Chapter 5 provides details to help programs develop and review evaluation questions. The following chapter explains the core concepts of process evaluation and provides guidance in preparing for the process evaluation of a project. Chapter 7 focuses on outcome evaluation and provides a detailed discussion on planning an outcome evaluation within the context of the Responsible Fatherhood program.
The chapter clarifies short-term, intermediate, and long-term outcomes and corresponding out-come indicators. Also included are tools for identifying indicators for a project's outcomes. Chapter 8 explains the difference between descriptive and comparative evaluation designs, and offers an overview of common evaluation designs and data sources applicable to Responsible Fatherhood grantees.
Finally, chapter 9 provides information on selecting appropriate instruments for a project evaluation, and offers tips for developing evaluation instruments. Author abstract modified. Do you have something you think is appropriate for the library?
Submit Library Resources. Page Count. Year Published. Author Organization. For example, the New Jersey Department of Corrections helped make it possible for co-parents to bring their children with them to facility-based parenting classes by obtaining childrens books and coloring supplies for the rooms in which courses were conducted. These semi-structured efforts included providing family meals, marking holidays and birthdays with special activities, conducting joint skills-building activities with fathers and children, and devoting parts of visitation time to group conversations or games.
In addition, the Osborne Association hired graduates of their correctional facilitybased parenting classes to staff their child-friendly visitation areas. These men served as informal mentors, available to answer questions from other fathers or visiting children and to encourage positive parent-child interaction. The Shelby County Division of Corrections Tennessee reported combining one-on-one and group activities for fathers and their children with concurrent activities for co-parents or caregivers see schedule at right.
Families were invited to participate in these special visits approximately once a week from the time the family enrolled in programming until the fathers release. In addition to these semi-structured activities, the program offered each family up to two family group conferencing sessions facilitated by a program staff member.
During these highly structured sessions, incarcerated participants could meet with significant family members such as their parents, spouses or romantic partners, and co-parents of their children to discuss expectations, fears, and hopes related to reentry, according to a predetermined list of important life domains.
Implemented by other grantees in slightly different formats including long-distance videoconference , these structured conversations provided an opportunity for families to overcome fears, generate realistic expectations, and plan collaboratively for a successful return to the community.
In addition to supporting in-person contact, programs undertook a host of other creative strategies to help families supplement in-person visits and increase the level of connectedness between fathers and their children.
These included components of programming offered to participants, as well as special incentives to participation. Families could participate in these visits from their homes or, for those without high-speed Internet capabilities, from one of several satellite offices located throughout the state. In addition, the program offered fathers the chance to create storybook audiotapes for their children.
Fathers recorded stories and other positive messages on the tapes, which were sent home to their children. In a similar effort, Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota partnered with the education division of the South Dakota Department of Corrections to give fathers enrolled in relationship education classes the opportunity to create video diaries for their children.
Men were provided with a free or subsidized DVD and the chance to record themselves doing something special for their children, such as reading a book, reading a letter, or playing a musical instrument. The DVDs were then mailed home to participants children. The RIDGE Project Ohio encouraged letter-writing and telephone communication by providing its participants with subsidized telephone calls and letter-writing supplies. The Shelby County Division of Corrections Tennessee provided child-oriented incentives to encourage caregiver participation in its family strengthening program.
Families involved in the criminal justice system face overwhelming challenges. Yet research suggests that these families can benefit from additional support Hairston, , This brief highlights approaches to supporting incarcerated and reentering fathers in strengthening their parenting and co-parenting relationships. MFS-IP grantees employed varied and comprehensive strategies, including parenting skills training, relationship building and co-parenting support, child-friendly visitation, enhanced communication e.
They aimed not just to increase father-child contact but to improve the long-term quality of family relationships by teaching skills important for family functioning and providing opportunities to practice these skills. Although numerous barriers exist, grantees were able to successfully implement these services, and a rigorous evaluation is currently underway to assess their effectiveness. This evaluation will help to identify relationship-strengthening strategies that can be successfully delivered within the constraints of the correctional system; assess the effectiveness of such programs on family functioning, relationship quality and stability, and recidivism; and make recommendations for how these programs can be integrated and sustained with the correctional system.
Abbey, A. Evaluation of a family-based substance abuse prevention program targeted for the middle school years. Journal of Drug Education , 30, Arditti, J. Families and incarceration: An ecological approach. Bronte-Tinkew, J. Elements of promising practice for fatherhood programs: Evidence-based research findings on programs for fathers.
Report for National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse. Day, R. Incarcerated fathers returning home to children and families: Introduction to the special issue and a primer on doing research with men in prison.
Fathering , 3, Glaze, L. Parents in prison and their minor children. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report. Washington, DC: U. Hairston, C. Family ties during imprisonment: Do they influence future criminal activity? Federal Probation, 52 1 , Family ties during imprisonment: Important to whom and for what?
Fathers in prison: Responsible fatherhood and responsible public policies. Marriage and Family Review , 32, Family connections during imprisonment and prisoners community reentry. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. Harrison, K. Parental training for incarcerated fathers: Effects on attitudes, self-esteem, and childrens self-perception. Journal of Social Psychology, , Johnson, E. Youth with incarcerated parents: An introduction to the issues. The Prevention Researcher, 13 2 , Landreth, G.
Filial therapy with incarcerated fathers: Effects on parental acceptance of child, parental stress, and child adjustment. Journal of Counseling and Development, 76, Mbwana, K. What works for parent involvement programs for children: Lessons from experimental evaluations of social interventions Child Trends Fact Sheet No.
Washington, DC: Child Trends. Mumola, C. Incarcerated parents and their children. Parke, R. Effects of parental incarceration on young children. The effects of parental incarceration on children: Perspectives, promises and policies. Waul Eds. Pilgrim, C. Implementation and impact of a family-based substance abuse prevention program in rural communities. The Journal of Primary Prevention, 18, Poehlmann, J.
Incarcerated mothers contact with children, perceived family relationships, and depressive symptoms. Journal of Family Psychology, 19, Robbers, M.
Justice Policy Journal, 2 1. Roettger, M. Paternal incarceration and adversity in young adulthood. Corrections Today. Rosenberg, J. The importance of fathers in the healthy development of children: The fatherhood manual.
Skarupski, K. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. Visher, C. Transitions from prison to community: Understanding individual pathways. Annual Review of Sociology, 29, Implementation Study: Yearly implementation interviews will be conducted with each grantee through As programs mature and more incarcerated participants are released, grantees will gain more experience serving couples during and after release.
The implementation evaluation will document insights garnered from grantee efforts to provide post-release supports in the community and navigate couples-based service provision during a period of major relationship transition. Impact Study: Survey data collection with incarcerated men and their partners is currently under way in 5 impact sites selected from among the 12 grantees. Beginning in December , couples participating in MFS-IP programming and a set of similar couples not participating in programming were enrolled in the national impact study and completed the first of three longitudinal surveys designed to collect information about relationship quality, family stability, and reentry outcomes.
Baseline data collection is expected to continue on a rolling basis for a total of 3 years, with follow-up data collection extending another 18 months beyond the final baseline interview. Publication Date. It documents innovative parenting supports provided to incarcerated and reentering fathers and their families.
A New Approach: The Marriage and Family Strengthening Grants for Incarcerated and Reentering Fathers and Their Partners This brief describes efforts of the national MFS-IP initiative to build collaborations between the criminal justice system and human service agencies to provide family support services to incarcerated fathers, their children, and their co-parents.
What Do Fathers Need to Know? Curriculum Choices for Parenting Skills Parenting program content must be perceived as salient and relevant for fathers to stay engaged. Grantees selected a wide variety of parenting curricula for use with the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated fathers they served; however, the curricula generally included a core set of common topics, such as the importance of father involvement, communication with children and other family members, child development, discipline techniques, and anger management.
Evaluating Parenting Curriculum Effectiveness The effectiveness of parent education curricula remains an empirical question. To date, few experimental or quasi-experimental studies have examined parenting outcomes among participants in such classes. Most evaluations have used single-group or unmatched comparison group designs, which compare participants questionnaire responses before and after a parenting course.
These studies measure whether parenting knowledge improved, but do not allow any conclusions to be drawn regarding whether gains in knowledge were due to participation in the course, whether such gains were sustained, or whether the knowledge gains were associated with improvements in parenting behavior. Exhibit 1. Exhibit 2. At these specially equipped centers, parents and children could participate together in skills-building sessions.
The minute semi-structured sessions offered by Osborne allowed fathers to practice the parenting skills they learned in the agencys parenting course, interact directly with their children, and receive feedback and parenting support from experienced fathers.
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