Engaged Father Toolkit

ENGAGED FATHER TOOLKIT

The Healthy Start Engaged Father program promotes infant wellbeing by providing expectant and new fathers with parent education, support, and access to resources during the perinatal period. The impetus to develop the program came from the need to strengthen family resilience by promoting positive father involvement. This includes involving fathers in providing practical support during pregnancy and in raising children.

Many Healthy Start home visiting programs now provide a male involvement program that offers men the opportunity to engage in the wellbeing of children. The 2019 Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) Notice of Funding Opportunity released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that Healthy Start projects funded under this notice should now serve 100 fathers or male partners affiliated with the Healthy Start women, infants, children.

Dr. Shawna J. Lee has collaborated with the Genesee County, Ingham County, Kalamazoo, Detroit, Hannahville Indian Community and Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, and American Indian Health & Family Services Healthy Start programs to develop, implement, and pilot test the Healthy Start Engaged Father program. The Engaged Father model parallels the approach used for mothers who participate in Healthy Start. The Healthy Start model uses home visitation and Community Health Workers (CHWs) to connect families to services intended to reduce health disparities that exist within low-income communities in the United States.

THE ENGAGED FATHER PROGRAM HAS THREE CORE COMPONENTS:

Home visitation with a father-friendly male CHW;
Parent education and support to men during pregnancy and the first year of his child’s life; and
Group-based peer support, in which fatherhood CHWs implement a culturally relevant group-based fatherhood curriculum.

WE KINDLY ASK THAT YOU Share how you PLAN to USE THE toolkit

Please let us know how you’ll use the toolkit to help us target our research. We would be happy to work with you to customize our materials for your organization's goals as well. We can also provide notifications when we release updates to the toolkit content.

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PRINTED MATERIALS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD BY SITE

The Engaged Father Toolkit (i.e., Involved Dad and Dad Zone) is designed to make father-friendly parent education available free of charge to programs that serve parents in Michigan. Individual toolkits are listed below by each site partnering with the Healthy Start Engaged Father program. The toolkits are currently specific to each partner site, but we can tailor or help provide support in tailoring to other interested sites and programs.

Involved Dad: The First Few Months Booklet

Dad Zone: Game Strategies for Pregnancy Booklet

We also have additional materials that can be included in the toolkits. These materials are described below and available upon request:

Program enrollment form: This document is used to document enrollment of fathers and male partners in the Healthy Start Engaged Father program.
Needs assessment: This document is used for a CHW to engage in assessment of the fathers and male partners enrolled in the program.
Stickers: These are used to adhere to the front page of the toolkit folder, as well as the inside flap of the toolkit folder detailing main program staff contact information.
Through the Father’s Eyes: A tri-fold brochure promoting the Healthy Start Engaged Father program.

WCAG 2.0 COMPLIANT AND SPANISH DOWNLOADS FOR GENESEE COUNTY

Involved Dad: The First Few Months Booklet

DOWNLOAD (English)

DOWNLOAD (SPANISH)

Dad Zone: Game Strategies for Pregnancy Booklet

DOWNLOAD (ENGLISH)

DOWNLOAD (SPANISH)

This publication is supported by the Genesee County Health Department through the Healthy Start project, Grant Number H49MC00148, from the Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA,) as well as funding from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, and the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services.

The Engaged Father Toolkit was created to comply with accessibility standards and regulations from WCAG 2.0. Please don't hesitate to provide feedback on optimizing our PDF documents.