New Insights from an Early Childhood Nonprofit That Supports Fathers

[PREVIEW CLIP FROM ANTHONY SESSOMS]

The bottom line is that it is in the best interest of the child that the father would be present and active, engaged in the child's life.

[J.B. WOGAN]

I’m J.B. Wogan from Mathematica and welcome back to On the Evidence, a show that examines what we know about today’s most urgent challenges and how we can make progress in addressing them.

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On this episode of the On the Evidence, we’re going to return to a topic we started to explore on a previous episode: father engagement in programs and social services. We know fathers play an important role in their children’s lives and that most fathers want to be involved with their kids; but too often, fathers have been excluded from social services systems as many government and nonprofit programs were designed to serve women and children.

That’s starting to change. More government agencies, nonprofits, and researchers are exploring strategies that embrace fathers’ desire to be involved with their children. The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—known by the acronym ASPE—has partnered with Mathematica to study strategies for including and engaging fathers in social service programming. The ultimate goal is to better support the well-being of families.

In a previous episode, we focused on fatherhood programs that pivoted during the COVID-19 pandemic to continue supporting dads. This episode focuses on Bright Beginnings, a nonprofit in Washington, DC, that provides both center-based and home-based Head Start programming for children and families. We’ll be focusing specifically on Bright Beginnings’ efforts to support fathers.

Why is that important? Some background could be helpful here. All over the country, Head Start programs promote the school readiness of young children ages birth through age five from families with low incomes by providing early education and a range of comprehensive services at no cost to the family. Head Start programs engage and empower parents to be involved in their children’s learning and development, but it’s more common for mothers to be the focus of those engagement efforts. Recently, Head Start has made significant efforts to engage fathers in program services, recognizing the important role that fathers play in supporting child development and family well-being.

We’re dividing this episode into two parts. In the first part, I interview Anthony Sessoms and Ryan Pratt. Anthony oversees the fatherhood initiative at Bright Beginnings. Ryan is a maintenance technician at Bright Beginnings as well as a father who has participated in the nonprofit’s fatherhood programming.

After that interview, stick around for a brief 10-minute discussion with Danielle DeLisle, a research analyst at Mathematica, about how the evidence base on fatherhood engagement relates to what Anthony and Ryan shared from their experience at Bright Beginnings.

And one more note to avoid confusion. During the interview, Anthony and Ryan sometimes use the acronym BBI. That’s short for Bright Beginnings, Inc., the full name of Bright Beginnings.

Okay. I hope you enjoy the episode.

[J.B. WOGAN]

And I'm going to start with the hard questions. If you could just, for the record, state your name, where you work and what you do.

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

My name is Anthony Sessoms. I work at Bright Beginnings and I am the family recruitment and outreach specialist, as well as I oversee the fatherhood initiative.

[RYAN PRATT]

My name is Ryan Pratt and I work at Bright Beginnings and I am the maintenance technician. And I've been here for about two years now.

[J.B. WOGAN]

And I imagine that listeners who are from DC or the specific neighborhood in DC, where Bright Beginnings operates will already be familiar with what you do, but for listeners outside of DC, could you just, Anthony, maybe you can take this. Can you give some background on what Bright Beginnings is? You know, who do you serve and what services do you provide?

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

Absolutely. Well, it’s funny you would say that because the listeners in the DMV they should basically know who we are. We were established in 1990 by an organization called the Junior League of Washington. And we've been in the business of early childhood development for well, over 30 plus years now. We operate two early childhood and family learning centers and we offer free full-day, year-round services, providing developmentally appropriate early education to our children. We serve children from birth to five and we serve thousands of children experiencing homelessness, I guess you could say, by providing them and their families with a quality care and support during the times of hardship and transition.

We have a very clear mission statement, if I could share that real briefly. We make every attempt to provide children with a safe, nurturing, and educational environment. We want to make sure that our children are kindergarten-ready to learn when they graduate from Bright Beginnings. And yes, we do have a graduation for our toddlers. And then supporting homeless are parents that are experiencing homelessness, homelessness to stabilize their home lives and helps them to become more self-sufficient. And that's basically who we are and what we do.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay, great. And, while Bright Beginnings is focused on early childhood education, I understand that you also have a focus on engaging fathers and maybe, while Head Start programs, Early Head Start programs have some kind of foundation around engaging fathers that you've been especially intentional about it in the last few years, and that wasn't always the case. So what, you know, in terms of that focus on engaging fathers, what changed and why?

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

Well, first of all, I'd like to just kind of piggyback on what you just said. We practice a two-gen approach where while we are educating our children, we're also working with our fathers or with our parents in general. And so initially, the conception of Bright Beginnings was based on helping women of color that were single and had children. And so basically Bright Beginnings in DC was more or less of the female centric or female centered organization. What, where we had a paradigm shift was when our new executive director came aboard, and what she, Dr. Marla Dean, and what she immediately recognized was that it takes the family unit to, to fully develop a child. And that fathers that we believe that based on what we saw in the city, that fathers were absent from the lives of their children.

So one of the first things, one of the first explicit steps that we had to do was, we had to change our logo because our logo was just was a female and a child holding hands. And so that was the first explicit step that we had to do.

The next thing that we wanted to do was we wanted to change our narrative and support a counter narrative based on the myths and the stereotypes, because the truth is, the CDC reported that Black fathers are the most engaged fathers out of all the ethnicities. And so we saw evidence of this every day with fathers dropping off their children, picking them up daily, participating in school activities, participating in back-to-school night, participating in socializations, participating in parenting classes. They were doing all of this, but the school, that Dr. Dean was able to identify that, the school made no real effort to engage them, it's almost as if they was just here, but they didn't have a voice. And it's something like we used to tell our kids, you know, we, we, we want you to be seen, not heard, and that was basically the role of the fathers here.

And so, that’s the inception of BBI’s fatherhood initiative, and like I told you before, you know, we, we call it an initiative, opposed to a program because we were introducing something fresh, unique, new, something where we could be creative and have imagination. And from that point on, after we changed our logo, rewrote that narrative, we became a community that no longer engaged the stereotyping of Black fathers. We begin to affirm and embrace our fathers and we believe that all parents are necessary for the wellbeing of the child. And we support the caregiving as a family unit, whether that family is a one-parent unit or a two-parent unit. Because a lot of times some of our children, they actually live with their father. And so even though we had a lot of services provided for parents, only the mothers could access them. So now we acknowledge the fathers as caregivers and they are entitled or need the same resources, opportunities, and services. And so basically J.B., the bottom line is that it is in the best interest of the child that the father be present and active, engaged in the child's life. So that's what caused it to change.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Hi listeners, sorry to interrupt the flow of the interview, but I want to drop in a clip here from Anthony that actually occurred later in the original recording, but I think it makes more sense to put it here when he’s talking about the decision to focus on fathers at Bright Beginnings. You just heard him mention the stereotypes and myths he had to overcome about fathers not wanting to be present in their children’s lives. When he arrived, most of the nonprofit’s staff were women and most of their clients were women and their children, and some of them had their own negative experiences with fathers that made them skeptical of this whole fatherhood initiative. Here’s Anthony again.

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

I had to acquire their trust. I had to form a relationship with our female staff and it took time. It was hard, it was challenging, but I'm here to report today that they did not disappoint me. They came through. And I have some great relationships here with our female staff and it's almost to the place now where they do anything they can to help us.

You know, there's an old saying that says the proof is in the pudding, you know, and when they start seeing something change, that's why I said we didn't call it a program. It was an initiative because we wanted the, we wanted the female staff as well to see that it was fresh, unique, and new, you know, that, that we were using our creative imagination for this. And when they begin to see fathers show up every Monday from three to five, right, Ryan? I mean from three to five and they looked right in the room, when they begin to see, I created something called volunteer dads, the dads had to volunteer twice a month in the classroom and, you know, and then they had to come in and read to the kids and help give the kids love and help put them to sleep. And you know, when I did the field trips and they saw the dads show up, and J.B., let me tell you, I won’t be doing a field trip no time soon because that field trip was something else, but when they begin to see the dads authentically participating, it just changed the whole situation. And now what I have is just like insurmountable support.

[J.B. WOGAN]

And in terms of how, how recent history is, is that shift in mindset and approach? Are we talking like last few years, last decade?

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

Well, I believe that we've been working up on that shift for probably the last five to four years, but it happened, it happened for Bright Beginnings, the latter part of 2017. And then we launched the fatherhood initiative in 2018, based on the data from 2018.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Ryan, I understand that you're both a Bright Beginnings parent and employee. How did Bright Beginnings support you as a father?

[RYAN PRATT]

Oh, they support me through child care. They support me through various resources. They support me through Home-Based, which prepared me to become a better parent. They also supported me through parenting classes as well as fatherhood initiative.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. Could you expand a little bit upon that? You said Home-based, what is Home-Based?

[RYAN PRATT]

So basically Home-based is something that they actually do from home. So my children, they were actually homeschooled before they actually were brought to the school building. So they actually were home for 12 weeks. And after they finished the 12-week course there, then they were actually eligible to actually come to the school and, you know, interact with the kids and, you know, do all sorts of activities and assignment that they had in their plans for, for my children.

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

And if I could add a little context to that, Ryan had the luxury of, because he's been with us for a few years now. The home-based programs for our pregnant moms. And so what we do is we enrolled them in school while the mom is pregnant so that when she gives birth, then she has a slot in the center. And so while mom and dad are home waiting for a slot in the center, we provide 90-minute classes a week, one 90 minute class per week, they are able to tap into all of the center’s resources like diapers, wipes. We started loading them up with the things that are going to need as well as we, they are able to partake in our food distribution. And then hopefully when the baby is born and after six to 12 weeks, the baby is allowed to come into the center and our infant room. So that's like the whole purpose home-based stages them for the center.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Gotcha. And then Ryan, you also mentioned other fatherhood initiatives. Was there anything specific that, or can you give an example of what a fatherhood initiative would be?

[RYAN PRATT]

Sure, the fatherhood initiative is basically it's a 12-week course, which was taught. It was basically through communication. It was through relationships. It was through co-parenting. It was through financially preparedness. It was just so many different resources that the fatherhood had for us, that we was actually, you know, learning through the fatherhood initiative program.

[J.B. WOGAN]

And then, in terms of ways that Bright Beginnings has supported you, I, I suppose one other way might be that, that you are an employee there now. So do you want to talk a little bit about that? What was the process like? How did you end up, not only being a father there, but being an employee?

[RYAN PRATT]

Wow, so, you know, the fatherhood program really, really grabbed me. That's what, you know, actually grabbed me and, you know, I wanted it to actually become a part of BBI because I’d seen, you know, so much that was actually going on here. You know, so I was working somewhere else before I started working here. And, uh, you know, it was like, BBI just snatched me. They snatched me from, from the other job, because it was just something, it was just, it was just a glow that I seen J.B., you know, and I wanted to be a part of that glow.

Well, do you think being a father helps in, in your work there at Bright Beginnings and may, are there ways in which being a dad? Um, I, um, is, is informs the work or makes it more enjoyable, or what do you think?

[RYAN PRATT]

Yes. It teaches me responsibility. It teach me developing leadership. It teaches me how to be very accountable. It teaches me to have a reason to become mentally and better financially. It helps me with both of my two boys and my one girl, cause I have three children. So it just bettered me all around.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Anthony, how has fatherhood informed the work you do there?

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

Well, that's, that's kind of funny you would ask because that's what actually leads navigates guides me as I work with these guys by being a father and a single father at that. And so everything that I do, when I talk about co-parenting, it’s something that I had to learn how to do. And I'll be honest with you, J.B., I wasn't that great at it in the beginning. So, you know, I really had to work on that and, you know, having to learn how to communicate effectively with my son's mom, you know, and her family, learning how to be more understanding and flexible. Being a father helps me to give them the correct advice. I'm able to tell them, Hey, don't do that because this is the outcome. Or, Hey, you're going down the right path because this is going to produce this positive outcome. And so, you know, a lot of times when I am dealing, even though I have an established curriculum, I have appointed times that I meet with them. I do one-on-one sessions with them. We have zoom classes throughout the week. We have activities, but I'm always open for the individual counseling because there's no cookie cutter, you know, recipe or instruction to being a dad. It's almost like I'm the person that they call on when they encounter a problem that they don't know how to resolve or address or handle. And I'm just grateful that I can just be there when they do call. So being a dad, I mean, plays a huge role in how I work with the dads here at Bright Beginnings.

[J.B. WOGAN]

And do you think the fathers are more responsive because you speak from that position of authority as someone who is a dad yourself?

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

I'll say that they're responsible because I speak from a position of experience. And my experience literally commands their attention because most of the time, whatever they're going through, I've been through it myself, you know, like having to pick the child up, having to come up, having to deal with custody issues. You know, let's just be real about it. You know, this is what, this is what our fathers go through, you know, custody situations, transportation. Sometimes it gets legal, you know? And so being able to advise them and counsel them from a position of experience, opposed to just being authoritative, I believe that's what helps them. And they can, you know, you can feel when someone has gone through something and you know, that they're telling you the truth because when you you've been on the streets or, you know, you've been disenfranchised or you've been the person that have not always received the opportunity, when real help finally shows up is so different from anything that you've ever received, you know, exactly what that is. So, yeah.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Anthony, beyond direct services, are there other ways that you support fathers? I understand, for example, that one of the things Bright Beginnings does is help fathers obtain leadership roles within Head Start programming. Are there other things like that that you want to talk about?

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

I mean, I’ll say this. When we're able to establish a father in a leadership role in Bright Beginnings, that's like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you know, because of course, you know, there's not a lot of men that work in Bright Beginnings—well, at this Bright Beginning there, I think there are only, um, five to six men actually worked with us here, but I think, um, that's having a robust like partnership program. Like we, we have some partnerships, as the young people in the city saying that are torch, like these partnerships are like torch. They, they they're like fire. Like we can pick up the phone and call and say, Hey, we have a dad that needs a job. You know, can you hire them? Anthony give me a resume, the most I could promise you is an interview. If I get you the interview, then the rest is up to you.

So like just having a real robust partnership program, because we partner with just about, we partner with local agencies, district agencies. One of my huge partnerships right now is with the Mayor's Office of Father, Men, and Boys, you know, shout out to Jason Wallace as well as to the Department of Human Services. Shout out to the fatherhood initiative over there and Matthew Chatham, like these guys bring resources to the table and for the most part they're all free. So it's everything from like housing, educational opportunities, jobs, you know, um, it's, it's like the other night, you know, one of the fathers was introduced, will be introduced to a publishing company because he wrote a book and he's trying to figure out it's like these partnerships are just they're, they're like, they're wild. It's like, I never seen anything like this, that you have a network of men of color and it doesn't just have to be men of color. It's any man, who's a dad. If you need access to these resources, they are here ready and available to you. So I believe that that's one of the things that really help us outside of our direct services is having that robust partnership list.

A lot of the partnerships that Bright Beginnings had when I arrived, they were more or less geared to our female population. So, for an example, they, we had housing partnerships, but they only took the women and their children. We didn't have any partnerships for the men. And so basically I had to recruit those partnerships. And within the first year I was able to acquire at least 34 partnerships, 25 MOUs that we have now still on file that are father specific. So anywhere from construction to office work to, um, if you want to become a plumber and electrician, workforce development partnerships, education department partnerships. So like you said, it is diverse, but we did have to basically recruit those partnerships that are male specific for the fathers.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Anthony, I wanted to ask about, how, because we've been talking about how this, how you support fathers and how fathers benefit, but what about the children? How, how do you think the increased focus on fathers is affecting the children of those fathers in your program? And, you know, since this podcast is called On the Evidence, we care about the evidence and data. So if you have any data on outcomes that you're willing to share, we'd love to hear about that, too.

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

Then we have three dispositions that actually navigate our work here. Um, and we always talk about this because although the fatherhood initiative is in is I guess you could say, I'm not gonna say it's even in his infancy stage, like we're, we're a little bigger now, but we try to adopt everything that the school uses. And our three dispoitions are, is that we are committed to excellence and equity by attending to the whole child and providing personalized learning. And, and we are a learning organization. So we're constantly assessing, tweaking, you know, realigning our programming to meet the needs of our parents. But this last disposition is, um, we are an evidence-based, data-driven culture. And so we have a, we use a platform called LENA and LENA is a, um, a program that we use where we're able to gauge the number of times our children speak, because we're trying to close the language gap, um, here at our school and that we want our kids, our children, I'm sorry, our children to know at least 49, to at least half are familiar with at least 40 million plus words before they leave Bright Beginnings.

And so what I did was I partnered with the data department, because what I saw was that as I would go into the classrooms, J.B., I would notice that certain children that, who I knew a father was active, it just seemed like they were more engaged or more excited about learning. And so when I spoke to the data department, I, we collaborated to see if we could have a direct correlation between the children who was making high scores on LENA to see how engaged were the fathers in the program and what we found, we actually presented this data at the OSSE winter inside the Capitol Winter Institute, um, this past year, um, what we found was that fathers who were directly involved and engaged in their children's life, whether it was picking them up, participating at at-home parent child engagement activities, whether it was them participating in the parenting classes, the data proved that those children, they excelled higher, they were learning more words. They were speaking more, they were, um, more engaged in the classroom. And so we have data that proves that when a father is directly involved in their child's life, that the child develops consistently and aggressively in our educational program.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Ryan, I was curious, how has Bright Beginnings changed the way you parent? Is there, are there certain skills or tactics that you use in the way that you parent, you father your children today because of your interaction or engagement with the program?

[RYAN PRATT]

Yes, it basically encourage me on everything I was actually doing. Right. And they also basically gave me advice on the things that I was doing wrong, you know, which kind of helped me understanding, you know, a better look of, you know, of everything that I was actually intaking and everything that I was actually doing, you know, with my children, but it definitely helped me understand better.

[J.B. WOGAN]

What about your relationship with your children? I mean, so, so beyond just, uh, your approach to parenting, how, how has Bright Beginnings changed your relationship with your children?

[RYAN PRATT]

Well, it’s changed how we communicate, you know, it, it changed, how, you know, how to, how to be very patient with my children. As well as I told you before, you know, it helped me understand my children more better because a lot of things that I did not know that I was actually doing, once I actually understood what I was doing wrong, you know, and I learned it from, from, you know, where there was actually getting, you know, the resources and everything from, from school, you know, it helped me kind of leverage on the right track and to actually do what was actually right for my children, because, you know, I could have been doing the same exact thing that, that, that won't help my child. So, you know, a lot of stuff, you know, I kinda like intake from the school of what they was actually doing, you know, have you ever heard of, you know, it takes a village to raise a family? So, you know, with that, everything that BBI has actually showed my children, you know, as far as the communication, the patience, you know, sharing, you know, with, attending, you know, all the, you know, activities, uh, that goes on in the classroom. It's just, it just helped me understand my children better because, you know, I had to take the time to see what was right and what was wrong.

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

J.B., can I just throw one thing in there?

[J.B. WOGAN]

Sure.

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

In the fatherhood initiative, 12-week course, we use a curriculum called quenching the father's thirst, a scientifically developed curriculum that actually addresses these areas that Ryan is talking about. So in that 12 week course, we piggyback on what the teachers are doing with them in the classroom. But we talk about the necessity of co-parenting. We talk about effective communication. You know, we talk about, um, transitions, you know, the do's and don'ts of conversation. And so we believe that these skills aid into the father's development of being able to not just communicate with his significant other or the mother of his children, but also with the teachers and with their children. So we do practice these strategies in that 12-week course from August to January.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay, great. One, uh, sort of one big picture question I should've asked earlier, but you'd mentioned that when Ryan was first participating as a father, there were only a few fathers who were, who were showing up. What does that look like today? How, how many, how much has the, has the program grown?

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

We went from probably about five, about five fathers monthly to going on about, probably about 65 to 70 active fathers a month, pre pandemic. Post pandemic, or mid pandemic, we went down to probably about 55. Um, they don't all participate at the same time, but we see more of them throughout the month because I put them in cohorts based on what they need. Um, and so, I mean, participation shot up. And so basically what the female staff saw the father initiative do is something that they had never seen before. And it was so noticeable that some of our female staff would just come and just stand and look in the window, you know, out of amazement, like I've never seen a room full of 25, 30 dads at this school, you know? And so that was another, um, indicator that we were making an impact, um, because the participation and J.B., you know, as well as I do, sometimes men lose interest quickly. So, you know, you have to keep readjusting, realigning, reinventing, recreating, re-imagining. So, you know, when it was time to take the program to the virtual platform, we had already been doing that from August up until March, you know, so it's like, um, yeah. Participation has increased greatly.

[RYAN PRATT]

J.B., if I can actually add on to that, you know, as, is I attended the fatherhood program. I kind of acknowledge how we were growing progressively. And, and it was because of Mr. Sessoms like, you know, like his, his, his thrillingness, you know, look his appearance made you show up. His appearance. That's all he to do was just come. All the plans and activities that he had for us, it actually gave the people, uh, the initiative to want to come. It wasn't, it wasn't about thinking about coming. No, we were going to come, not because of the food J.B., but because of what we were doing, the lesson plans and everything, it was just fire, just like Mr. Sessoms said it was something that you actually wanted to talk about. It was a cure. I mean, because sometimes, you know, like dads, they need that conversation, you know, so it was, it was amazing.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. All right. That's great, great context. I've run through my battery of questions. What should I have asked about, but didn’t? Any topic that you wanted to cover?

[RYAN PRATT]

I just wanted to get deep into, uh, you know, the, okay. No, I just wanted to, you know, I just wanted to go back off of the fatherhood initiative. It was just, you know, like the whole program itself, J.B., you know, it's just, it's just thrilling. You know, I, I, you know, I wish I can tell millions of people, you know, if they need the help to come because it plays a big role in male figure life, I gotta say it because, you know, I was a young man that actually, you know, grew up without a father, you know, uh, he was in my life, but you know, it, you know, I made, I made the best of it as well as he did, but a cure like this, don't nobody have a cure like this, but the fatherhood program. So, you know, that's why I totally recommend people, if they want to find, find out a lot more about the fatherhood program please do and come, you know, because it's very, very wonderful.

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

Thanks, Ryan. So when I say we try. We really try.

[J.B. WOGAN]

All right. So, Anthony, back to you. Final thoughts, anything we haven’t covered yet, topics that you want to make sure are a part of this conversation.

[ANTHONY SESSOMS]

Yeah. Like I was telling Ryan before we got started today, you know, we just don't want our fathers involved. You know, we want that overarching, I guess you could say theme, engagement. Cause you know, it's one thing for a father just to show up and pick their child up on the weekend, but it's another thing for them to just be engaged in their child's development. And so, you know, here, we want to make sure that our fathers are engaged. We communicate with all of our parents twice a week via newsletter. Fathers and mothers are invited to talk to teachers about their child's development. We engage with our parents, in particular, our fathers with opportunities like I've already said such as jobs, internships, apprenticeships, educations, and trainings. But then we provide them with a host of resources, um, from our family services department, workforce development and, um, health and wellness and therapeutic service and family advocacy.

Um, and a lot of that stuff we do by facilitating our programming. So within that, you know, we have parenting classes, workshops, we do parent cafe, we provide hot meals on the go. We provide community service opportunities. Our fathers receive father-specific food distribution. We provide them with technology. And like I said earlier, the parent and child engagement. And so my final thought is that we, you hear that it's a lot, but when you are aligned with the mission, it's almost sweatless. There are days that I'm in my office from 6:30 in the morning to 5:30 in the evening, sometimes at 6:30 in the evening, if I have a zoom call with the dads, but I just want to say, you know, you got to love this kind of work and not just do it for the pay. You got to want to your dad succeed. You gotta want to see a father pull himself up by the bootstraps and really become self-reliant and self-sufficient. And the only way to do it is, you have to put in the work. Our fathers do not come to us with intrinsic motivation. They don't come to us with all the tools that they need. They do not arrive here all the time, knowing exactly what it is that they want. And I look at it as, you know, when they first get here, I got to triage the situation because most of our fathers, when they arrive, they are in crisis. They were raised in homes where they had little to no interaction with their father. They might've been, they might come from homes where there was drug addiction. They may come, they may have actually been homeless themselves. And so we try to provide our dads with the tools that they need in order to succeed. And we make sure that we give them every opportunity.

And so I'll just say in my final thought, you know, you know, our organization's Bright Beginnings, we're on 3418 Fourth Street, Southeast Washington, DC. You know, my telephone number is (202) 868-9856. And if you want to help with this work, all you need to do is call me, because I'll be willing and ready, able to take your call to get you involved.

[J.B. WOGAN]

So now that we’ve heard from Anthony and Ryan, I want to turn for a moment to talk with Danielle DeLisle, who is working on Mathematica’s project with ASPE at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on a project called KEEP Fathers Engaged.

In partnership with ASPE, Mathematica has been gathering information on strategies for engaging fathers across a wide range of human services programs. Research suggests that children do better when their fathers play a meaningful part in their lives. We know, for example, that father involvement can help improve children’s emotional adjustment, their school completion rates, and their mental health as adults. And the benefits extend beyond the children. Fathers’ involvement with their kids is also related to improved outcomes for mothers and for the fathers themselves.

We heard several examples of these improved outcomes throughout the conversation with Anthony and Ryan.

Danielle, KEEP Fathers Engaged identified a framework for how human services programs can better engage fathers. Can you tell us how Anthony’s and Ryan’s experiences at Bright Beginnings relate to that framework?

[DANIELLE DELISLE]

Sure. Their stories really aligned with what we’ve learned. During the KEEP Fathers Engaged project, we identified approaches and strategies to increase father engagement at the program, organization, and system levels. And you know, J.B., I think Anthony and Ryan really spoke to each of these.

• For example, we heard about how at the program level, it can be really powerful to hire fathers as staff to make the program feel friendlier and more accessible to fathers by relating to their experiences. They also talked about how the program can often increase its reach by meeting fathers where they’re at and by being flexible in offering a range of opportunities for fathers to get involved. Listeners might have noticed Anthony mentioned the importance of fathers to their children’s outcomes with the example he gave of about children learning more words when they have fathers that participate in at-home parent-child engagement activities.

 

• And so that’s at the program level, and then at the organization level, there’s real value when the leadership at an organization like Bright Beginnings makes a commitment to father engagement by emphasizing how more involvement from dads can advance the agency’s goals—in this case child development, well-being and early education objectives. We heard Anthony talk about how Bright Beginnings changed to focus more on fathers with their new director, Dr. Marla Dean, who really saw the importance of engaging the whole family and championed including fathers in services. The organization also used data creatively to rethink and improve how it engages fathers, and they built strong partnerships with other community organizations such as local housing and employment services to help meet the needs of the whole family, where services were previously aimed at women and mothers.

 

• Finally, at the system level, Head Start provides a structure for fathers to take on leadership roles such as with its Policy Councils and other opportunities for parents to be involved with programming. Parents can participate in as volunteers, employees, or in leadership roles that give parents the opportunity to develop local program policies, activities, and services.

And so J.B., these are the kinds of strategies we found can be effective not only at Head Start programs, but across a wide variety of human services programs. And, again, those strategies can be employed at the program, organization, and system levels.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Thanks to my guests, Anthony Sessoms, Ryan Pratt, and Danielle DeLisle. And thank you for listening to On the Evidence, the Mathematica podcast. This episode was made possible with support from ASPE, that is, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

On the episode page, I’ll provide links where listeners can learn more about Mathematica’s ongoing work with ASPE to understand the key elements and strategies that allow for the effective engagement of fathers in human services programs. I will also include a link to our listener survey.

As always, you can keep up with the latest episodes of On the Evidence by subscribing wherever you get podcasts. Another way to stay up-to-date with the podcast is by following us on Twitter. I’m at JBWogan. Mathematica is at MathematicaNow.