Leading Minnesota's campaign for healthy fatherhood.

3 Processes for Engaging Fathers in Child Welfare

• Family Group Decision Making: Find multiple links from Minnesota DHS or American Humane. 

• Signs of Safety: Find more information, here.
• Wraparound: Find various links, here.

Advocating for Nonresident Fathers in Child Welfare Court Cases
This 170-page guide describes ways to work with fathers, practice tips for working with men, ways to navigate the court system, and issues related to incarceration, ethics, and male help-seeking behaviors. Online here (free print copies are also available, 2009).

Child Protection Workers: Engaging Fathers
This 2-page InfoSheet discusses research on child welfare agencies' efforts to identify, locate, and involve nonresident fathers. Available here (August 2008).

Father Engagement Practice Bulletin
This 2-page from the Iowa Department of Human Services provides expectations and strategies for child welfare workers to utilize regarding father engagement, here.

Father Involvement – Meeting CFSR Standards
The National Family Preservation Network developed this 17 page guide to help child welfare agencies improve their practice and outcomes regarding fathers’ involvement with their children and their children’s cases, here. (2010)

Fathering After Violence
The Family Violence Prevention Fund offers a framework  for enhancing the safety and well-being of women and children by motivating men to renounce their violence and become better fathers. Online here.

Father Inclusion Checklist
This checklist, developed by Carver County, provides a way to ensure county agencies are making diligent efforts to find non-custodial parents. Online here.

Fathers' Rights and Roles
This issue of Rise Magazine, by and for parents in the New York child welfare system, addresses parents' perspectives of father involvement. Online here (Spring 2009).

Fathers as a Resource for Children in the Child Protection System
The Minnesota State Bar Association Family Law Section published this article in Family Law Forum. Online here

FrameWorks Institute: Talking about Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention
This website offers tools and research about how to talk about abuse prevention, how Americans think about child development, and how to improve public policies and programs to lessen abuse and neglect. Online here.

Gatekeeping: Mom as a pathway to healthy father involvement
Mothers play a central role in how fathers are involved with their children, whether they live together or not. Mothers can facilitate or hinder the father's involvement, often serving as gatekeepers between dads and kids. Learn more here Also, Talking with Moms about Engaging Dads is intended to help professionals engage mothers to engage the fathers of their children in healthy ways. Learn more here (4-page PDF, Sept. 2009).

Identifying, Interviewing, and Intervening: Fathers and the Illinois Child Welfare System
This study, conducted by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, examines the Integrated Assessment program used in Illinois, here. (2009) 

The Importance of Fathers in the Healthy Development of Children
This 127 page document is part of the Child Abuse and Neglect User manual series from the United States department of Health and Human Services, here. (2006) 

Literature Review on Non-Resident Fathers, Paternal Kin and the Child Welfare System
The executive summary was written by Quality Improvement Center on Non-Resident Fathers, here. (2008)
 
National Quality Improvement Center on Non-Resident Fathers and the Child Welfare System
(Fall 2008).
The National Quality Improvement Center on Non-Resident Fathers and the Child Welfare System (QIC NRF) is a collaborative effort of various organizations. QIC NRF is working to determine, through a research design, the impact of non-resident father involvement on child welfare outcomes. More here.

Olmsted County Child and Family Services Expectation for Parental Involvement
This 11-page policy statement describes the southern Minnesota county's expectation for involving both parents in child welfare services, online here (2008).

The Protector: Dads as Assets for child safety and well-being
This 2-page InfoSheet describes the 5 protective factors developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy that focus on the prevention of abuse and neglect, here. (May 2010) 

What About the Dads? Child Welfare Agencies’ Efforts to Identify, Locate, and Involve Nonresidential Fathers
This study  by the Urban Institute examined child welfare practices with respect to identifying, locating, and involving fathers of children in foster care including whether child support resources were used, here (April 2006). Also, More About the Dads: Exploring Associations between Nonresident Father Involvement and Child Welfare Case Outcomes, a resource document published by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. It explores child welfare case outcomes as they relate to non-resident father involvement, here. (Feb. 2008) 

Working with Fathers: A Program Improvement Resource
To better involve fathers, the Minnesota Department of Human Services developed practice tips organized around the five basic child welfare casework functions of engagement, assessment, case planning & implementation, monitoring & evaluation, and case closing, here. (April 2009)