As part of the AdoptUSKids Professional Leadership Development Program (APLD), Regina Branch and Jamielah Jenkins of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) explored ways to better engage fathers and paternal relatives to ensure children have a permanent family.
Both action research projects sought to address the fact that fathers and their relatives are often overlooked in child welfare cases, even when they can be a possible placement or can help case managers identify other placement options.
In particular, the projects emphasized how engaging fathers at the beginning of a case can lead to positive outcomes.
Finding and engaging fathers early
To ensure case managers were searching for and connecting with fathers as soon as a child entered foster care, Regina Branch, special advisor with the MDHHS Children’s Services Administration (CSA), partnered with five counties for her project. As part of the project, she:
- Trained CSA administrative staff on using the Child Paternity Registry (CPR) and how to generate an affidavit of parentage, including providing examples and demonstrating how to overcome obstacles.
- Updated and streamlined a CPR form that staff in the five counties can use to request paternal searches.
- Shared a list of community resources available to support fathers in each county.
- Created a decision tree that helped staff address barriers when they weren’t able to find or engage fathers.
- Listened to fathers about their needs and recommendations for improvements and connected them to supportive resources in the community.
Working with fathers early in the case helped ensure that fathers and their relatives were found and engaged, which should ultimately lead to increased placement opportunities for children entering care.
The project demonstrated a need for a culture shift to ensure that child welfare professionals value fathers and engage with them. One of Branch’s key findings was that when case managers viewed engaging fathers as an opportunity, the case managers were more positive about the effort and had more supportive interactions.
Changing policy and practice to emphasize fathers and relatives
APLD fellow Jamielah Jenkins, MDHHS family advocate specialist, also had an action research project focused on fathers and their relatives.
First, she found research that showed children fared better with relatives. She then assessed agency data that showed if a child’s initial placement in care was not with relatives, the child was less likely to ever be placed with kin. As part of her project, she worked with three diverse counties that had relative placement rates below the national average. She:
- Designed the Kinship Exception Review (KER) form to emphasize the importance of engaging with at least five maternal and paternal relatives.
- Added clear guidance on the KER that a kinship exception would be denied when there wasn’t meaningful engagement with or assessment of fathers or other relatives, or when barriers that prevented kinship placement had not been documented.
- Required the use of barrier indicators on the agency’s Relative Documentation Form to show when case managers were unable to locate or approve kinship placement options before moving forward with a non‑relative placement.
- Trained Children’s Protective Services case managers and county supervisors on the importance of kinship placements, including sharing information on state kinship policy and local relative-placement data and on how to use the KER form and family‑finding tools.
- Collaborated with the additional support provided by CSA regional child welfare analysts who used LexisNexis searches to help identify and locate fathers and relatives.
After the project, the counties had better engagement with fathers, including fathers who helped connect case managers to their relatives for placement. All three counties significantly increased the percentage of children who were placed with relatives.
Expanding commitment to fathers and relatives
During and after these projects, MDHHS undertook a significant effort to improve its ability to reach and support fathers. The agency:
- Created a Fatherhood and Parental Engagement workgroup, which includes multiple internal and external state government partners.
- Created a new goal to place 75 percent of children in care with relatives.
- Partnered with grassroots and local organizations that are already working with fathers.
- Shared information from both action research projects statewide.
- Suggested enhanced training for new case managers to emphasize the importance of engaging fathers and relatives and to teach them how to find and engage these individuals.
- Increased the number of fathers with lived experience in child welfare who partner with the agency in various ways.
- Helped create a conference on father engagement and monthly lunch-and-learn trainings through partnerships with fatherhood engagement organizations.
By partnering with nonprofits and other public agencies already working with fathers, Michigan can accomplish more outreach to dads while avoiding duplicating efforts. With their community partners, MDHHS hosts regular caregiver engagement events such as Dad Cafés and Dinner with Dads.
At these events, fathers come together for a meal and share their experiences with MDHHS staff and leadership on topics such as co-parenting and navigating systems. The local partners offer information on the services they have to support fathers and learn from fathers about what else they might need to thrive.
Recommendations from the APLD fellows
When asked what other agencies might do to better engage fathers and their relatives early in a case, Branch and Jenkins shared the following suggestions:
Ensure that fathers are heard and supported
Engagement efforts like Dad Cafés and Dinner with Dads offer agencies the opportunity to hear from fathers while connecting fathers and the agency to community partners for support and resources.
Another important effort is ensuring that fathers are invited to family team meetings and have the chance to bring members of their support network to ensure they are truly and effectively engaged.
Create avenues for ongoing input
Agencies should look for ways to gather insights from fathers with lived expertise on an ongoing basis and should compensate them for their time and expertise.
Focus on shifting culture and beliefs
It’s important for agencies to foster a culture that values fathers and paternal relatives. Michigan found that both case managers’ and supervisors’ beliefs about the value of fathers were critical to successfully engaging fathers and paternal relatives. For example, when supervisors value father engagement, they are more likely to ask staff if they pursued active efforts to engage fathers.
Allow time for self-reflection
Staff at all levels of the agency likely need time, encouragement, and training on best practices to consider how they are approaching fathers and communities that have suffered significant harm. It’s important for staff to understand historical trauma and how systems have actively encouraged the removal of fathers through policies and practices.
Review policies
It is vital for agencies to look closely at existing policies to determine if they encourage father and relative engagement or create unnecessary barriers. Branch and Jenkins emphasized the value of looking beyond language to consider how policies play out in the real world. Michigan, for example, had a policy that domestic violence victims couldn’t receive support unless they were in a shelter. However, there are no shelters for fathers, so they were unable to receive the needed support.
Train staff
Training for new case managers should include information on the philosophy behind father and paternal relative engagement, data on the value of placing children with fathers and paternal relatives, specifics about how to find and connect with individuals, and the tools that can ease this effort. Agencies also should find ways to train their existing staff, who will be key to any effort to truly change the culture and practices.
Partner with organizations already supporting fathers
When first expanding efforts to engage fathers, agencies should assess what organizations are already doing this work. They should approach community organizations with a goal of enhancing everyone’s efforts and building lasting partnerships. During their outreach to partners, agencies need to acknowledge the trauma that the child welfare and other public agencies have caused the community and approach with a sense of openness and humility.
Test ideas through pilots
Efforts such as APLD action research projects are a great way to test a new policy or practice in a few communities before deciding what changes to make across an entire jurisdiction.
Ensure that agency systems are in place so recommendations from fathers and findings from continuous quality improvement (CQI) efforts guide system change
Agencies should have a process to ensure that information gathered from fathers with lived expertise is incorporated into efforts to enhance paternal engagement. One way to do that is to include those team members leading CQI in initiatives related to fatherhood and relative care.
Engaging fathers and paternal relatives should be an integral part of all agencies’ efforts to ensure that children have safety, permanency, and well-being. It’s time to shine new light on these often-overlooked populations.
Resources
The Child Welfare Information Gateway’s Identifying and Engaging Fathers offers resources on the importance of father involvement and effective strategies for engaging fathers in child welfare practice.
The Children’s Bureau factsheet Navigating the Child Welfare System as a Father explains the child welfare process, fathers’ rights, and available supports.
Toolkit for Building System Capacity to Engage Fathers and Paternal Relatives in Child Welfare, written by Mathematica, provides a detailed look at how agencies can change their system to better support and engage fathers and their relatives.
Learn more about the AdoptUSKids Professional Leadership Development (APLD), a program designed for emerging leaders working in child welfare.