Session: Engaging Fathers in Services: Testing Strategies and Addressing Barriers (Society for Social Work and Research 21st Annual Conference - Ensure Healthy Development for all Youth)

Interest surrounding fathers in all aspects of family and child well-being continues to grow, and research designed to develop and test strategies to engage fathers in child and family services has increased substantially in recent years. As the field advances, knowledge has accumulated about the potential barriers to engaging fathers in services and the methodological challenges that researchers face in their attempts to study fathers and their families. Although progress has been made, gaps in the knowledge base remain. This collection of papers aims to broaden the knowledge base for father engagement research and practice, providing an overview of three studies of father engagement in child and family services. These papers provided new field tested strategies for engaging fathers in several settings using a variety of methods, including increasing the use of collecting data from fathers directly for their insight and perceptions of their own involvement rather than relying on mothers’ reports, as was often the case in prior research.

This symposium beings with an overview of the landscape of father engagement in early home visitation, examining the prevalence of participation and variations due to organizational and worker level factors. The paper identifies several areas that researchers should take into account when looking at father engagement as a potential outcome measure. Two papers then test out specific father engagement strategies in related areas. First, a mixed-methods analysis of a group based parenting intervention for fathers, looking at key indicators of feasibility and success of a peer based approach to recruitment and retention into the services. Fathers provide critical information on the barriers they faced both in participation but also being part of the peer-based approach to engagement. And finally, a large cluster randomized study, evaluating the impact of a father enhancement to traditional home visitation services. The study employs measures from both mothers and fathers, using innovative strategies such as audio recordings, to capture the co-parent relationship, father involvement, and child maltreatment indicators and compares these indicators across study condition.

Together these papers highlight the continued advancement of father involvement and engagement research, but point, in several instances, to barriers that continue to challenge the field. The findings will help guide future field research on father engagement through the more specific targeting and refinement strategies, and also better elucidate the specific factors that may influence engagement at multiple organizational levels.