Delivering services to incarcerated teen fathers: A pilot intervention to increase the quality of father–infant interactions during visitation.

Abstract

The absence of a father figure has been linked to very poor developmental outcomes for the child. During incarceration, there are limited opportunities for visitation between fathers and their children. The Baby Elmo Program provides incarcerated teen fathers with parenting training and visitation with their children with the stated goal of enhancing father-child interactional quality. Forty-one incarcerated teen fathers and their infants ranging from 1 to 15 months of age participated in the present study. During individual sessions, a trained facilitator prepared fathers for visits with their children by introducing key concepts such as following the child's lead, using developmentally appropriate media to illustrate those concepts. After each training session, the incarcerated teen father interacted with his infant and the visit was video recorded. Analysis of the visit sessions focused on father's time use on different activities, the quality of father-infant interactions, and father's integration of target skills introduced in the intervention. The time-use analysis revealed that time use changed as a function of infant age. Growth linear modeling indicated that there were significant positive increases in the amount of parent support and infant engagement as a function of the number of sessions. Follow-up analyses indicated that changes between specific sessions mapped onto the target skills discussed during specific training sessions. This study's preliminary findings suggest that an intervention integrating visitation and appropriate media may be effective for incarcerated teen fathers. Due to the lack of a randomized control group, the present findings are exploratory and are discussed with a focus on further program development.

Fathers Are Parents, Too! Widening the Lens on Parenting for Children's Development

“…Research is slowly moving in this direction. New interventions for fathers have significantly enhanced the quality of father–child interactions and paternal self‐efficacy , and coparenting interventions have reduced mothers’ and fathers’ parenting stress and symptoms of depression, and have enhanced parenting quality .…”

Father-Inclusive Perinatal Parent Education Programs: A Systematic Review

“…It uses a theoretically driven intervention approach and interactive sessions to help fathers understand their infant's emotional needs and thus support positive father-child interactions. 73,74 The program is now being tested as an RCT with community-based samples of low-income fathers. 75,76 Supporting Father Involvement, a group-based relationship strengthening program that has been successful in promoting father involvement, 77,78 is currently being tested with high-risk couples involved in the child welfare system.…”

Examining the Outcomes of the InsideOut Dad Fatherhood Education Program for Incarcerated Minority Fathers

“…The rate of noncontact in this sample was actually higher than past research that found that approximately two thirds of fathers had no contact with their child during incarceration (Day et al, 2005). This may be due to the restrictive protocols of correctional institutions regarding visitation policies (Barr et al, 2014; Murray et al, 2012). It may also reflect the nature of the relationship between the incarcerated father and the child’s mother or caregiver who can play a “gatekeeping” role in determining the frequency with which children visit an incarcerated parent (Loper & Tuerk, 2006).…”

“…Differences in the outcomes of corrections-based fatherhood education programs are attributed to variability in curricula implementation (Armstrong et al, 2018). Examples of this variability are found in the evaluative work of Barr et al (2014) and Block et al (2014). Despite some empirical focus on corrections-based fatherhood education in the last decade, few studies have captured the fatherhood education experiences of incarcerated minority fathers (Cabrera et al, 2015).…”