This newsletter, from the North Carolina Department of Social Services and the Family and Children's Resource program, gives guidance on best practices to serving families. The article focuses on fatherhood involvement in child welfare and strategies for improving engagement among fathers.

This resource provides information to stakeholders running fatherhood programs with tools related to fatherhood, including program development and funding and the Responsible Fatherhood Management Information System.

The Urban Institute, with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, conducted the Study of Fathers' Involvement in Permanency Planning and Child Welfare Casework. This study reviewed the extent to which child welfare agencies identify, locate, and involve nonresident fathers in case planning. This paper reviews the results of the study on the steps that child welfare agencies take with engaging nonresidential fathers,; possible barriers, and the policies that affect involvement.

From the Children's Bureau, Office of Child Abuse and Neglect, this manual was built upon the important role that fathers play in child wellbeing. Authors review how to enhance the roles of fathers in their children's lives. Providing guidance to CPS caseworkers, this resource provides recommendations to increase father involvement in the case planning process.

This pilot Healthy Marriage Initiative, called Healthy Marriage, Responsible Fatherhood, was implemented in Nampa, Idaho as a coalition of faith- and community-based partners. Through OPRE, this resource provides information on the local implementation of a healthy marriage campaign.

Authored by Kelly Noonan, Rider University, National Bureau of Economic Research; Nancy E. Reichman, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey; and Hope Corman, Rider University, National Bureau of Economic Research. In this report, the authors estimate the effect of poor child health on the labor supply of new fathers post- welfare reform, using a national sample of mostly unwed parents and their children--a group at high risk of living in poverty. The researchers address the potential endogeneity of child health and find that having a young child in poor health reduces the father's probability of being employed by eight percentage points and that it reduces his work effort by over five hours per week. These results add to a growing body of literature suggesting that young children with serious health problems are likely to receive lower levels of health investment than their healthier peers.

With assistance from the Welfare Peer TA Network, the Partners for Community in Bloomington, Illinois and the Illinois Department of Human Services participated in a site visit to a model intermediary program in Oklahoma, the Cornerstone Assistance Network. The Cornerstone Assistance Network facilities and fosters community and faith partnerships through education and interaction. The report provides a summary of the site visit.