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| Promoting Responsible Fatherhood | Federal Resource Site |
Projects and Reports on Low-Income FathersInformation about programs designed to help low-income fathers obtain the skills they need to provide financial and emotional support for their children. |
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Restoring Fathers to Families and Communities: Six Steps for Policy MakersThis guide was developedby Kathleen Sylvester and Kathy Rich of the Social Policy Action Network to help fill the gap in information available for state and local officials about what they can do, legislatively and administratively, to help fathers help their children. Each of the six steps offered include a menu of policy options and provide detailed examples of what states, communities, and nonprofits nationwide are already doing to promote responsible fatherhood. The report is available fromthe Annie E. Casey Foundation, 701 St. Paul St, Baltimore, MD 21202. Phone: 410-547-6600. |
Connecting Low-Income Fathers and Families: A Guide to Practical PoliciesThis set of guides by Dana Reichart with contributions from Daniel Ash, Jenna Davis, and Matt O'Connor of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) are designed to assist state policymakers in their consideration of policies related to low-income families. They are intended to provide simple and concrete information about the challenges facing low-income fathers and offers a range of feasible policy alternatives that directly confront these barriers. Chapters cover building services, identifying partners, financing, etc. Also included are multiple fact sheets for practice and policy work. |
The National Evaluation of the Welfare-to-Work Grants ProgramThe Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program it created, made moving people from welfare to work a primary goal of federal welfare policy. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 furthered this goal, authorizing the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to award $3 billion in welfare-to-work grants to states and local communities to promote job opportunities and employment preparation for the hardest-to-employ recipients of TANF and for noncustodial parents of children on TANF. Grants are awarded directly by DOL on a competitive basis to programs in local communities with innovative welfare-to-work approaches, and through states, on a formula basis, to the Private Industry Councils or equivalent bodies in all JTPA service delivery areas (now Workforce Investment Boards, under the Workforce Investment Act, which replaced JTPA). |
Giving Noncustodial Parents Options: Employment and Child Support Outcomes of the SHARE ProgramThis welfare-to-work approach emphasized close monitoring of child support compliance and strove to limit the burden of child support obligations on the NCPs, so these did not become a disincentive to work. Specifically, The Support Has A Rewarding Effect (SHARE) initiative operated with Welfare-to-Work (WtW) grant support in three counties in the state of Washington. SHARE involved collaboration among the welfare and workforce investment systems, child support enforcement agency, and employment and training providers. The SHARESHARE offered three options to noncustodial parents (NCP) whose minor, dependent children were receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and who were in arrears on their support obligations:
The main objective of this study was to examine the employment, earnings, and child support outcomes for targeted NCPs. |
Partners for Fragile FamiliesHHS has a continuing partnership with the private-sector initiative, Partners for Fragile Families (PFF). This initiative is aimed at helping fathers work with the mothers of their children in sharing the legal, financial, and emotional responsibilities of parenthood. In March 2000, HHS approved ten state waivers for the Partners for Fragile Families Demonstration projects. Working at the community level with non-profit and faith-based partners to provide employment, health, and social services, these projects will test new approaches to involving young fathers with their children and to helping mothers and fathers build stronger parenting partnerships. Projects sites are located in California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The Office of Child Support Enforcement has funded Fatherhood Development Workshops on effective practices for working with young unemployed and underemployed fathers; the development of a manual for workers to use in helping low-income fathers learn to interact more effectively with the child support enforcement system; and a peer learning college for child support enforcement experts to identify systemic barriers these young fathers face in becoming responsible fathers. In addition, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) is supporting a 20-city, multi-year study of “fragile families”. This study, funded through a private/public partnership, will assess the effects of father involvement on child well-being, including fathers who live apart from their children on a permanent or intermittent basis. Preliminary data from several sites indicates that 44 percent of never-married fathers are living with their partners when their baby is born, that over 80 percent of fathers are providing financial assistance to the child’s mother during pregnancy, and that over 90 percent of mothers want the father to be involved in the child’s life. |
Parents’ Fair ShareSites in seven states participated in Parents’ Fair Share (PFS), a demonstration project conducted by MDRC that provided employment-related training, parenting education, peer group support, and mediation services to encourage low-income fathers to be more involved with their children and increase their payment of child support. Current available reports:
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OCSE Responsible Fatherhood Demonstrations
Eight states (California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Missouri, New Hampshire, Washington, and Wisconsin) received Responsible Fatherhood demonstration grants or waivers through the Office of Child Support Enforcement to allow them to test comprehensive approaches to encourage more responsible fathering by non-custodial parents. Each state project is different but they all provide a range of needed services such as job search and training, access and visitation, social services or referral, case management and child support. The initial implementation report, OCSE Responsible Fatherhood Programs: Early Implementation Lessons, and the final report OCSE Responsible Fatherhood Programs: Client Characteristics and Program Outcomes (in PDF format only) are available on line. The implementation report provides information about the program models used and the lessons learned in client recruitment and retention. The outcome report describes service delivery and program outcomes. The report indicates the responsible fatherhood services resulted in: increased employment rates, ranging from 8 to 33 percent, and increased incomes, ranging from 25 to 250 percent, especially for those who were unemployed previously; increased child support compliance, ranging from 4 to 31 percent; primarily for those who had not been paying previously; and increased time spent with children; 27 percent of the fathers reported seeing their children more often after the program. A press release on the outcome report is also available.. |
Welfare-to-WorkCurrently, HHS is working closely with the Department of Labor to implement the Welfare-to-Work program, which provides grants to states and communities to move long-term welfare recipients and certain non-custodial parents of children on welfare into lasting, unsubsidized employment. Amendments to WtW passed last year will make it easier to identify fathers eligible for services. The Administration for Children and Families and the Employment and Training Administration in the Department of Labor have issued a joint guidance to State Child Support Enforcement agencies, State TANF agencies and Welfare-to-Work grantees on strategies to enhance the recruitment, referral, eligibility determination, and provision of services to non-custodial parents under the welfare-to-work program. WtW grants represent a new and valuable source of funding for local work-focused services to noncustodial parents (NCPs). The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, working with the Department of Labor, sponsored a study of 11 selected WtW grantees with an NCP focus to identify how some WtW grantees have designed and implemented programs that address the employment and other service needs of NCPs. The study report, Serving Noncustodial Parents: A Descriptive Study of Welfare-to-Work Programs, prepared by The Urban Institute and Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., documents a variety of recruitment strategies and service approaches being implemented and highlights key issues that must be addressed to serve this population. [The report is also available in PDF format.] A limited number of printed copies of the report are available. For copies, send a fax labeled “Serving Noncustodial Parents” to 202-690-5514, identifying the name of the report you are requesting and provide your name and/or organization and complete mailing address. A special Welfare-to-Work (WtW) evaluation report, Giving Noncustodial Parents Options: Employment and Child Support Outcomes of the SHARE Program, was released in February 2003. Support Has A Rewarding Effect (SHARE), was an initiative operated with WtW grant support in three counties in the state of Washington. SHARE offered three options NCPs whose minor, dependent children were receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and who were in arrears on their support obligations: (1) start paying support, (2) enroll in a WtW program, or (3) face possible incarceration. As a program, SHARE involved collaboration among the welfare and workforce investment systems, child support enforcement agency, and employment and training providers. The SHARE approach emphasized close monitoring of child support compliance and strove to limit the burden of child support obligations on the NCPs, so these did not become a disincentive to work. In general, the program found NCP’s a hard-to reach-population and many NCPs eligible for the program never learned about SHARE because staff could not locate them, and some were incarcerated or had moved. The employment rate, earnings, and child support payments among all NCPs referred to SHARE increased. Factors other than SHARE probably played some role in the outcomes observed. However, differences in key outcomes for NCPs who took different paths through the initiative suggest that all or some of SHARE’s components — service of a summons, the threat of incarceration, the possibility of renegotiating obligations and arrears, WtW services, and ongoing compliance monitoring — may have played a role in the observed improvements for NCPs who did engage in the initiative. See also: Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration web site. |
The March-April 2000 issue of Poverty Research Center News is devoted to FathersAccording to the cover of the issue: “The issue looks at fathers — their contribution to child well-being, the part they play in welfare reform, and the unintended consequences of child support policy. Moving beyond the stereotype of “deadbeat dads”, the articles in this issue signal the role fathers can play beyond that of breadwinner. The authors review a range of policy and program initiatives, as well as chronicle the difficulties fathers face in sustaining a meaningful role in their children’s lives.” For more information, see the web site: Joint Center for Poverty Research. |
Last Revised: October 2, 2006
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