This report summarizes activities in a study designed to build evidence on promising strategies to improve enrollment and participation in fatherhood programs. Participating programs iteratively implemented and assessed three approaches to addressing implementation challenges—outreach, peer mentoring, and coaching—and the use of rapid learning cycles to implement those approaches.

In 2020, MDRC and its partners conducted a literature review and held a series of conversations on the subject of engaging fathers in fatherhood programs that included practitioners, fathers, researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders. This publication collects engagement approaches practitioners and other stakeholders have tried or are considering.

This report describes a randomized field trial of an app designed to be integrated into a fatherhood curriculum. The app offered reminders, planning tools, and encouragement to participants. The study found no evidence that the app improved attendance, either for the first session or overall.

The Just Beginning intervention aims to improve the quality of interactions between fathers with low incomes and their young children. As implemented in this evaluation, the intervention did not produce statistically significant effects on measures of father-child relationship quality, on fathers’ parenting confidence, nor on levels of father-child contact.

This report presents findings from a random assignment evaluation of a program incorporating interactive cognitive-behavioral techniques with job-readiness services for fathers recently involved in the justice system. As implemented in this evaluation, the program did not produce impacts on employment, involvement in the criminal justice system, or parenting.