Using Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) as a Frame for Father-Inclusive Efforts

Unless you’ve been on a remote desert island for the past couple of years, I’m sure you’ve heard about the push to implement diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in the public and private sectors. Despite recent challenges to these efforts, DEI seems here to stay.

In recent years, National Fatherhood Initiative® (NFI) has seen more government agencies and other human service organizations intentionally include fathers in their work. And, while not all these father-inclusive efforts use the term "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" to describe them (because some started before DEI became popular), they can be understood within a DEI framework. Likewise, if you want to make the case to your colleagues, leadership, or board that your agency or organization should offer programs and resources specifically for fathers, you could make the case using a DEI framework.

How?

Let’s begin by defining a DEI effort so we are on the same page. A DEI effort:

• Respects the differences among people (diversity)
• Seeks fairness in access to opportunities and resources (equity), and
• Provides an intentional, proactive, ongoing effort to involve those who have been marginalized in some way (inclusion).

The aforementioned and increasing number of father-inclusive efforts by government agencies and human service organizations have recognized that by ignoring the evidence of involved fathers’ positive impact on maternal and child health (and family and community well-being,) they have excluded or otherwise marginalized fathers in the design and implementation of family-strengthening programs and services. They’ve also recognized this has limited their own and their partners’ impact in creating and implementing strengths-based and whole-family approaches. Without programs to intentionally involve fathers in the whole-family approach, how whole-family are they, really?

In other words, these DEI-related father-inclusive efforts have sought to:

• Rectify a lack of respect for fathers and mothers' different, complementary impacts on children, family, and community well-being.
• Provide fathers access to the opportunities and resources provided by human service organizations and programs.
• Do the above intentionally and proactively through ongoing efforts.

How Father-Inclusive Efforts Use a DEI Frame

Here are some select examples of these father-inclusive efforts viewed within a DEI frame and how NFI comes alongside the agency or its partners to realize the effort’s full potential.

Example #1) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families Internal Memorandum: In 2018, the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued an internal memorandum (IM) to the programs it oversees calling for proactive father inclusion. A wide range of organizations run the programs it oversees, including child support, childcare, Head Start, and family and youth programs. The IM acknowledges the inherent lack of DEI regarding including fathers in human service programs. It also describes how the programs it oversees have started to weave proactive father inclusion (engagement) efforts, many of which use father-specific resources.

NFI’s Role: We build the capacity of organizations nationwide that run ACF-funded programs, most notably child welfare, child support, child abuse prevention, and Head Start and Early Head Start. 

Example #2) ACF, Office of Child Support Services, Advancing Equity in Child Support: In 2023, ACF awarded a consortium of state-level child support agencies, led by the state of Minnesota, with a grant to create model initiatives for including fathers more effectively. It calls for creating father-specific initiatives and resources. This grant considers ACF’s strategic goals (and thus the federal government’s) around DEI, such as reducing structural barriers that lead to discrimination (fathers have been discriminated against in child support), taking preventative and proactive approaches to ensure individual and family well-being (involved fathers reduce the risk or poor individual and family outcomes), and the use of whole-family strategies.

NFI’s Role: We’re part of the team implementing the initiative, providing a fatherhood lens by advising/consulting on all aspects of the project.

Example #3) ACF, Children’s Bureau: The Children’s Bureau, which oversees the nation’s child abuse prevention programs, has awarded many grants and cooperative agreements to improve the inclusion of fathers in child welfare systems. These efforts have involved creating father-specific pilot projects, initiatives, and resources (e.g., podcasts, print materials, and curricula). To see examples, visit The Child Welfare Information Gateway.

NFI’s Role: In addition to partnering with state and local child welfare agencies to help them include fathers more effectively, we have partnered with the Children’s Bureau on several father-inclusion projects.

• Most notably, the Quality Improvement Center on Non-Resident Fathers and the Child Welfare System. This was a five-year project in which we teamed with the American Humane Association and the American Bar Association to build capacity in child welfare systems by establishing father-specific programs and resources, including a curriculum that builds staff skills in father inclusion.
• More recently, we were part of the Bureau’s advisory council for the Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare project, which focuses, among other things, on adding to the evidence for promising strategies around father inclusion.

Example #4) Florida Department of Children and Families and Florida Department of Health: In 2023, the Florida State Legislature passed a $70 million bill tied to the state’s child welfare efforts that established a statewide Responsible Fatherhood Initiative. Funding to implement the components of the initiative went to several state agencies. The Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) has awarded grants to local human service organizations to establish father-specific programs. The Florida Department of Health (DOH) has directed the home visiting programs (HVPs) it funds to implement father-inclusive strategies and tactics. Part of the funding also goes to establishing a statewide website and clearinghouse to assist fathers and the organizations that serve fathers with guidance and resources that increase fathers’ involvement in their children's lives.

NFI’s Role: NFI is partnering with nearly all DCF grantees to implement our programs. The DOH chose 24:7 Dad® as the father-specific program for integration into HVPs. NFI conducted four regional training sessions for HVPs on implementing the program. NFI is partnering with the organization awarded the grant to establish a statewide website and clearinghouse to assess the organizations awarded DCF grants and help them create action plans to more effectively include fathers in programs and services.

Example 5): Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Prevention and Early Intervention (PEI) The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which is responsible for overseeing the state’s child abuse and neglect prevention programs, established the Fatherhood EFFECT program within its Prevention and Early Intervention (PEI) division. The program seeks to increase the number of father-specific efforts within the human service organizations it funds. It focuses on keeping children safe by increasing the five protective factors that reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect. PEI requires using curricula designed specifically for fathers in the programs it funds. For details on this program, visit this webpage. 

NFI’s Role: 24:7 Dad® is an approved curriculum for use with Fatherhood EFFECT funds, and all the current grantees use it. We also partnered with the PEI division to conduct a father-inclusion webinar for statewide grantees and other organizations interested in becoming more father-inclusive. Finally, we conducted a series of in-person capacity-building webinars on father inclusion for the organizations funded by the Texas Home Visiting Program.

Example #6: Memorial Hermann Health System (Houston, TX): Memorial Hermann is one of the largest and most revered nonprofit healthcare systems in the U.S. In recognizing a gap that contributes to racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, they partnered with NFI to implement a pilot program using 24:7 Dad® and Understanding Dad™ (with Mom as Gateway™) to prevent the poor maternal and child health outcomes associated with a lack of father involvement during the perinatal period. They considered this program to be part of their “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and whole family-centered efforts.”

The program focused on families at risk for poor maternal and child health outcomes, enrolling expectant fathers in 24:7 Dad® and mothers in Understanding Dad™. They contracted with an independent evaluator to measure the program’s impact on those outcomes. It was so successful in reducing negative pregnancy-related outcomes that it became a permanent offering across all its facilities in the greater Houston area that serve pregnant women.

NFI’s Role: Besides providing our programs, we trained their staff to facilitate them.

I encourage you to consider viewing your father-inclusive effort through a DEI frame. With more public and private funding available for DEI efforts than ever, it might help you develop an even more successful one that your organization can maintain for a long time.

Have you thought about your fatherhood program or initiative as DEI?

Can you develop a statement in 20 words or less that puts it within a DEI frame?