Effectively involving fathers in protecting and parenting their children sometimes presents unique challenges and may require special strategies. Find related organizations and tips and resources for engaging fathers in caring for their children.
Supporting Fatherhood at a Community Level
Caring Dads
Offers intervention to fathers, trains communities in engaging, assessing, and intervening with high-risk men, and conducts research to improve outcomes.
Definition for Father Involvement Interventions
The California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare
Provides information on programs that aim to increase fathers’ active and positive engagement in their children's lives. Father-focused programs promote involvement, provide support and education, teach fathers new parenting skills, and strengthen families.
Early Implementation of Findings From Responsible Fatherhood Reentry Projects
Fontaine, Rossman, & Cramer (2015)
Focuses on the initial Centered Responsible Fatherhood Ex-Prisoner Reentry Pilot Projects funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, specifically the programs’ administration and structure, target populations, and prerelease and post release activities. These programs provide soon-to-be and recently released fathers and their families with an array of responsible parenting, healthy relationship, and economic stability services to help stabilize the fathers and their families.
Engaging Fathers
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Head Start Bureau
Provides information and resources to enhance father engagement efforts, including wall posters to create father-friendly environments and a webinar on supporting fathers with the help of communities.
Fatherhood Research and Practice Network
Presents a 5-year national project that (1) promotes rigorous evaluation of fatherhood programs that serve low-income fathers, (2) expands the number of researchers and practitioners collaborating to evaluate fatherhood programs through in-person and virtual trainings, and (3) disseminates information, including new evaluation findings, that lead to effective fatherhood practice and evaluation research.
Father Involvement and Child Welfare: The Voices of Men of Color
Brodie, Paddock, Gilliam, & Chavez (2014)
Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics, 11(1)
Analyzes how unintentional bias can affect paternal involvement in child welfare case management through focus groups of fathers from underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds in the San Francisco Bay area.
FRPN Research Brief: Attendance in Community-Based Fatherhood Programs
Fatherhood Research and Practice Network (2018)
Addresses low attendance in fatherhood programs through reviewing attendance measures, influences on attendance, and the effects of attendance on fathers’ outcomes. The brief then provides practice guidelines for improving father attendance and participation.
How Can We Better Engage Fathers in Prevention?
Casey Family Programs (2019)
Provides organizational strategies and resources to better support fatherhood initiatives and interventions in order to improve children’s safety and prevent maltreatment.
Project Fatherhood
Children’s Institute
Provides fathers with support, education, and other services at no cost to help them learn to be more engaged and actively involved in their children’s lives.
Resources for Engaging and Supporting Native Fathers
Capacity Building Center for Tribes (2016)
Provides a list of resources focused on engaging and supporting Native fathers.
Supporting Father Involvement: An Intervention With Community and Child Welfare–Referred Couples
Pruett, Cowan, & Gillette (2019)
Involvement: An Intervention With Community and Child Welfare–Referred Couples. Fam Relations, 68
Expands on the evidence base study, Supporting Father Involvement (SFI), to include child welfare families. The programs aims to strengthen co-parenting, parent–child relationships, and child outcomes.
National Child Abuse and Neglect Technical Assistance and Strategic Dissemination Center
View Abstract and Document
Provides resources that practitioners can use to engage fathers, build their protective factors, and increase their involvement in their children’s lives.
Supporting Fatherhood at an Individual Level
Dads Rock! Nurturing Father Engagement [Video]
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau, Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, National Child Abuse and Neglect Technical Assistance and Strategic Dissemination Center (CANTASD) (2018)
Father Engagement and Father Involvement Toolkit
California Social Work Education Center (CalSWEC), University of California Berkeley (2018)
Provides a fatherhood engagement toolkit for communities and local organizations, complete with engagement and communication tools, assessments, trainings, policies and procedures, and evaluation tools.
Fathering Activities
FatherWork, Brigham Young University
Activities for fathers categorized by eight different stages in the child's life.
Fathers Matter: Involving and Engaging Fathers in the Child Welfare System Process
Campbell, Gordon, Howard, & Rayford (2015)
Highlights efforts to improve involvement of fathers for children who are involved in the child welfare system. The report concludes with recommendations for better engaging and involving fathers.
FRPN Research Brief: Coparenting and Low-Income Fathers' Satisfaction with Parenting (PDF - 252 KB)
Levine, Kaufman, Hammar, & Fagan (2015)
Outlines the importance of fatherhood programs that promote healthy coparenting as a means to encourage active and engaged father-child relationships. The brief reviews findings on low-income nonresidential fathers' views of coparenting and satisfaction with their relationships with their children.
How Can Fathers and Other Constituent Leaders Inform Family First and Other System Change Efforts?
Casey Family Programs (2019)
Describes the importance of involving parents, especially fathers, in designing the child welfare system.
National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse
Promoting Responsible Fatherhood and Strong Communities
Connects visitors with current research about strengthening the father role in families in the context of individual tips and programmatic design.
Strategies for Practice in Helping Fathers Step up to the Plate and Stay Engaged
Kirven (2014)
Cleveland State University
Journal of Family Strengths, 14(1)
Provides practitioners with the tools to implement family strengths perspective and encourage them to incorporate family strengths into working with fathers. Clinical impressions are discussed, including Holistic Integration Techniques and other intervention strategies for practitioners to implement.
Supporting Fathers and Strengthening Families
Child and Family Research Partnership (2017)
Explains the importance of father involvement for child well-being and development and increasing protective factors in families. The report also discusses the disproportionately in fathers and father figures being implicated in child maltreatment.