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Training Materials Parents as Teachers Fatherhood Toolkit is a compilation of materials to enrich and enhance programs serving fathers in home visiting programs. Parents as Teachers builds strong communities, thriving families and children that are healthy, safe and ready to learn by matching parents and caregivers with trained professionals who make regular personal home visits during a child’s earliest years in life, from prenatal through kindergarten.
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After a number of years working with a caseload of 20 families in a rural community, I began to notice a trend: the lack of fathers present in the homes during my work. I began to question what our district could do to encourage the involvement of more fathers. After pondering this question, all the while doing little to nothing about the issue, I received an e-mail from our Parents as Teachers state leader. The e-mail was sent to all Illinois programs stating that the national center was looking to partner with a local program for a fatherhood initiative project. I jumped on the chance to…
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Training Materials This resource can help practitioners and service providers determine their organizations' readiness to provide services to fathers and father-figures. The chart breaks down key areas that organizations working with fathers would typically consider and how their actions can support those key areas to properly support fathers.
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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…
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…
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New York launched a pilot employment program to help parents behind in their child support in four communities between 2006 and 2009. The program was part of the state's Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative. Our evaluation found that the program's combination of employment assistance, case management, and other support services substantially increased the earnings and child support payments of disadvantaged parents who were not meeting their child support obligations.
This report makes recommendations for improving the evaluation of social programs and fostering partnerships between practitioners and evaluators. It calls for the field to have clearer guidelines on how evaluation can meet the particular needs and contexts of different kinds of programs, and for individual organizations and fields of practice to have the chance to demonstrate that they will use evaluative information for program improvement if afforded the opportunity to do so. Strategies include: promote a menu of credible evaluation alternatives that can be used when an randomized…
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This report discusses conclusions from a two-day meeting of representatives of local, State, and national agencies that focused on the potential benefits and challenges of interagency collaboration between relationship education and pregnancy prevention practitioners. It summarizes key themes from the meeting and strategic actions related to relationship education and teen pregnancy prevention that were highlighted in the meeting. The recommended actions include: launch pilot projects and projects to test promising practices and assess the effectiveness of blended strategies; include youth…
This newsletter highlights four interrelated investments made by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to support community-based solutions to strengthen families and neighborhoods. The investments include: tapping the strengths of faith-based organizations; removing stumbling blocks to opportunity for people returning from incarceration and their families; providing a foundation for healthy relationships and marriages; and supporting strong and responsible fatherhood. Examples of specific initiatives in each area are described and successful practices are highlighted.
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These resources are a snapshot of web-based materials available as of May, 2011; including field-shaping research and information sites, practical tools, and programmatic guidance for the important work of responsible fatherhood. (Author abstract)
