This video series, available through the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse, encourages fathers to show their “Dadication” to their children. The videos exhibit how fathers make time and show up for their children, even when facing common stressors like financial burdens and busy schedules.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report provides data that assesses the third cohort of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) grantees following their grant award in 2015. Data snapshots cover client recruitment and characteristics through the end of the grant in 2020. The data highlights staffing and implementation, services offered to support healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood, and other program components.

This research-to-practice brief reviews lessons learned from Seedco’s Office of Family Assistance-funded Strong Fathers, Stronger Families (SFSF) program which adjusted its service delivery model resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. SFSF helps fathers achieve financial stability by providing services focused on responsible fatherhood, healthy relationships, and economic stability. Seedco utilized a Continuous Quality Improvement process to service delivery that included continuous reflection on program improvements. Lessons learned focus on changes in recruitment and enrollment of participants, how program providers can deliver virtual workshops, how other services and referrals can be delivered virtually, the ways staff can change practices and procedures to enhance program benefits and minimize program limitations, and participants’ responses to virtual programming.

This research-to-practice brief focuses on a fatherhood engagement approach that was implemented in the Northeast Florida Healthy Start Coalition’s Fatherhood PRIDE program. The brief examines how Fatherhood PRIDE recruited, enrolled, and retained fathers by father-specific strategies and how the program partnered with other stakeholders that provide services to fathers. The brief also highlights the program’s intake process that captures and leverages participating fathers’ supports and networks.

The Fathers & Families Coalition of America will host its 22nd Annual National Conference as a hybrid event (with in-person and virtual events) from May 16, 2021 to May 19, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. The conference will include presentations on strategies to support students and families during the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual case management, supporting fatherhood and fatherhood engagement, child support, trauma-informed care, and overcoming adversity and building resilience. Six workshops will be offered as part of the advanced practitioner credential program. The conference registration includes a fee.

The Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood initiative provides funding for the Fathers Advancing Community Together (FACT) program in Contra Costa County, California. FACT offers responsible parenting, healthy relationships, and economic stability services, including workshops for low-income parents. This Urban Institute brief covers a survey of FACT participants that examined whether they believed they were equipped with the skills to be good parents and how participating in the workshops affected their capacity to save money and develop budgets or obtain employment.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief summarizes findings from three different demonstration projects that are designed to support noncustodial parents: the Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration (ETJD), Parents and Children Together (PACT), and the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED). The evaluations assessed whether employment and other supportive services to disadvantaged noncustodial parents affect participants’ earnings, parental engagement, and ability to make child support payments. Findings from these projects showed significant impacts on improving noncustodial parents’ employment and earnings compared to prior evaluations of similar programs. ETJD and CSPED examined child support payments, and neither study found an impact on the amount of child support paid. However, unlike previous evaluation studies, PACT and CSPED, which had parenting workshops as a core service, generated positive impacts on father-child contact.

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison hosted a webinar on December 2, 2020, which covered father-specific parenting programs targeting expectant and new fathers and young, low-income, and unmarried fathers. Presenters highlighted peer-to-peer programming for new fathers led by the African American Breastfeeding Network; a Dads Matters effort that brings fathers into perinatal home visiting programs; and the work of the Milwaukee Fatherhood Initiative that offers father-focused legal, health, and education services and parenting support.

As part of its M.A.N. C.A.V.E. (Men All Need to be Caring, Actively-Engaged, Vested, and Encouraged) Fatherhood Initiative, which aims to improve child well-being and promote positive relationships between fathers and their children, the City of Phoenix Head Start Birth to Five Program is sponsoring a free Fatherhood Virtual Summit on December 3, 2020 and December 4, 2020 from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. ET. This event will combine keynote presentations and breakout sessions geared toward parents, grandparents, foster care providers, educators, and others who work with or raise boys.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief presents four models to illustrate how program activities of Responsible Fatherhood (RF) programs may contribute to intended outcomes. The four models in the brief depict linkages between RF activities and, as measured in the Parents and Children Together (PACT) Evaluation, four intended outcomes of RF programs to include healthy relationships between co-parents, father development and well-being, consistent employment, and parenting skills and father involvement. The models also include research question recommendations for future evaluations to build the evidence base.