Evaluations of Existing Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Programs

This proposal is for an evaluation of Fathers and Children Together (FACT), a prison-based parenting program that was recognized as an Innovative program by the U.S. Office on Child Abuse and Neglect in the Emerging Practices in the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect project. A Scientist-Manager-Practitioner (SMP) model provides the framework for incorporating standardized and newly developed measures into a systematic assessment of the program's resources, procedures and processes, and outcomes. The assessment will enable FACT to highlight program strengths, identify service barriers, and evaluate both costs and success of efforts to increase supporting factors for positive parenting and reduce risk factors for child abuse in this group of fathers. Six program goals are translated into nine hypotheses which are then tested, using multiple research methodologies (quasi-experimental, pre-experimental, and non-experimental) to determine if the program's components (parent education classes, father/child visitation, storybook project, parent advisory team) are effective in increasing the father's knowledge and use of parenting skill, empathy with children, recognition of importance of role of fathers, understanding of how life experiences effect parenting. Benefits of this proposal derive from its: investigation of the frequently ignored importance of the father/child relationship in child abuse prevention; development of two new instruments which can be further tested by other programs to explore the incremental changes parents undergo in modifying parenting behaviors and measure the combined effects of multi-faceted child abuse programs; emphasis on the relationship between program costs and outcomes in child abuse prevention programs; insight into the prevalence and severity of attachment disorders among incarcerated fathers and subsequent effect on child abuse factors; utilization of a comprehensive model to evaluate a strategic blend of program activities in child abuse programs; a greater understanding of the complexities facing families and children with an incarcerated father.