Featured Grant OpportunitySchool Emergency Response to Violence (Project SERV) (Funding Opportunity) 

Featured Grant OpportunityShare with Youth: NOAA Student Opportunities Database

Featured Grant OpportunityShort Courses in Social Determinants of Health for Research Education in Nursing Research (Funding...

Featured Grant OpportunityComprehensive Partnerships to Advance Cancer Health Equity (CPACHE) Program (Funding Opportunity)

Featured Grant OpportunityRisk and Protective Factors of Family Health and Family Level Interventions (Funding Opportunity)

Featured Grant OpportunityPersonnel Development to Improve Services and Results for Children with Disabilities--Doctoral...

Featured Grant OpportunityStanding Announcement for Tribal Title IV-E Plan Development Grants (Funding Opportunity)

Featured Grant OpportunityProviding Research Education Experiences to Enhance Inclusivity for a Diverse Substance Use and...

Featured Grant OpportunityFY 2024 Research on School-Based Hate Crimes (Funding Opportunity)

Featured Grant OpportunityChallenge America (Funding Opportunity)

Featured Grant OpportunityResearch and Evaluation on Firearm Violence and Mass Shootings (Funding Opportunity)

Featured Grant OpportunityNational Juvenile Court Data Archive (Funding Opportunity)

Featured Grant OpportunityGraduate Research Fellowship (Funding Opportunity)

Featured Grant OpportunityCommunity Programs for Outreach and Intervention with Youth and Young Adults at Clinical High Risk...

Featured Grant OpportunityPrint and Disseminate Child Victims and Witnesses Support Materials (Funding Opportunity)

##  More Collaboration Profiles

## Breadcrumb

            -  Collaboration Profiles 
            -  Just Beginning Fatherhood 
            -           Just Beginning Fatherhood      

# Just Beginning Fatherhood

### History

In 2008, JB began as a collaborative project between Carole Shauffer and Rachel Barr. Shauffer is a lawyer and former Executive Director of the Youth Law Center and advocate for children involved in the welfare system. Barr, a psychologist at Georgetown University, studies parent–infant interactions and infant learning and memory. The pair met during a fellowship program at the Zero to Three organization. There, they discussed developing an accessible intervention for incarcerated teenage fathers who do not typically have contact visits with their children. The program and curriculum are intergenerational, drawing on Dr. Barr’s expertise in parent–infant interactions and infant learning. JB is available to both mothers and fathers, but due to the much higher proportion of incarcerated fathers, an overwhelming majority of program participants are teenage fathers. JB benefits from the collaborative approach of the Youth Law Center and Georgetown University. JB’s researcher–practitioner partnership team has made JB an efficient and effective program, as each entity brings unique skills and added value.

### Partnership Roles

The Youth Law Center supports the development and implementation of JB by providing expertise on the reform of the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. The center also provides legal and logistical support to address bureaucratic and systemic issues. The Youth Law Center visits sites regularly and trains all new facilitators to support the implementation of the JB program.

Georgetown University evaluates the program to measure its effectiveness and the fidelity with which the model is implemented. The collaborative approach between the Youth Law Center and Georgetown University assures that the JB curriculum responds to evolving evidence from the field and is consistently implemented with high quality.

### Purpose       

The JB program promotes confidence and competence in participants in their role as parents and supports parent–child interactions while the parent is incarcerated. Participants build confidence and competence by learning strategies to positively interact with their children and practicing parenting skills during structured visits. To benefit young parents and the community as a whole, the program strives to reduce recidivism, improve the behavior of parents while they are in custody, and encourages successful reentry (De Claire & Dixon, 2015).
> 
“The staff and [teenage parents] at the Youth Guidance Center love the parenting program initiated by the Youth Law Center in collaboration with Georgetown University. It has transformed the attitudes and behaviors of some of the most hard-to-reach [teenage parents] that have serious histories in drug use and gang activity. It gives them purpose in life and a vision of a future.”

*—Colleen Preciado, Retired Chief Probation Officer, Orange County, California*

## Main navigation

- Just Beginning Fatherhood
- About the Collaboration
- Collaborating with Juvenile Correctional Facilities
- Promising Practices
- Lessons Learned and Challenges
- Accomplishments
- Resources
- References

## Help Spread the Word About youth.gov

Get a Web Badge