Study Details | Pathways to Work

3353-Strengthening Famili

Study quality: Low

Low

Reason for the rating: This study received a low study quality rating because it is a quasi-experimental design that does not adjust estimated impacts for potentially important differences between the intervention and comparison groups.

Intervention: Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative

Population and employment barriers:

Parents (Noncustodial parents), Sex (Male)

Services provided:

Case management, Financial education, Health services (Substance use disorder treatment and mental health services), Soft skills training, Supportive services, Training (Occupational or sectoral training), Work and work-based learning (Transitional jobs), Work readiness activities (Job development/job placement, Job search assistance)

Setting: Urban only

Study design

Design:

Quasi-experimental design

Study group formation:

To be eligible for the study, a participant or comparison group member had to have the following characteristics: be a noncustodial father; be receiving public assistance or have an income at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level; be unemployed or working fewer than 20 hours per week; have a child support order payable through the support collection unit or have had paternity established for his or her child and a court proceeding; and be receiving child support services through a social services district. The pilot programs used several methods to recruit participants, including family courts, internal referrals, and outreach. The authors used propensity score matching to generate a comparison group, using annual data on child support case characteristics, demographic information, and quarterly wage information for noncustodial parent case records in the New York state child support program from 2005 to 2009. Specifically, evaluators matched cases with overdue child support orders that had similar demographic characteristics, employment and earnings histories, number and ages of children, public benefit receipt histories, and some other characteristics. The matching approach resulted in a group of 1,757 fathers in the intervention condition and the same number of comparison group fathers.

Time period of study:

October 2006 to September 2009

Pathways only reports results from studies with a study quality rating of high or moderate.

Sample characteristics

Sex

Male

100%

Participant race and ethnicity

Black or African American	58%
White, not Hispanic	18%
Another race	2%
Hispanic or Latino of any race	23%

The race and ethnicity categories may sum to more than 100 percent if the authors reported race and ethnicity separately; in these cases, we report the category White, rather than White, not Hispanic.

Family status

Parents	100%
Noncustodial parents	100%

Intervention implementation

Implementing organization:

New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance

Intervention services:

The Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative provided employment services and other supports to parents with low income who were not current on their child support payments in the following four New York cities: Buffalo, Jamestown, Syracuse, and New York City. Participants worked with a case manager to coordinate services, including job-readiness training, job search assistance, and job placement. Some sites also offered job skills training, transitional jobs, and work supports. Each site also provided parenting or relationship skills workshops and child support-related services. Some sites provided substance abuse and mental health services as well.

Mandatory services:

Participants were explicitly told participation was not mandatory but that nonparticipation could result in jail time. According to the authors, the “threat of jail” was “usually made quite clear.”

Comparison services:

The comparison group was composed of men who were not current on their child support payments in the same New York cities, and who matched the characteristics of parents in the intervention group but who did not have access to Strengthening Families services.

Study publications

Lippold, Kye, and Elaine Sorensen (2011). Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers: Final impact report for the pilot employment programs, Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Available at https://www.urban.org/research/publication/strengthening-families-through-stronger-fathers-final-impact-report-pilot-employment-programs.

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Study of Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative