A New Sure-Fire Tool that Leads to Better Father Engagement

If you want a sure-fire way to create low and no-cost strategies to increase father involvement in your organization’s programs and services, then your next step is to assess your organization’s father-friendliness.

Fortunately, it’s never been easier to do that thanks to National Fatherhood Initiative’s^® (NFI’s) new online, on-demand Father-Friendly Organization Workshop™, the newest addition to the lineup of trainings and other courses in the Father Engagement Academy™.

This powerful workshop provides you with an affordable and convenient training on how to create a father-friendly organization no matter your setting.

What makes the workshop so powerful?

It leverages the value of NFI’s popular Father Friendly Check-Up™ (FFCU) assessment. The FFCU helps individuals and organizations assess the degree to which an organization’s operations encourage father involvement in the services and programs it offers.

NFI developed the FFCU in 2000 to respond to the need of organizations for an assessment of their capacity to engage their staff in the delivery of services and programs for fathers, of their organization to increase father involvement in the families they serve, and for low and no-cost strategies to help them do so. NFI has refined it many times since then. Consequently, the current version is the culmination of more than 20 years of use and responds to feedback from the thousands of staff who have used it in organizations across the country that are as diverse as:

• State child support enforcement and home visiting programs
• Head Starts and Early Head Starts
• Parents as Teachers and Circle of Parents programs
• Child welfare agencies
• Community action agencies
• Pregnancy care and birthing centers
• Schools
• Public health departments; and
• Family support programs on military installations

Organizations in each of these settings have used the FFCU to effectively engage their fellow staff in delivering fatherhood services and programs and to increase father involvement in the lives of children.

Prior to this workshop, the FFCU was only available in a downloadable PDF file, which meant you had to print it, complete it, and score it manually. As a benefit of completing the workshop, you’ll have exclusive access to the fully-automated version of the FFCU that you can complete online and receive automatic calculations of all of your father-friendliness scores.

While the workshop ensures you get the most out of your FFCU assessment, it provides many features and benefits aside from the use of the FFCU. As a result, you’ll learn:

• About the 4 Father-Friendly Assessment Categories (Leadership Development, Organizational Development, Program Development, and Community Engagement).
• Why each assessment category is vital to an effective assessment of father-friendliness.
• Tons of tips to improve father-friendliness in each area.
• How 8 diverse organizations became more father-friendly.
• How to create a Father-Friendly Action Plan based on the assessment of your organization’s father-friendliness (template included).
• The importance of approaching father-friendliness from a systems perspective.
• How to access the FFCU assessment available only to those who take this workshop. It automatically calculates an overall score of father-friendliness and scores in each of the 4 assessment categories. Use it to create your Father-Friendly Action Plan.

Assessing your father-friendliness is an exercise that will pay great dividends for you and the families your organization serves. It’s never been easier, more efficient, and more effective to do so.

You can learn more about the Father-Friendly Organization Workshop™ and enroll here. 

Have you conducted a comprehensive assessment of your organization’s father-friendliness?

If so, how did the results inform your next steps to better engage fathers in your programs and services? Could you benefit further from a comprehensive online workshop and fully-automated assessment from the nation’s leader in father engagement, especially if it has been a minute since you assessed your organization?

If not, what are some next steps you can take towards completing a father-friendly assessment?