Fathers with child welfare involvement are often, if not always, mandated to participate in a parenting education program. The goal is to educate fathers to be more involved in the lives of their children. However, there are barriers to father involvement that parenting education alone can not solve. These fathers are in need of resource linkages to other educational programs and services. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the effectiveness of having case management services as part of a parenting program for fathers.

Project Fatherhood is one of these programs designed to provide parenting education specifically to fathers. Upon noticing their needs for other programs and services, they incorporated a case management system that would allow them to connect fathers to these needed resources. Project Fatherhood’s goal is to increase father involvement in the lives of their children by reducing the barriers that prevent them from doing so, and to reduce father absenteeism in society. To assess the effectiveness of the program, this study focused on evaluating the effectiveness of the case management system by reviewing father participation, their needs upon enrolling, referrals they received from their case managers, and case manager follow up.