TRUE Dads: Evaluation of an Intervention Focusing on Father Involvement, Co-parenting, and Employment

With an emphasis on 12 3-hour group workshops, the TRUE Dads fatherhood intervention program focuses on establishing or strengthening three of men's key roles in the family: 1) their role as providers, through fostering employment and economic self-sufficiency, 2) their role as fathers, in building and maintaining positive engagement with their children, and 3) their role in having and keeping a positive relationship with their co-parenting partner (wife, intimate partner, or other co-parent). The study is a randomized clinical trial that compares participants in a program track with participants a study track (no treatment control group) over a one-year period.

Interventions to strengthen men's roles as providers, as fathers, and as co-parents have typically been addressed in separate intervention and research silos. The TRUE Dads program proposes a unique integration of employment, fathering, and co-parenting services, with the overarching goal of strengthening fathers and the family unit by: 1) increasing fathers' economic stability and self-sufficiency, 2) enhancing the quantity and quality of father's engagement with their children, 3) improving the quality of the collaborative relationship between fathers and mothers or men and their co-parenting partners, 4) improving the relationship quality of fathers in their intimate partner relationships (with the co-parent or new partner), and 5) positively affecting children's behavior and development.

Twelve hundred fathers will be recruited for the study. After an initial interview of the fathers and their co-parenting partners, who will complete Baseline survey, 720 of the 1,200 fathers and co-parents will be assigned to the TRUE Dads intervention (Program track), and 480 to a no-treatment control condition (Study track). Participants will be informed that the program consists of participation in a series of 12 three-hour meetings. Those 12 sessions include six meetings covering a core fatherhood curriculum, attended with the co-parent, combined with one of three intensives selected by the father: a) six sessions with an emphasis on employment, b) six sessions with an emphasis on building healthy romantic relationships with the co-parent, or c) six sessions with an emphasis on parenting with a participating co-parent. Participants in the Program track may be referred for additional employment, mental health, or other needed services. Both program and control participants (fathers and co-parents) will fill out a Follow-up survey one year from their entrances into the study.

Eligibility Criteria:
Inclusion criteria:

This study begins with a focus on fathers. We are initially recruiting men who:

* Are 18 or older
* Are residing in Oklahoma County/Metro
* Are expecting a child or already have a child age (0-12), with an emphasis on 0-6,
* Have spent time with the child the prior month (or with mother if expecting)
* Are English-speaking. Have not previously participated in the Family Expectations program offered by Public Strategies (Oklahoma) in the last 3 years

Exclusion criteria:

Because this an intervention for fathers that attempts to improve the relationship with the fathers' co-parent, we are accepting fathers only if the co-parent agrees to attend at least the first 6 workshops. In pilot trials, almost all the co-parents are women (wives, intimate partners, grandmothers), but a few are men (the fathers' father, brother, intimate partner)

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Exclusion Criteria:

* Either or both partners have taken part in the Family Expectations project during the past three years, located in the same building, run by Public Strategies