Father

Involvement
and
The Five
Protective Factors

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®

 Contents

Introduction 3
Parental Resilience 4
Social Connections 5
Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development 7
Concrete Support in Times of Need 8
Social and Emotional Competence of Children 10
Appendix 12

2 Father Involvement and The Five Protective Factors

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®
 Introduction

Strengthening Families™ is a research-informed approach to increase family strengths, enhance child

development, and reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect.

It is based on engaging families, programs, and communities in building five protective factors:
• Parental resilience
• Social connections
• Knowledge of parenting and child development
• Concrete support in times of need
• Social and emotional competence of children

Using the Strengthening Families™ framework, more than 30 states are shifting policy and practice to
help programs working with children and families focus on protective factors.* States apply the
Strengthening Families approach in early childhood, child welfare, child abuse prevention, and other
child and family serving systems.

The Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) leads the charge in the spread of the framework
across the country. CSSP acknowledges that more work needs to be done by those who use the
framework to intentionally engage fathers to draw on fathers’ strengths in building the factors and
meet their needs.

As a consequence, National Fatherhood Initiative® collaborated with CSSP to create a brief (part of
CSSP’s Making the Link series of briefs) that maps how NFI’s resources help build each of the
protective factors. CSSP has distributed the brief to states and others that use the framework. (See
The Appendix to read the brief.)

In this guide, we highlight each of the protective factors and how NFI’s resources can help those who
use the framework to build the factors in their community through more effective engagement of
fathers.

Each section includes more detail on each factor than in the brief, along with a couple of questions
for you to think about after you’ve read the section to reflect on how that protective factor applies to
the fathers and families you serve.

It is our hope that this information helps you better understand how you and your organization can
engage fathers and strengthen families via the five protective factors.

*Some states add a sixth protec ve factor, nurturing and a achment.

Father Involvement and The Five Protective Factors 3

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®
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 Parental Resilience

Parental resilience is defined by CSSP as “The ability to manage and bounce back from all
types of challenges that emerge in every family’s life. It means finding ways to solve
problems, building and sustaining trusting relationships including relationships with your
own child, and knowing how to seek help when necessary.”

Key to building this resilience is addressing parents’ individual developmental history, psychological
resources, and capacity to empathize with self and others. Programs and resources that rely on
Attachment Theory create the pro-social connections necessary to develop parental resilience.
Because so many parents who abuse and neglect children were abused and neglected themselves,
they became parents void of quality intimate relationships with their own parents or caregivers.
These parents find it difficult to develop positive attachments to their own children.

Father-specific resources address this factor because fathers who abuse and neglect their children, or
who are at risk to abuse and neglect, have unique developmental needs compared to mothers. They
moved through a different developmental trajectory. Because many of these fathers lacked involved
fathers or positive male role models, they did not develop positive attachments to their fathers and
other men. They also did not develop pro-fathering attitudes and values, chief among them attitudes
and values associated with healthy masculinity. Masculinity is the primary framework upon which
the male psyche is constructed.

All of NFI’s father-involvement programs use Attachment Theory as part of their multi-theoretical
framework. Programs like 24:7 Dad® and InsideOut Dad® create positive attachments between
fathers, their children, and other adults (e.g.,, the mothers of their children) by teaching fathers how
to effectively nurture themselves (e.g.,, through sessions on greater care of their own physical and
mental health) and others (e.g.,, through sessions on child development and communication) in ways
that fathers understand. These programs also lay the foundation for a future of healthy attachment
with children when used with expectant fathers.

Moreover, because facilitators deliver these programs in a group setting, fathers create pro-social
connections/attachments with caring facilitators and other fathers.** These bonds deepen as the
programs progress to completion. They also learn to empathize with others through the mutual
sharing of emotionally and spiritually intimate stories and experiences.

Think About It…

How resilient are the dads you serve?
How easily to they bounce back from setbacks?

**Some facilitators deliver the programs in one-on-one settings, such as home visits and office-based case
management.

Father Involvement and The Five Protective Factors 4

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®
 Social Connections

About social connections CSSP states, “Friends, family members, neighbors and
community members provide emotional support, help solve problems, offer parenting
advice and give concrete assistance to parents. Networks of support are essential to
parents and also offer opportunities for people to ‘give back’, an important part of self-
esteem as well as a benefit for the community. Isolated families may need extra help in
reaching out to build positive relationships.”

Many of NFI’s programs include sessions that build the relationship skills essential to fathers
effectively connecting with others (adults and children). Father-specific programs and resources
are particularly important to developing emotionally and spiritually-intimate social connections
because, compared to women, most men are raised to build networks for the exchange of
material goods and information. Their networks do not provide the level of emotional and
spiritual support they need to reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect.

NFI’s programs create bonds between fathers and facilitators and among fathers through
delivery in a group setting. NFI understands that these powerful connections can and should
live beyond the end of father-involvement programs. We provide technical assistance and
training to organizations on creating “alumni programs” in which fathers who complete a
program can continue to interact formally—by participating in one or more additional programs
that further build their pro-fathering skills, attitudes, and knowledge—or informally, such as by
volunteering to help the host organization conduct community events and recruit other fathers
into programs.

This continued engagement of fathers

after a program ends further deepens
fathers’ social connections by keeping
them engaged in a positive environment/
network, a particular challenge when
working with fathers who have been
socially isolated or involved in networks
characterized by anti-social behavior. NFI
compiled its knowledge about alumni
programs into the free
downloadable Creating an Alumni
Program for Graduates of a Fatherhood
Program: A Guide with Tips and Advice. It
features, among other things, model
alumni programs in different settings.

Father Involvement and The Five Protective Factors 5

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®
 Social Connections

A final, critical component of helping parents create social connections is the ability of a
community to provide an environment that nurtures those connections. NFI created
the Community Mobilization Approach™ (CMA) that trains organizations and community
leaders from across sectors to mobilize their communities to address father absence and
increase father involvement (e.g., through broad-based and sector-specific fatherhood
initiatives). NFI has implemented the CMA (or consulted on its implementation) in a diversity of
communities (e.g., urban and rural). Implementation of the CMA has resulted in many long-
standing fatherhood initiatives (e.g., the Milwaukee Fatherhood Initiative, and the Fatherhood
Coalition of Tarrant County).

NFI works alongside community leaders to implement a three-phase process that comprises the
CMA. The process involves participatory research, planning, and implementation, and it
produces a customized community action plan. Leaders build, implement, and own the plan, a
vital outcome for successful community-wide efforts that address social challenges. This plan
facilitates the development of community-wide social connections and supports for fathers.

Think About It…

• How well connected are the dads you serve to family, friends, and community?
• How well connected is your fatherhood effort in the community?

Father Involvement and The Five Protective Factors 6

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®
 Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development

About this factor CSSP says, “Accurate information about child development and
appropriate expectations for children’s behavior at every age help parents see their children
and youth in a positive light and promote their healthy development.”

The importance of helping fathers to learn appropriate parenting skills and child development
information cannot be overstated. Interventions that focus on fathers are critical because fathers are
not “raised to raise children.” Families and American culture in general (and many sub-cultures
including those that demark immigrant enclaves in many major U.S. cities) do not adequately
prepare boys and young men in the care of children. Fathers should be involved in the care of their
children from the moment their children are born.

CSSP goes on to say that parenting and child development information is “most effective when it
comes at the precise time parents need it to understand their own children. Parents who
experienced harsh discipline or other negative childhood experiences may need extra help to change
the parenting patterns they learned as children.”

NFI’s programs focus on building the parenting skills of fathers. One of the most important of these
skills is proper discipline of children. Fathers learn, for example, the difference between punishment
and discipline, to know when to discipline and when to punish, and to rely primarily on discipline. In
fact, NFI’s 12 Tips for Effectively Disciplining Your Children focuses on just this topic.

Fathers also receive extensive information on child development at all stages of a child’s life (i.e. at
the precise time they need it based on their children’s ages). One of the signature resources in NFI’s
programs is the Ages and Stages of Child Development Charts that informs fathers about the
physical, social, and emotional milestones children should reach by specific ages. A unique feature of
these charts is a list of actions fathers can take to help their children reach milestones. NFI has
turned these charts into Help Me Grow Guides for mass distribution by organizations that fathers
can use to track their children’s growth and identify questions they might have for their children’s
pediatrician/family doctor.

Think About It…

• Does your work with dads focus enough on developing parenting knowledge in general?
• Does your work with dads focus enough on helping them to learn the ages and stages of child
development?

Father Involvement and The Five Protective Factors 7

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®
 Concrete Support in Times of Need

About concrete support, CSSP emphasizes, “Meeting basic economic needs like food,
shelter, clothing and health care is essential for families to thrive.” Father-specific programs
and resources are necessary to adequately address this factor because fathers, and men in
general, are reluctant to seek help for their basic needs, much less to admit they have them.

CSSP points out that family poverty is the factor most strongly correlated with child abuse and
neglect. Families need concrete support to prevent them from or lift them out of poverty. Research
shows that father absence places children and families at greater risk of poverty. Therefore, any
effort addresses this factor when that effort connects fathers with their children to prevent and
intervene on father absence.

NFI recognizes, however, that meeting the basic needs of families (especially those at risk for or living
in poverty) is beyond the scope of father-specific programs and resources. Therefore, NFI provides
technical assistance and training to help organizations understand the basic needs faced by specific
populations of fathers and the importance of integrating father-involvement efforts into the services
organizations provide that help families meet their basic economic needs.

Incarcerated fathers are one of the specific populations of fathers NFI helps organizations to serve,
primarily through the InsideOut Dad® program. These fathers often struggle with meeting their own
and their families’ basic economic needs before and after incarceration.

In 2010, NFI completed The Connections Project, an 18-month federally-funded initiative that
involved training on InsideOut Dad® and produced several resources that build the capacity of state
and local corrections systems and direct-service providers to better understand the basic needs of
formerly-incarcerated fathers for successful reentry into society. Among the resources NFI produced
was a free guide titled: Engaging Fathers for Successful Reentry: Research, Tips, Best Practices.

This guide, now available in NFI’s Free Resources section on fatherhood.org, covers eight critical,
basic needs necessary for successful reentry (e.g., housing and employment). The guide also
highlights best-practice models from around the country and tips to address each of the needs.

Father Involvement and The Five Protective Factors 8

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®
 Concrete Support in Times of Need

CSSP goes on to say about this factor, “When families encounter a crisis such as domestic
violence, mental illness or substance abuse, adequate services and supports need to be in place
to provide stability, treatment and help for family members to get through the crisis.”

To that end, NFI provides crisis-focused resources including a Booster Session titled
Understanding Domestic Violence™ that organizations can use as a stand-alone offering or
complement to father-involvement programs. This booster session raises awareness among
fathers of the signs that they, or fathers they know, might be at risk for, or engaged in, domestic
violence.

Think About It…

• How well do you connect dads to the concrete supports that meet their unique needs?
• How well do you connect dads’ families to supports that meet the entire family’s needs?

Father Involvement and The Five Protective Factors 9

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®
 Social and Emotional Competence of Children

About this factor CSSP says, “The social and emotional development of young children plays
a critical role in their cognitive skill building, social competence, mental health, and overall
wellbeing. The nature of this development is deeply affected by the quality of a child’s
relationships with his or her primary attachment figures, usually parents. Healthy
development is threatened when families of young children face multiple problems and
stressors.”

Father-specific resources address the unique contribution of fathers to the social and emotional
development of children. Fathers serve, for example, as a role model for boys and a relational model
for girls.

CSSP goes on to point out, “Social and emotional development [is] highly dependent on the quality
of a young child’s primary relationships…it is increasingly common to encounter infants and young
children whose attachment to a primary caregiver has been severely limited, disrupted, or arrested.
These children are at risk for serious development problems…”

These facts are not lost on the thousands of practitioners that NFI has trained through the years.
They include practitioners in corrections, education, military, workplace, government, and non-profit
settings to name a few.

These facts are also not lost on researchers who have studied the negative impact of father absence
and concluded that father involvement is critical to child well-being. NFI’s programs and resources
combat father absence, pure and simple. In doing so they help children develop social and emotional
competence through increased and competent father involvement, thus reducing children’s stressors
and the risk of limited, disrupted, or arrested attachments to their primary caregivers that lead to
short- and long-term developmental problems.

As a way to further address this factor, NFI has created mother-specific resources that address the
relationships between fathers and mothers. The most significant relationship in a child’s life is the
relationship between his or her mother and father. This relationship is the blueprint a child follows
for developing his or her own relationships. Improving this relationship is critical to prevent
disruptions between children and their primary caregivers and to intervene and repair after
disruptions. Because mothers are most often the primary caregiver of children—and certainly in
cases where the parents are not romantically involved or living together—they need resources that
help them better understand the importance of father involvement in the lives of their children and
how to effectively co-parent.

Father Involvement and The Five Protective Factors 10

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®
 Social and Emotional Competence of Children

NFI’s Mom as Gateway™ booster session was NFI’s first foray into this arena, and it has been
extremely well received with several thousand organizations acquiring it. It helps mothers
understand “maternal gatekeeping” behavior and, in doing so, become more willing to accept
increased father involvement as long as it is safe for them and their children.

Because of the popularity of this booster session, NFI developed Understanding Dad™, a program
that helps mothers address maternal gatekeeping behavior in a more comprehensive manner. The
program also builds practical communication skills mothers can use to improve the relationship they
have with the father of their children.

NFI has also developed resources for mothers in the form of tip cards and “pocketbook” guides for
mass distribution by organizations. Learn more about these resources here.

Think About It…

• Does your work with dads include addressing maternal gatekeeping behavior?
• Do you provide moms with resources that help them better understand and communicate
with dads?

Father Involvement and The Five Protective Factors 11

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®
 Appendix

Father Involvement and The Five Protective Factors 12

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®
 Appendix

Father Involvement and The Five Protective Factors 13

© Copyright 2017, 2022 National Fatherhood Initiative®