A new brief from the National Home Visiting Resource Center highlights the importance of father involvement in young children’s early development and learning – and offers strategies home visiting programs can use to engage them.
Father Engagement in Home Visiting: Benefits, Challenges, and Promising Strategies notes early involvement produces measurable benefits to the father, his partner and the child. These benefits occur regardless of whether the father and child live together.
Despite the evidence, home visiting programs face barriers in successfully engaging fathers according to the brief. These include misperceptions that program are only for mothers, concerns about safety issues, scheduling issues and inadequate curricula and training to help staff address the needs of both parents.
The brief outlines five promising strategies home visiting programs can use to overcome barriers and profiles available curricula supporting fathers.