The benefits of high-quality father-child relationships for fathers and children alike are well documented. While evidence suggests parenting programs can improve the quality of father-child relationships, few fathers participate in such programs. This qualitative study aims to fill the gap in knowledge on best practices for recruiting urban African American fathers, a group of fathers with unique parenting challenges, to parenting programs. Focus groups were conducted with 29 fathers to gain their perspectives on recruitment strategies. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with a nationwide sample of 19 fatherhood program providers to learn about their most successful recruitment strategies. Recruitment strategies based on emergent themes from the focus groups and interviews are presented here. Themes included using word-of-mouth recruitment, increasing advertising, targeting advertising specifically to urban African American fathers, providing transportation and incentives, recruiting through the courts, collaborating with other community agencies, and offering parenting programming along with other programming valued by fathers such as employment assistance. Implications for developing strategies for recruiting urban African American fathers to parenting programs are discussed.

The negative health impact of maltreatment prior to adulthood supports the need for early prevention and intervention to prevent initial and recurrent child abuse and improve capacity to meet healthcare needs of maltreated children.

Although a strong literature on child maltreatment re-reporting exists, much of that literature stops at the first re-report. The literature on chronic re-reporting, meaning reports beyond the second report, is scant. The authors follow Loman’s lead in focusing on reports beyond the first two to determine what factors predict these “downstream” report stages. Cross-sector, longitudinal administrative data are used. The authors analyze predictors at each of the first four recurrences (first to second report, second to third report, third to fourth report, and fourth to fifth report). Findings demonstrate that some factors (e.g., tract poverty) which predict initial recurrence lose their predictive value at later stages, whereas others (e.g., aid to families with dependent children history) remain predictive across stages. In-home child welfare services and mental health treatment emerged as consistent predictors of reduced recurrence.

Young children in families contacting the child welfare system are at high risk of recurrent maltreatment and poor developmental outcomes. Home visitation programs to support parenting may offer hope as a preventive resource but these programs are rarely linked with child welfare. This article describes findings from a formative evaluation of a program designed to connect child welfare-involved families to an existing evidence-supported home visitation program. The program, Early Childhood Connections (ECC), was developed by a field-university partnership including leaders from a public state child welfare system, regional early childhood education systems, and several local agencies providing family support services. Despite extensive and rigorous planning by the workgroup and collaborative refining of the intervention approach as agency needs changed, the continued structural and policy changes within both the home visitation agency and the child welfare agencies created significant ongoing barriers to implementation. On the other hand, child welfare-involved families were receptive to engaging with home visitation. Implications of lessons learned for ongoing program development in this area are discussed.

Child welfare (CW) professionals who provide direct services to families, referred to as ‘caseworkers’ in the USA, often have to act in ways that are inconsistent with their professional values, leading to feelings of guilt, anxiety and self-blame, referred to as moral distress. The conceptual basis for moral distress primarily comes from the nursing literature, leaving a theoretical gap in how CW workers experience moral distress. Hence, this study used qualitative system dynamics modelling to develop a dynamic theory of moral distress amongst US CW caseworkers (N = 25 focus groups, 192 participants). Results, presented in a qualitative system dynamics model, reveal that participants held strong values pertaining to CW casework and that moral distress was common. Participants described discrepancies between the services they wanted to provide and the services they were actually providing, and the distressing feelings that resulted. Study findings also highlight coping strategies and ‘breaking points’ related to moral distress. Overall, this study’s dynamic theory provides a framework that illustrates the stock (accumulation) and flow (release) of moral distress specific to CW caseworkers and sheds light on the psychological distress and conflict experienced in this profession. Implications for social work education and CW organizational change are discussed.