The Administration for Children and Families works hard every day to promote the economic and social well-being of families, children, youth, individuals, and communities. Our program offices offer supportive services, funding, strategic partnerships, guidance, training, and technical assistance. This work is done with a commitment to whole-family, community-based approaches, one of ACF’s five strategic goals. Engaging fathers is a key part of these approaches.
Recently, ACF formed a Fatherhood Taskforce, an internal working group with a short-term goal to address ongoing or emerging issues related to father engagement across ACF programs. Taskforce meetings focus on promising practices, opportunities for collaboration, and solving challenges that offices are experiencing. OCSS and the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) have collaborated on several items. OCSS presented a Child Support 101 webinar to OFA Health Marriage Responsible Fatherhood grantees on May 29 to help them understand child support services and how to help clients meet child support obligations. Our programs also held successful meetings in April and May to introduce OFA’s grantees to their local child support offices and build a bridge for them to collaborate on father engagement.
ACF also published a resource to connect dads to other services that help with child support, employment, housing, health insurance, and more. This resource helps dads learn about these programs, their eligibility requirements, and how to apply for them. The flyer is available in English (PDF) and Spanish (PDF), and local human service programs can use it in their outreach to fathers.
Register for National Fatherhood Summit — Aug. 13 to 15
Collaboration between program offices and practitioners will be discussed more broadly at ACF’s 2024 National Fatherhood Summit: From Foundations to the Future on August 13-15 in Atlanta. This event will bring together fathers, experts, leaders, and advocates from across the country to share knowledge, best practices, and innovative strategies for engaging and supporting dads. We want to find ways to enhance services and systems to empower fathers to be an active and loving presence in their children’s lives.
Registration is free and open to the public. Register for the National Fatherhood Summit by July 19 . I hope to see you there!
Tanguler Gray, Commissioner
This blog gives the commissioner a forum to communicate directly with child support professionals and other partners about relevant topics. The Commissioner’s Voice is reprinted from the June 2024 Child Support Report newsletter.