programs. It begins by explaining concepts underpinning evidence-based practice and highlighting the use of practices that have demonstrated efficacy in improving participant outcomes. Evidence-based programming is defined as specific programmatic activities and processes which appear to be related to positive outcomes for program participants. Section 1 of the report focuses on project conceptualization and reviews programming decisions that will have a long term impact on the project. It…
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Journal Article Research on family structure has led some to claim that sex-based parenting differences exist. But if such differences exist in single-parent families, the absence of a second parent rather than specific sex-typed parenting might explain them. We examine differences in mothering and fathering behavior in single-parent households, where number of parents is held constant, and we describe individualist and structuralist perspectives for potential sex-based parenting behaviors. We compare 3,202 single mothers and 307 single fathers in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Kindergarten Cohort…
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Journal Article Using a sample of 3,977 youths from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), this study examines the unique characteristics of single-custodial-father families with adolescents and the effects of single fathers' involvement and parenting on outcomes in emerging adulthood. Findings suggest that single-custodial-father families are distinct from single-mother and 2-biological-parent families in terms of sociodemographic characteristics, parenting styles, and involvement. Parenting styles and involvement mediate the differences between single-father families and 2-parent families in…
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Journal Article Jane Waldfogel, Terry-Ann Craigie, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn review recent studies that use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) to examine why children who grow up in single-mother and cohabiting families fare worse than children born into married-couple households. They also present findings from their own new research.Analysts have investigated five key pathways through which family structure might influence child well-being: parental resources, parental mental health, parental relationship quality, parenting quality, and father involvement. It is also important to…
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Journal Article To improve the quality and stability of couple and father-child relationships in fragile families, researchers are beginning to consider how to tailor existing couple-relationship and father-involvement interventions, which are now targeted on married couples, to the specific needs of unwed couples in fragile families. The goal, explain Philip Cowan, Carolyn Pape Cowan, and Virginia Knox, is to provide a more supportive developmental context for mothers, fathers, and, especially, the children in fragile families.The authors present a conceptual model to explain why couple-relationship and…
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Journal Article Since the mid-1970s the U.S. imprisonment rate has increased roughly fivefold. As Christopher Wildeman and Bruce Western explain, the effects of this sea change in the imprisonment rate--commonly called mass imprisonment or the prison boom--have been concentrated among those most likely to form fragile families: poor and minority men with little schooling.Imprisonment diminishes the earnings of adult men, compromises their health, reduces familial resources, and contributes to family breakup. It also adds to the deficits of poor children, thus ensuring that the effects of imprisonment on…
This book summarizes the current research on children whose parents are incarcerated, and discusses the implications of those findings for policy and intervention. It uses a developmental perspective to integrate theory with research and delineates how both resilience processes and contextual factors shape experiences and outcomes for children whose lives are affected by the incarceration of a parent. Following a chapter on multidisciplinary perspectives on research and intervention with children of incarcerated parents, Part 1 discusses background information and current trends in service…
