IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/cysrev/v118y2020ics0190740920301572.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Families Offering Children Unfailing Support (FOCUS) Fatherhood Program: Changing child welfare through child support and parenting skills

Author

Listed:
  • Nievar, M. Angela
  • Ramisetty-Mikler, Suhasini
  • Saleh, Mahasin F.
  • Cabrera, Natasha

Abstract

The Fathers Offering Children Unfailing Support (FOCUS) program serves fathers referred by Child Protective Services and the Attorney General’s Office. Our goal was to investigate changes in fathers’ report of parenting involvement and fathers’ instrumental support through child support payments through two separate studies of community samples. In the first study, fathers who completed FOCUS (n = 361) rated their parenting, co-parenting, and self-efficacy higher than a comparison group from the waiting list (n = 359). Fathers planning to enter the program reported less positive beliefs about their parenting than those who finished the program. Within the group completing the program, posttest scores contrasted with a retrospective pretest showed substantially stronger effects than a quasi-experimental design. Results indicate that fathers entering the program may be unaware of their needs for improvement or have high social desirability bias. In the second study, fathers in FOCUS increased their child support payments by almost 100% in the year after program completion. Both studies used anonymous data due to involvement in the court system. Future evaluations of high-stakes programs for at-risk families should be aware of issues with experimental designs.

Suggested Citation

  • Nievar, M. Angela & Ramisetty-Mikler, Suhasini & Saleh, Mahasin F. & Cabrera, Natasha, 2020. "Families Offering Children Unfailing Support (FOCUS) Fatherhood Program: Changing child welfare through child support and parenting skills," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:118:y:2020:i:c:s0190740920301572
    DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105321
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740920301572
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105321?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Campbell, Christina A. & Howard, Douglas & Rayford, Brett S. & Gordon, Derrick M., 2015. "Fathers matter: involving and engaging fathers in the child welfare system process," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 84-91.
    2. Lee, Shawna J. & Pace, Garrett T. & Lee, Joyce Y. & Knauer, Heather, 2018. "The association of fathers' parental warmth and parenting stress to child behavior problems," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 1-10.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gonzalez, Juan Carlos & Flores, Iliana & Tremblay, Madeleine & Barnett, Miya L., 2022. "Lay health workers engaging Latino fathers: A qualitative study," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Parminder Parmar & Laura Nathans, 2022. "Parental Warmth and Parent Involvement: Their Relationships to Academic Achievement and Behavior Problems in School and Related Gender Effects," Societies, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-20, November.
    2. Crooks, Natasha & Yates, Latrice & Sosina, Wuraola & Johnson, Juquita & Strong, Alexis & Griggs, Brianna & Shipp, Kentrele & Green, Betty & Matthews, Alicia & Johnson, Waldo, 2024. "Strategies for engaging Black male caregivers in family-based research," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    3. Havlicek, Judy, 2021. "Systematic review of birth parent–foster youth relationships before and after aging out of foster care," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    4. Louis John Camilleri, 2022. "Exploring the Lived Experiences of Fathers of Children on the Autism Spectrum: A Narrative Inquiry," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, April.
    5. Kim, Jangmin & Trahan, Mark & Bellamy, Jennifer & Hall, James A., 2019. "Advancing the innovation of family meeting models: The role of teamwork and parent engagement in improving permanency," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 147-155.
    6. Ward, Kaitlin P. & Lee, Shawna J., 2020. "Mothers’ and fathers’ parenting stress, responsiveness, and child wellbeing among low-income families," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    7. Laura Upenieks & Matthew A. Andersson & Markus H. Schafer, 2021. "God, Father, Mother, Gender: How Are Religiosity and Parental Bonds During Childhood Linked to Midlife Flourishing?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(7), pages 3199-3220, October.
    8. Kiely, Elizabeth & O' Sullivan, Nicola & Tobin, Mary, 2019. "Centre-based supervised child-parent contact in Ireland: The views and experiences of fathers, supervisors and key stakeholders," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 494-502.
    9. Luo, Yuhan & Qi, Mengdi & Huntsinger, Carol S. & Zhang, Qin & Xuan, Xin & Wang, Yun, 2020. "Grandparent involvement and preschoolers’ social adjustment in Chinese three-generation families: Examining moderating and mediating effects," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:118:y:2020:i:c:s0190740920301572. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.