Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Fathers’ participation in child and family services has the potential to boost mothers’ engagement in interventions and extend outcomes. Positive fathering has been linked to important home visiting outcomes such as child maltreatment prevention, however, the field of home visitation has largely overlooked fathers’ roles in the family. As a result, scant evidence is available to guide home visiting programs in best addressing fathers’ roles in promoting positive child and family outcomes. This paper describes the preliminary results of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of an enhancement to home visitation services that addresses fathers and their roles in their young children’s lives, called “Dads Matter”. Dads Matter is a manualized intervention designed to assess the fathers’ role in the family to determine how he may best be engaged to build an effective, supportive, and productive co-parenting team with the child’s mother.

Methods:

A multisite clustered RCT was conducted, beginning with 21 home visiting program supervisors across five large organizations, including 204 families across condition. Supervisors were randomized to deliver Dads Matter enhanced services (intervention) or home visiting services as usual (control). We present findings on the outcomes of the intervention on fathers’ engagement and the father-home visitor relationship quality using self-report measures from workers and parents. Multi-level analyses are used to accommodate the clustered nature of the data. In addition, a qualitative study of 24 home visitors who participated in the RCT across both study conditions was conducted. Workers completed a brief survey and were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide by telephone. Triangulation of data sources, multiple coders, and member checking were used to enhance rigor. Major themes were produced a priori and implemented as tree nodes designed to focus on assessment and engagement strategies targeted by the training.

Results:

A high proportion of the 203 families (90%) were retained for both 4-month and 1-year follow-up interviews. The majority of parents identified as being Latino or African American and unmarried. Overall results were positive, showing that the proportion of fathers in home visits increased in the intervention condition and workers in the intervention condition increased the proportion of services they provide to fathers. In the intervention group, home visitors formed more positive relationships with fathers without compromising relationships with mothers. Qualitative data indicate that although many workers were reticent about engagement of fathers in services at first, they were able to “get over the hump” and build efficacy in engaging fathers in home visiting services. Qualitative data also suggest intervention-trained workers used more and varied engagement strategies with fathers that were reflective of the intervention training, as well as new and innovative strategies.

Conclusions and Implications:

Results of this study suggest that Dads Matter is a potentially feasible, acceptable, and effective approach to increasing fathers’ engagement in services. Preliminary intervention outcomes include fathers’ increased participation in home visiting services and improved relationship quality with workers. Qualitative data offer insights to strategies for improving home visitors’ willingness and capacity to engage mothers and fathers together in services.