I’m excited to announce the release of the third edition of National Fatherhood Initiative’s InsideOut Dad® program! The first new edition of the program since 2012, it reflects our continued commitment to provide the highest quality, effective fatherhood programs and resources for use by organizations and other institutions that serve fathers and families.
The most widely used evidence-based parenting program designed specifically for incarcerated fathers, InsideOut Dad® is used in federal, state, and local corrections and corrections-related facilities (e.g. halfway houses) across the U.S. and in several other countries. Since releasing the first edition of the program in 2005, National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) has trained 1,935 individuals to facilitate the program. These individuals represent staff from nearly 800 corrections facilities and community-based organizations that partner with corrections facilities and systems to deliver the program.
This first part of a two-part post focuses on the process we used to create the third edition and the reasons behind issuing it. It also provides a broad overview of the improvements to the program. The second post will provide details on exactly how we improved it.
The Process
The third edition integrates feedback from facilitators and from fathers who have participated in the program. NFI gathered this feedback for five years. Why so long a period of time? Because determining whether to issue a new edition requires:
- A feedback system marked by constant communication with the organizations that run it and the people who participate in it. Our system includes feedback from facilitators during training institutes and technical assistance calls and email exchanges. It also includes feedback from fathers who send us letters about the impact of the program, specific components/content in it, and what, if anything, they’d like the program to address or include that it doesn’t. (We receive as many as 25 letters per month.)
- Diligence and patience. We carefully gather and record feedback and monitor independent evaluations of the program. We issue a new edition only when we receive feedback and evidence that reveal we need to make enough significant changes to the curriculum and its components such that simple updates to the current edition won’t cut it.
- In-depth interviews with facilitators that we’re on target. When we learn that a program needs enough significant changes that a new edition is necessary, we spend months identifying how to integrate those changes. We then schedule in-depth interviews with facilitators to get their input on those changes. For this new edition of InsideOut Dad®, we interviewed facilitators who deliver the program in federal, state, and local corrections facilities in different parts of the country.
The Reasons
By now you might have wondered what’s a “significant” change? A change that requires, for example:
- We add, move, or eliminate a session.
- We add, move, or eliminate an activity within a session and replace it with another one.
- A change in the content or flow of a specific activity.
- A change in structure to some or all of the sessions, such as a new tool or process common to those sessions.
- A change in the design of one or more curriculum components.
- Adding a new curriculum component(s).
We also don’t issue a new edition for its own sake or because “it’s time.” If a program that works doesn’t need to change, why change it? In this case, however, the feedback and evidence from the use of the second edition revealed that we needed to make enough of these kinds of changes to warrant the third edition.
There’s another vital reason we take care in issuing a new edition: the cost to upgrade to it. We’re very aware that many corrections facilities and systems and community-based organizations run a fatherhood program on a shoestring budget. We’re also aware that the use of funds to acquire a program and training on it can happen only during certain parts of a grant cycle (e.g. a startup phase) or specific times of the fiscal year. That’s why we include the following offers when we issue a new edition of any program. We:
- Offer a significant discount as part of a pre-sale when we announce the release of a new edition. During the pre-sale for the third edition of InsideOut Dad®, we’re offering $150 off the complete curriculum kit and the InsideOut Dad® Bundle that contains the new edition. The pre-sale lasts through the end of April. Come June 1st, we’ll have the kits in our warehouse ready to ship and charge the full price.
- Support the previous edition for one year after we release the new edition. This offer provides the time some current users need to upgrade. If you can’t upgrade now, we’ll continue to support the second edition of InsideOut Dad® through May 31, 2019. You can get all the Fathering Handbooks you need until that date. You can also get complete program kits and individual curriculum components (e.g. if you lose one and need a replacement) as long as supplies last. We’ll send reminders of this cut-off date as it approaches.
The Improvements
I’m so pumped about this new edition. In part two of this post, I’ll share all of the ways we improved the program. Here’s a taste.
- More research- and evidence-informed content.
- Updated and improved existing content. We improved the final session, for example, to help fathers more effectively process the impact of the program on them and their family.
- An earlier focus on “Fathering from the Inside.” We moved a core session and made critical related changes to nearly half the core sessions in the program.
- Added three optional reentry sessions that allow facilitators to dive deeper into a topic that facilitators and fathers said needs more depth, and that introduces a new topic they said the program needs.
- Added a new optional session to better ease fathers into the program.
- Improved the design of the Fathering Handbook and added a new tool to it that will help fathers to more effectively carry out their Fathering Plan.
- Improved the curriculum components so that, from a logistical perspective, it will be easier to facilitate the program and use some of its content. We also added some tools to help implement the program with fidelity and to customize it for delivery in jails and other short-stay facilities.
Now, if you just can’t wait until we publish the second part of this post next week, click here to download the information sheet to see exactly “What’s New!” And if you’re ready to order the third edition with pre-sale pricing, click here to get started!
Are you ready to implement a new, improved edition of InsideOut Dad®? There’s no better, more affordable time to upgrade.
Have you thought about acquiring InsideOut Dad®? There’s no better, more affordable time to start it.
