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
“Think big, act practically, and let your light shine” are key tenets of the Citizen Father Project, a program promoting leadership among fathers in the Minneapolis area. Developed through a partnership between a university and a fatherhood program, the Citizen Father Project forges relationships between fathers and professionals to build healthy families and communities. The project’s goal is to create community social change by addressing the problem of fathers not being positively involved in the lives of their children. Leaders draw upon parental resilience and collaborative social…
Fatherhood Summit Session
From policy to practice, funding, and organizational founding, women play a pivotal role in the promotion of responsible fatherhood. John C. Maxwell defines a leader as “one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” This session features three women—dynamic fatherhood program leaders—who know, go, and show the way to effective father engagement, strong program implementation, and continuous quality improvement.
Good leaders possess qualities that are unrelated to gender: honesty and integrity, compassion and commitment, inspiration and empathy, competence and confidence…
Fatherhood Summit Session
Addressing fathers’ employment needs is crucial in most fatherhood programs, but many dads face special challenges in finding work. This session began with a brief overview of how employment has been addressed in fatherhood programs through key demonstration projects such as Parents’ Fair Share. Next, the presenters described effective methods for providing employment services to a range of high-need fathers including noncustodial or nonresidential fathers, and fathers with criminal records, minimal education, or child support arrears. The presenters addressed common road blocks to…
Fatherhood Summit Session
Organizations across the country are considering—or actively offering—father-focused services. Whether new to the field or seasoned practitioners, all can benefit from developing, refining, and implementing strategies designed to engage fathers. This session will take participants on an exploratory journey of personal and organizational capacity to assess their readiness to set a place at the fatherhood table. Preparation involves careful consideration of whether a program’s policy, practice, and mission align with those of public and private funding organizations. Preparation also…
Accessing affordable child care is a common challenge for parents; it is especially difficult for those with low incomes who need education or training to gain knowledge and skills that can lead to higher paying jobs. Ideally, parents seeking job-related education or training would be able to access child care assistance as part of enrolling in occupational programs, but access varies across states, localities, and training providers. Accessing care for education and training can depend on numerous factors—from local policies and funding to the availability of child care that meets parents…
Brief
Since the 1970s, Americans’ household incomes have become more volatile, fluctuating year-to-year and week-to-week. Increased income volatility is particularly prominent among low-income families, many of whom are served by the U.S. system of means-tested income support programs. These programs provide income, goods, and services to families who prove that their income (and sometimes assets) are low enough to qualify for a particular program and meet other program requirements. At initial application, during benefit receipt, and at recertification periods, each income support program has…
Other
The Sustainability Framework and Assessment Tool was developed at the Center for Public Health Systems Science (CPHSS), a public health research center at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. The Center’s work in the area of sustainability began in 2003 with Project LEaP, a rigorous process evaluation examining the effects of funding reductions on eight state tobacco control programs. Recognizing that sustainability is a significant challenge for not only public health, but also social service and clinical care programs, in 2010 CPHSS began…
Brief
The Learn, Innovate, Improve (LI2) process is a systematic, evidence-informed approach to program improvement. LI2 involves a series of analytic and replicable activities, supported by collaboration between practitioners and applied researchers, to help human services programs design, implement, and iteratively test programmatic changes. As a continuous improvement process, LI2 is intended to build practitioners’ capacity for better using and producing high-quality evidence; ultimately, this process can be institutionalized within the program environment.Human services programs (such as…
Brief
Low-skilled men, especially minorities, typically work at low levels and provide little support for their children. Conservatives blame this on government willingness to support families, which frees the fathers from responsibility, while liberals say that men are denied work by racial bias or the economy--either a lack of jobs or low wages, which depress the incentive to work. The evidence for all these theories is weak. Thus, changing program benefits or incentives is unlikely to solve the men's work problem. More promising is the idea of linking assistance with administrative requirements…
