2017-2023
Evidence suggests that fathers play an important role in children's development and that they can serve as a key source of emotional and financial support. In many social services, however, fathers have been historically overlooked. This has been the case in the child welfare system, where data from the Child and Family Service Reviews indicate that fathers and paternal relatives could be better engaged.
The purpose of this project was to apply what we know about the importance of fathers to strengthening father and paternal relative engagement in the child welfare system. Partnering with the Office of Family Assistance (which oversees the Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood discretionary grant program) and the Children’s Bureau, this project aimed to:
- Synthesize what we already know about a) efforts to engage fathers and paternal relatives of children involved in the child welfare system, and b) Continuous Quality Improvement approaches within the child welfare system;
- Map “touch points” within a child welfare case where fathers and/or paternal relatives could be more fully engaged;
- Identify potential strategies and interventions that could be used at the touch points to increase their engagement;
- Select a collaborative Continuous Quality Improvement approach and use it to work intensively with a few sites to implement and test these father and paternal relative engagement strategies and interventions;
- Conduct a pilot study to examine the feasibility and implementation of the Continuous Quality Improvement approach and the engagement strategies and interventions; and
- Conduct an evaluation of the selected continuous learning methodology and the engagement strategies and interventions.
This contract was awarded to Mathematica, with a subcontract to the University of Denver.
Point(s) of contact: Pooja Curtin and Katie Pahigiannis.
This study has registered the following descriptive evaluations on the Open Science Framework registry:
Information collections related to this project have been reviewed and approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under OMB #0970-0579. Related materials are available at the OPRE Study: Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare Project [Descriptive Study] page on RegInfo.gov.
The most currently approved documents are accessible by clicking on the ICR Ref. No. with the most recent conclusion date. To access the information collections (E.g. interviews, surveys, protocols), click on View Information Collection (IC) List. Click on View Supporting Statement and Other Documents to access other supplementary documents.
Information collections related to this project have also been reviewed and approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under ACF’s Generic Clearances. Related materials are available at the following pages on RegInfo.gov:
Formative Data Collections for ACF Research (OMB #0970-0356)
Formative Data Collections for ACF Program Support (OMB #0970-0531)