24/7 Dad™ Spotlight:
The Hoosier Dad Program
An Interview with Seth Tipton

Organization: The Children First Center
Location: Auburn, IN
Setting: Rural America
Program: Hoosier Dad
24/7 Dad™ Training Date: September 15 and 16, 2004
Organizational Background: The Children First Center (CFC) began in 1973 as a child and day care preschool for children with special needs. Since then, CFC has branched into three major home-based service areas: Family Preservation, Healthy Families, and Families First. CFC serves a four county area.

Family Preservation works to preserve families who are receiving welfare benefits. These families are referred from the welfare department. Family Preservation helps these families build skills for healthy and functioning relationships. Families are helped with issues such as: safety, cleanliness, discipline, budgeting, and employment, to name a few. Ultimately, helping families in these areas create a better atmosphere for their children. Family Preservation provides supervised visitation services as well. Another component is the Independent Living program for young men and women in the foster program. This is a state program to help individuals transition from foster care to adult independence.

Healthy Families is a state-funded program where young, pregnant women with certain risk areas are offered services. Healthy Families workers go into women's homes every week to help them with child development and health and safety issues.

Families First is CFC's early literacy program. Workers go to the homes of parents with pre-school aged children to get them involved with reading and academics in the home.

First Steps is offered for children birth to 3 with special needs. First Steps provides the parents with an individualized service plan and coordinates efforts with speech and physical therapists.

CFC also oversees the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).

Program Background:
Currently, the fatherhood coordinator, Seth Tipton, is the only male among 73 employees. The interest to begin a fatherhood program originated in CFC's home-based program where Seth started to see an increase of dads being referred. Seth was given the majority of the male clients. He also had a large number of young mothers, ages 14-18, in their independent living program looking for answers with regard to the father of their children. There was one common theme with these young mothers: they had a terrible relationship with their own father. As a result of these experiences, Seth became very interested in promoting involved, responsible and committed fatherhood, and it was at this time that he attended a 24/7 Dad™ Training Institute in Indianapolis, IN. Although Seth found the training and curricula "wonderfully motivating, informative, and effective," he would now have to return to the real world and implement it. After the initial awe wore off from the training, Seth kept working on the implementation with vigor and passion, "to the point where co-workers probably got sick of hearing my statistics, but I kept at it. You can't sell others, if you're not sold to the core yourself." Seth realized he first needed to do everything possible to generate excitement about the 24/7 Dad™ program within his organization. "Everyone agrees fathers are important in a discussion [about families], but do they really believe it deeply. This can be a hard sell. [The staff] had tried to come up with different techniques and strategies to get fathers involved in the past and they didn't work. They weren't necessarily anti-dad, but were very skeptical. They were basically saying, 'Great theory, but we will talk when you've got dads coming to class.'"


Seth uncovered an unmet need and opportunity when he realized there was a percentage of the population that couldn't get services because they went through the court system instead of the welfare system. The courts were dealing with situations like divorce, and moms saying that they didn't want the dads around the children. Seth was able to unlock this referral stream by offering supervised visitation and using fathering skills sessions from the 24/7 Dad™ curricula in a one-on-one setting. Although the dads pay for the service themselves, it provides them with the opportunity to build a closer relationship with their children. Seth monitors the interaction with the fathers and reports back as requested by the court. "The pre and post quantifiable-data from the 24/7 Dad™ assessment tools really gives us the power to do this with credibility. The courts and government leaders are looking for any and every solution to help dads with child support and visitation." The supervised visitation piece is important because it provides revenue, which helps sustain the Hoosier Dad program.

Seth also recognized the need to launch an ongoing 24/7 Dad™ program as the backbone of Hoosier Dad. He hand-selected 8 men using his marketing sales background, networking and follow-up to go through all 12 sessions of the 24/7 Dad™ program. He didn't charge the dads. When asked how he motivated these men to commit, Seth said, "People know things need to change, and this program provides them a rational explanation for the process." Seth also uses NFI's 3E strategy (educate, equip, and engage) to market and sell his program. At the end of the 12 sessions, Hoosier Dad will have a graduation luncheon with community, political and faith leaders to go over data, testimonials, and program design.

As a result of Seth's efforts, the 24/7 Dad™ program will now be court ordered, and social-service organizations from every sector will start referring fathers to the Hoosier Dad program. Seth says, "It's all about follow-up. I'm always asking my contacts, 'Do you have our referral forms? Do you have anyone who could benefit from this program?'"

The Hoosier Dad brochure is another recruiting tool that has been effective. The brochure uses the statement "...because you affect them" as a key element, which leads to the statement, "finally it's here," referring to the Hoosier Dad program. They have cited research-based statements from NFI's Father Facts 4th Edition to back up the importance of fathers.

The third component of Hoosier Dad is offering father-friendly trainings to the community. Seth says, "I want to go where fathers are working, exercising, watching sports and create a father-friendly community." Seth has begun a media blitz strategy surrounding each of the program's components, and will deliver organizational trainings on getting fathers more involved. He also stresses the importance of using PowerPoint® to deliver high quality presentations, especially when speaking before the probation department, prosecutors, the welfare department, and businesses.

Retention Strategies:
Hoosier Dad has established some key retention strategies for their 24/7 Dad™ program including:

• Fathers being court ordered to attend.
• Using great facilitators.
• Using a brand new, state-of-the-art facility in a hospital that was donated for Thursday evenings at no charge.
• Providing coffee, tea, fruit, juice.
• Finding the balance between having fun and recognizing this is a serious issue.
• Making sure the fathers feel like they're getting their voice heard.
• Encouraging and thanking fathers for participating in the program.
• Stressing the importance of the fathers being there.
• Developing a child-support forgiveness incentive.
• Being sensitive to the time of year in which the program is being delivered; for example, retention strategies are different in the winter vs. other times of the year when fathers are doing a lot more activities outdoors.
• Contacting social workers in the schools and integrating the program and message for young men.

Funding Strategies:
Hoosier Dad has submitted a proposal to the Indiana Kid's Trust program, where vanity plates will be created that say "Kids First". These funds will provide $25,000 for the 24/7 Dad™ program and father-friendly components of the program. Additionally, Hoosier Dad will invite private donors to the 24/7 Dad™ graduation luncheon as a way to build relationships with potential funders. Hoosier Dad will also continue to charge for some fatherhood services. Outcomes: Even though Hoosier Dad is a new program, it has already experienced the following outcomes:

• 100% retention with the original 8 fathers in the 24/7 Dad™ program, and they are still coming back enthusiastically.
• Hoosier Dad has been featured in KPC news articles.
• Hoosier Dad staff will write a monthly fathering piece in a parent magazine distributed by a large publishing group in Indiana.