Here’s What We Know About the Work of Federal Fatherhood Grantees

Have you ever wondered what the organizations that received federal funding to implement responsible fatherhood (RF) programs did with those funds?

Wonder no more. The Office of Family Assistance in the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the federal RF grantees, recently released a voluminous report on the work of the most recent cohort of grantees (2015-2020).

The report describes:

• The 40 programs in the cohort and the fathers (and couples) they served
• Recruitment activities
• Characteristics of the fathers served
• Services provided and how they were implemented
• Changes experienced by fathers from the time they started a program until a program ended
• Findings from 15 process evaluations of programs’ impact
• Findings from eight outcome evaluations of programs’ impact

Here are some areas of this 62-page report that you might want to dive into:

• The four common ways that RF programs used to recruit fathers, the tactic that provided the bedrock of programs’ recruitment efforts, and the role of incentives in recruitment
• Fathers’ main reason for enrolling in a program and the challenges that kept them from attending consistently and completing a program
• The proportion of fathers who were in a romantic relationship when they started a program and still in such a relationship when a program ended
• How much of a program fathers received on average, known as program dosage
• Whether during the entire grant period programs consistently trained staff on the curricula they used
• What the 15 programs that conducted process evaluations learned about program operations and implementation and changes in fathers over time
• What the eight programs that conducted outcome evaluations learned about program impact on healthy relationships, parenting skills and behaviors, and child well-being

The report contains a ton of great information that you might find valuable in your father-serving effort. I encourage you to download, read, and share the report.

What might you learn from the experience of federally-funded RF programs?