Toolkit for Building System Capacity to Engage Fathers and Paternal Relatives in Child Welfare

Publication Date: September 28, 2023

Introduction

Research reveals the protective and important influence of fathers and paternal relatives on the lives of children. For families engaged in the child welfare system, however, multisystemic factors can limit staff’s ability to engage fathers and paternal relatives authentically and meaningfully. The resources in this toolkit were developed as part of the Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare Project, administered by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) and sponsored by the Office of Family Assistance in partnership with the Children’s Bureau.

Six improvement teams from five child welfare agencies across the country participated in a Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC) to improve their engagement of fathers and paternal relatives and promote racial justice for men of color. BSCs help address complex issues embedded in systems. They engage staff at every level of organizations and communities to test, implement, and spread practice improvements across multiple settings. The toolkit resources will help child welfare agencies that want to structure their work to improve organizational culture as it relates to father engagement. They can use individual tools or all the tools, depending on their capacity and preferences. For those using multiple tools, we provide examples of how to use the tools in combination.

The tools are available in combination in one toolkit (PDF), and as individual tools. A webinar provides an overview of how to use the toolkit.

Purpose

This toolkit is designed to help child welfare agencies and their partners effect change at all levels of the system, ultimately incorporating engagement of fathers and paternal relatives into the fabric of child welfare activities. Its tools and resources will help multilevel improvement teams at child welfare the agencies build their capacity to use continuous learning approaches to assess and improve their work on an ongoing basis.

Key Findings and Highlights

Decorative

There are nine tools in the toolkit. Use of the tools is guided by the Collaborative Change Framework, an overall vision of an agency with optimal engagement of fathers and paternal relatives. The framework has five domains, each with goals for improvement teams to work toward. These include domain 1, support community, system, and agency environments that value and respect all fathers and paternal relatives; domain 2, achieve racial justice for men of color in the child welfare system; domain 3, identify and locate father and paternal relatives from the first point of contact with the family; domain 4,“assess and address the strengths and needs of, and barriers for, fathers and paternal relatives; and domain 5, continuously involve fathers and paternal relatives throughout the lives of their children. The additional eight tools teach the Plan-Do-Study-Act process and provide guidance for spreading and sustaining promising practices. They lead improvement teams towards developing a sustainability plan, so beneficial practices can be incorporated into standard agency procedures. Each tool includes an explanation of its purpose and an example of how to complete it.

Methods

The resources in the toolkit were developed and adapted during the BSC. The BSC improvement teams used the tools over 18 months beginning with a self-assessment, through developing a sustainability plan. They had the support of a BSC structure, the FCL project team, and faculty coaches. The FCL team field-tested the tools with four other child welfare agencies after the BSC. The current tools reflect revisions based on feedback from teams that participated in the BSC and those that participated in the field test.

Citation

Spielfogel, Jill, Candice Talkington, Jenifer Agosti, Amelia Forman, Roseana Bess, and Matthew Stagner (2023). Toolkit for building system capacity to engage fathers and paternal relatives in child welfare. OPRE Report #2023-189, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Glossary

Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC). The BSC is a continuous learning collaborative methodology used to test and spread promising practices to help organizations improve in a focused topic area. It has five key elements: (1) a Collaborative Change Framework; (2) inclusive multi-level teams; (3) a shared learning environment; (4) expert faculty coaches; and (5) a Model for Improvement. Each plays a critical role and works with the other elements in interrelated ways. Each BSC has a topic area of focus. Improvement Teams continuously identify, collect, and review data on the topic to gauge their organization’s progress toward specific outcomes.

Collaborative Change Framework (CCF). The change framework helps to guide the Improvement Teams’ work and creates a common language for BSC participants. For the Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare (FCL) project, it comprised five domains that collectively depict a child welfare agency that optimally engages fathers and paternal relatives. Each domain includes a set of related goals and strategies (also called change concepts) that Improvement Teams can test.

Faculty coaches. Faculty coaches share their expertise with Improvement Teams and facilitate shared learning across teams. For FCL, ACF and the Mathematica/Denver University team selected a group of six experts to support Improvement Teams and provide practice expertise related to the five domains of the Collaborative Change Framework. Faculty Coaches led affinity group calls and contributed to learning sessions and the content of all-team calls. The FCL team selected Faculty Coaches to ensure that diverse perspectives and identities were represented.

Fathers and Continuous Learning (FCL) in Child Welfare.  The FCL project tested the use of the Breakthrough Series Collaborative methodology. For this project, the FCL team used the BSC methodology to improve placement stability and permanency outcomes by strengthening the engagement of fathers and paternal relatives with children involved in child welfare, and to add to the evidence base on engagement strategies for fathers and paternal relatives. The Office of Family Assistance and directed by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in partnership with the Children’s Bureau, all within the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services funded the FCL project.

BSC improvement team. Six sites representing five child welfare agencies, each with a group of 7 to 14 people selected by each participating child welfare agency to lead the BSC activities. BSC Improvement Teams included a mix of administrators, managers, supervisors, child welfare caseworkers, community partners, and fathers and paternal relatives, although the composition of the teams varied from one site to another.