Father Involvement.PMD

Best Practice Next Practice Family-Centered Child Welfare A publication of the National Child Welfare Resource Center for Family-Centered Practice, a service of the Children’s Bureau Summer 2002 Father Involvement Father Involvement in Child Welfare: Estrangement and Reconciliation “The primary task of every civilization is to teach the young men to be fathers.” —Margaret Mead On almost every indicator of child well- Father’s role is more than that of eco- being, children today fare worse than their nomic provider of the past and now counterparts did just a generation ago. The includes nurturing, caregiving, and reason proposed by some is the dramatic emotional support in both obvious and rise, over the last thirty years, in the num- subtle ways. Successful fatherhood cor- in this issue ber of children living in fatherless house- relates strongly with many attributes holds. In 1960, less than 8 million chil- of children successfully growing up: 1 Father Involvement dren were living in families where the Healthy child development. This in- in Child Welfare father was absent. Today, it’s 24 million. cludes physical and mental health hab- Where are the fathers? Divorce, its, success in school, self-respect and self- 8 Fathers and Child Maltreatment single unwed motherhood, child- esteem, respect for others and for support and welfare policies, and incar- appropriate authority, constructive social 11 Father Involvement in ceration are the prime suspects in their and peer activities, as well as the avoid- Kinship Foster Care disappearance. Couple this with the per- ance of substance abuse, delinquency, 14 Engaging Fathers in vasive attitude, from school systems and and other forms of high-risk behaviors. Child Welfare Cases human services to the media, that “Dads Gender identity. An appropriate don’t matter. Men are inept parents.” 17 A Snapshot masculine role model is believed to help And even those men who wish to be boys seeking to create and understand 18 A Dad’s Story involved with their children, regardless their place in the world, and girls for- 22 My Baby’s Father of their marital or financial status, have mulating the terms of respectful and happy often been overlooked or marginalized. relationships with the opposite sex. 27 Fathers in Training Yet research shows that children grow- Responsible sexuality. Understanding 30 Fathers in Prison ing up without fathers are more likely to the emotional and social prerequisites and fail at school or to drop out, engage in the consequences of sexual activity depends 33 Fatherhood or early sexual activity, develop drug and Father-in-the-Hood? on a father’s involvement. Programs to alcohol problems, and experience or reduce teen pregnancy are a significant fo- 35 A Father Finds His Way perpetrate violence. cus of father involvement initiatives. 38 Fatherhood Training Emotional and social commitment. Curriculum Importance of father The invisible bonds of affection and pro- involvement tection are strengthened in children 39 Resources A good father is critical to the optimal through the demonstration of these development and well-being of a child. bonds in day-to-day father involvement. Best Practice/Next Practice Financial security. Family have more than 80. Head Start practice at all levels of the con- self-sufficiency is greatly en- programs, community-based ini- tinuum, i.e., child protective ser- hanced, even in poorly paid sec- tiatives, such as the National Fa- vices, foster care, kinship care, tors of the economy, where father therhood Initiative, and programs adoption, and family preservation. involvement is strong. for incarcerated fathers, are devel- In focus groups of fathers and Fathers and men are discov- oping and showing results. But child welfare workers, funded by ering a fuller role in the lives of what about involving father and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, children and families in numer- other males in child welfare? the issues facing fathers in child ous ways. Virtually all human welfare elicited some sharp re- service fields are exploring and Father involvement in sponses. Overall, focus group par- elaborating the positive lifelong child welfare ticipants who worked in child outcomes associated with father If children’s well-being is so welfare admitted that it was easier and male involvement in the lives closely tied to father involve- to work with families made up of of children and families. Pro- ment, why are so few fathers in- single mothers and children. One grams to help men be better fa- volved in the child welfare system? worker with 24 years of experience thers, understand their roles and Does our family-centered practice stated flatly: “We don’t involve fa- responsibilities of rearing a child, truly include all the family? Or thers. The system is mother fo- learn about child development, does “parent involvement” too cused.” Another worker said, “If find out alternative disciplinary often translate into “mother in- the mother says the father is dead, options, and, in some cases, how volvement” and family-centered we stop right there. It quite sim- to be a man, are emerging nation- practice mean only mother-and- ply is easier than trying to locate wide. For example, the Common- child-centered practice? the father, especially if we feel the wealth of Virginia’s Department of While research shows father mom will not be cooperative.” Yet Social Services reports that in involvement benefits children’s another worker made the point, “A 1997 there were 15 programs for well-being, the child welfare sys- father in the family makes it harder. father involvement; in 2002 they tem seems to contradict this in its It’s easier to let dad stay in the back- ground and not deal with him. Then I don’t have to deal with my Children who grow up in father-absent homes are signifi- own issues about men. It is easier cantly more likely to do poorly on almost any measure of to deal with mom only.” Clearly, child well-being. For example: from this discussion, mothers are ◆ Almost 75 percent of American children will experience the gatekeepers to the father’s par- poverty before they turn 11 years old, compared to only ticipation. Mothers have to believe 20 percent for families where there are two parents. that the family will benefit from ◆ Violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew the father’s participation. Further- up without fathers, including 72 percent of adolescent more, this discussion implies a sys- murders and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates. temic bias for excluding fathers. It ◆ Children living in father-absent homes are also more likely is easier to manage the ongoing to be suspended from school, or to drop out; be treated interactions over the course of a for an emotional or behavioral problem; commit suicide case by working only with one as adolescents; and be victims of child abuse or neglect. parent, the mother. In frontline 2 ◆ Summer 2002 Best Practice/Next Practice practice, the potential for a com- on all sides, we need to begin Father involvement depends on pliant relationship with the mother with this cornerstone fact: fathers recognizing the fragility of takes precedence over a compre- and men are excluded within the fatherhood. hensive working relationship with policy, programs, and practice of Nonresidential fathers in child all the family. child welfare. welfare are at very high risk for Addressing the issues raised by noninvolvement with their chil- Improving father and father and male involvement in dren. All child welfare profession- male involvement child welfare depends on inte- als need to recognize the many There are many reasons why fa- grated agency-based work bring- possible reasons for this, and not thers and men are “missing” ing together two pieces: key fa- view it as either a father’s lack of when it comes to child welfare. therhood and male involvement interest in the children, the re- These reasons are magnified issues and the way these issues in- moval of a “risk factor,” or a means within the distressed circum- tersect within child welfare. These to streamline case planning. In- stances that are characteristic of are helpful guideposts about how stead, we need to shore up these the child welfare population. To to proceed as we begin the work fragile relationships. Legal pater- address this absence of fathers, of father involvement in child nity and child support payments with the goal of creating greater welfare. We need to understand create the critical institutional sup- accountability and responsibility the following premises: ports for constructive father in- Forgetting Fathers Daniel was 3 and Dawn was 4 when their mother took them and disappeared. Her estranged husband, a limousine driver, searched obsessively for his children. He posted rewards, enlisted help from a retired police officer, and hired a private detective, all to no avail. As six years passed, he took to driving slowly through residential neighborhoods, looking for two blond children who looked like him. “I never gave up hope,’ said the father, ‘But it was as if they were dead.” Instead they were in foster care. In 1991 the authorities had found the children alone in their mother’s apartment. They were emaciated and had evidently been abused. But for three more years, through 33 court hearings, multiple foster placements, and the children’s complaints of new abuse, the foster care system failed to tell their father. After Daniel had been placed in a foster home, his emotional trauma brought beatings, not therapy. Sepa- rated from his sister and transferred to a group residence where bigger boys routinely abused him, he began openly longing for his father. He says the caseworker told him “Don’t think your father is going to come and rescue you, because your father’s dead.” In fact, the father was living nearby with a listed telephone number.

Load more