Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: Building Evidence for Responsible Fatherhood Programs and Programs Serving Justice Involved Parents

(Family and Child Policy)

Fathers play a unique role in their children’s lives and development, but some fathers face personal or societal barriers to positive involvement with their children — such as low levels of education, stigma from criminal records, declining wages for low-skilled men, or family instability. Research suggests that a father's absence and lack of paternal involvement can have negative consequence for both the children and fathers. Responsible Fatherhood programs aim to address these types of barriers. Programs often use a multi-component approach to service delivery by providing a combination of parenting, economic stability and self-sufficiency, and healthy relationships and marriage supports. Despite the growing number of programs and increasing policy and research interest, the field of fatherhood programming still lacks a solid body of rigorous evidence or evidence-based program models.

This panel will explore recent developments in the quest to build evidence of program models to strengthen father-child engagement, improve employment, and improve healthy relationships and marriages, with a particular focus on justice-involved parents.

First, impact findings from the Parents and Children Together (PACT) multi-site random assignment evaluation will be presented. This presentation will focus on the 12-month impact findings from four Responsible Fatherhood programs including rigorous evidence on the causal effects of the programs on key outcomes such as fathers' engagement with their children, employment and economic self-sufficiency, and co-parenting and romantic relationships. These results provide evidence from one of the few randomized trials that have been conducted on multi-component fatherhood programs.

Second, early participation results will be shared from the Building Bridges and Bonds (B3) evaluation; this evaluation represents a next phase of evidence-building for fatherhood programs. Three innovative program approaches were added to existing fatherhood programs and are being rigorously evaluated through a random assignment study. This presentation will focus on early implementation findings from the three-site test of Cognitive-Behavioral Intervention for Justice Involved Individuals Seeking Employment (CBI-Emp), a workshop-based curriculum that pairs traditional job-readiness services and cognitive behavioral skill-building with interactive learning techniques to help fathers learn better ways to react to challenging on-the-job situations. Demographic characteristics of the study members will be shared as well as lessons from the sites' experiences with recruitment and keeping fathers engaged in services.

Finally, although we more often think about justice-involved fathers because there are more of them, justice-involved mothers also must overcome barriers to positive involvement with their children and the labor market. The final presentation will present some promising practices and policies to address challenges parents who have been incarcerated face to realize family self-sufficiency and well-being. The promising practices and policies discussed will draw from a review of recent literature as well as conversations with academic and programmatic experts in the field of supporting families affected by parental incarceration.