This report displays and discusses some of the data related to the poverty of children and their living arrangements and data on male employment and earnings, educational attainment, and incarceration. It then provides information on federal programs that could play a greater role in addressing poverty of children through the fathers of these children (nearly all noncustodial parents are fathers). These programs provide economic assistance, family support, and job training and employment to eligible participants. The report also examines federal programs that have the purposes of preventing teen pregnancy and helping disadvantaged youth obtain the skills and support they need to make the transition to adulthood. The underlying premise of these programs generally is that the aid or services received from these programs by low-income noncustodial fathers can help them in meeting their financial commitments to their children (or future children) and providing emotional support to their children. The report concludes by presenting several public policy approaches proposed by the policy community that might improve the lives of low-income noncustodial fathers and their children. For example, social policy could play a role by expanding economic assistance programs to noncustodial fathers, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); and implementing strategies to prevent the build-up of unpaid child support through early intervention. (author abstract)

The National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) hosted a Webinar on August 23, 2012, that provided ideas and resources to help increase father involvement in schools and their children's education. Information was provided on various initiatives that have helped engage fathers and father figures, inspire children, reduce bullying, and generally improve the educational environment in order that men may become more involved in the lives of their children.

This National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) hosted a Webinar that presented strategies and approaches you can use in your program to raise awareness and change behavior, and had an emphasis on working with men in a fatherhood context and empowering them to take these conversations to family, friends and community. Topics included: ways to raise fatherhood program participants' awareness of the realities of violent and controlling behavior and the negative impacts for children; emphasize communication, mutual understanding, and healing; and, ways to use fatherhood groups to reinforce the message and build mutual support systems to change behavior.

The National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) hosted a webinar that provided ideas and resources to guide work with fathers who are returning to the community from prison. This webinar offered participants an improved knowledge and understanding of: Federal Department of Justice prisoner re-entry priorities, supports, and guidance; research findings from a review of prisoner re-entry programs; and effective strategies and lessons learned from programs having success helping fathers who are returning from prison. The NRFC is funded through the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) and serves as a national resource for fathers, practitioners, programs/Federal grantees, States, and the public at-large who are serving or interested in supporting strong fathers and families.

The Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grant program authorized $75 million in grants for programs to promote responsible fatherhood through three types of activities: healthy marriage, responsible parenting, and economic stability. As such, this resource from the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation offers a systematic review of impact, implementation, and descriptive studies that have examined responsible fatherhood and related family strengthening programs that target low-income fathers.

From Lawrence Mead and Ron Haskins, through the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, this article analyzes why low-skilled men typically work in lower level positions and provide little support for their children. Authors argue for a program to tie child support with work requirements, which is an initiative that has previously been shown to increase employment. In particular, authors highlight the Noncustodial Parents Choices (NCP Choices) program in Texas as an example to build work enforcement into the child support system.

One in three children live apart from their biological fathers, and about 40 percent of these children live in poverty. From Seedco, this brief is part of the Learnings from the Field series, and provides insights from a new wave of programs designed to help low-income, noncustodial fathers and their families. The brief highlights Seedco’s comprehensive approach to serving fathers, which includes case management, employment training, parenting classes, and financial literacy programs.

This working paper is through the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing (CRCW) at Princeton University. With the increased Federal attention toward responsible fatherhood initiatives, this paper uses the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being to predict non-residential fathers' social and emotional involvement with their children. It was hypothesized that child, maternal, paternal, and contextual characteristics would predict father involvement. However, the data show that paternal characteristics and relational factors were the only significant predictors. Significant paternal characteristics include criminal involvement in the past year, number of children in the household and outside of the household, and whether or not he previously lived with the child. Significant relational factors include the mother's report of parental cooperation and relationship quality, the presence of domestic violence, and whether the mother has a new partner.