Engaging Low-Income Fathers in Home Visiting: Approaches, Challenges, and Strategies.

Home visiting programs have a long history in the United States and abroad as a tool for supporting vulnerable families by encouraging positive parenting, promoting child development, and improving maternal and child health. Although programs have traditionally targeted pregnant women and mothers of young children, in the last several years interest has grown in expanding home visiting to more explicitly include fathers. This brief highlights the experiences of a select group of home visiting programs in the United States that are engaging low-income fathers, including the approaches programs use, the challenges they face in engaging fathers, and the strategies they use to overcome these challenges. This information has implications for home visiting programs that wish to extend their services to fathers, as well as other programs that serve fathers, such as healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood programs. (Author abstract)