Increasing Father Engagement in Head Start

How a web-based tool helped this program better support their community

Here is a story about how a program in West Virginia used the information from their Parent Gauge interviews to make an enormous difference in the lives of their families. This program is funded by Maternal Infant Early Childhood Home Visitation (MIECHV) and funded by West Virginia Home Visitation Program (WVHVP), within the Office of Maternal, Child and Family Health (OMCFH) using the Early Head Start model (EHS).

They discovered in their community a remarkable resource—a retired US Army police officer who had spent a career training Special Forces teams. This retired officer had the age and the experience that enabled him to be almost a father himself to the Early Head Start dads, many of whom said that he changed their lives by making them feel more respected and connected than they had ever been.

One of the MIECHV Early Head Start Program models’ dads showed so much interest and initiative in wanting to help other fathers that the WV Home Visitation Program sent him with his wife and two children and a staff member for several full days of training at the 24/7 Dads Program sponsored by the National Fatherhood Institute. He will be applying the knowledge he learned from the 24/7 Dad program to work with dads in the Early Head Start Model Program.

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