Beyond Checking the Box: How Participating in a Breakthrough Series Collaborative Supported the Efforts of Five Child Welfare Agencies to Engage Fathers and Paternal Relatives

This descriptive evaluation aims to assess the promise of the BSC framework for addressing challenges in child welfare. The BSC is a collaborative learning approach for addressing high-priority practice challenges, such as father engagement. Over the past two decades, the BSC has been used to address a number of challenges in child welfare.

The report shares findings for each of the research questions.

1. The FCL BSC helped agencies develop new father and paternal and relative engagement strategies and continue existing efforts. Despite challenges such as staff turnover and limited staff capacity, child welfare agencies continued to use strategies to engage fathers and paternal relatives after the BSC ended.
2. Child welfare staff reported that father and paternal relative engagement had improved with their agencies’ participation in the FCL BSC. Program data showed mixed engagement success with room for continued improvement. Overall, it was challenging for agencies to collect and use data to inform their practice and report on improvements.
3. Child welfare staff reported that their agencies had become more intentional about working with fathers and paternal relatives. They reported that active and engaged leaders promoted father and paternal relative engagement. To shift culture, agencies pursued officewide initiatives focused on the importance of fathers and paternal relatives and strategies such as making child welfare offices more welcoming and father-friendly. Community partners acknowledged the agencies’ efforts to shift organizational culture. Community partners, agency staff, and fathers and paternal relatives noted room for continued improvement.
4. Child welfare agency staff reported that participating in the FCL BSC was a valuable experience. Participating in the BSC helped child welfare agencies focus on addressing challenges in providing services, identify solutions with support from experts and other agencies, create new partnerships and reinforce existing ones, and lay a foundation for changes in practice and culture.

As a part of FCL, six teams representing five child welfare agencies participated in a Breakthrough Series Collaborative focused on father and paternal relative engagement between August 2019 and March 2021. During that time, the teams developed and tested strategies to improve the engagement of fathers and paternal relatives. More information about the implementation of the BSC in FCL is in the pilot study report, A Seat at the Table: Piloting Continuous Learning to Engage Fathers and Paternal Relatives in Child Welfare, which includes data collected through June 2020. The pilot study report describes how child welfare agencies engaged in the FCL BSC, what factors influenced their ability to do so, what strategies for change they developed, and which strategies might be sustainable.

This report describes their work to engage fathers and paternal relatives since the FCL BSC ended in March 2021, and assesses the potential contributions of the FCL BSC to lasting change. The Mathematica—DU team conducted three primary data collection activities between April 2021 and March 2023:

• Site visits to each agency included interviews with key staff, focus groups with child welfare and partner staff, and focus groups with fathers and paternal relatives who had recently closed child welfare cases.
• A survey of child welfare caseworkers, their direct supervisors, and partner staff asked for their perceptions on agency culture related to engaging fathers and paternal relatives in the child welfare system and their support for this engagement.
• Collection of program data related to the father and paternal relative outcomes in the FCL BSC logic model (receipt of referrals, extent to which their needs are assessed and addressed, engagement in the child welfare system, and engagement with their children) 

Baumgartner, S., N. Fung, A. Kalisher, S. Campbell, B. Hollie, J. Bellamy, E. Abendroth, R. Bess, and M. Stagner (2023). Beyond Checking the Box: How Participating in a Breakthrough Series Collaborative Supported the Efforts of Five Child Welfare Agencies to Engage Fathers and Paternal Relatives. OPRE Report #2023-223. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.