Responsible Fatherhood Isn’t Sustainable When Funded Like a Side Project

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

For more than two decades, the responsible fatherhood field has been asked to do something remarkable with something fragile. We’ve been asked to help fathers heal, work, parent, co-parent, navigate court systems, repair relationships, manage child support, address trauma, understand their rights, strengthen families, and show up for their children while standing on funding structures that are temporary, narrow, and uncertain.

That’s not sustainability. It’s survival. And survival can’t be the long-term strategy for a field that touches the lives of children, mothers, fathers, families, and communities.

Across this country, we say we want fathers to be more engaged. We say children need their fathers. We say family stability matters. We say responsible fatherhood is connected to child well-being, school readiness, emotional security, economic mobility, public safety, child support compliance, maternal health, and healthy co-parenting.

But too often, we fund fatherhood as though it only belongs to one agency, one grant category, one department, or one short-term initiative.

That’s the contradiction we must confront.

If father engagement benefits multiple systems, then multiple systems must help support father engagement.

Responsible fatherhood isn’t simply a program category. It’s not simply a curriculum, class, or support group. It’s not simply a six-week intervention where a man comes in, receives a certificate, takes a picture, and goes home.

At its best, responsible fatherhood is upstream infrastructure.

Responsible fatherhood is 

• The bridge between a father and his child before absence becomes permanent
• The conversation that helps a co-parenting relationship mature before conflict hardens into court battles
• The support that helps a father find work before child support debt becomes unmanageable
• The guidance that helps an unmarried father understand legitimation before a medical emergency exposes the limits of his legal standing
• The brotherhood that helps a man speak honestly about stress, grief, shame, and fear before those emotions become silence, anger, or withdrawal.

This is what upstream work does. It moves before the crisis. It doesn’t wait for a family to collapse before asking what could have been done. It doesn’t wait for a child to struggle in school before asking whether Dad had the tools to be engaged. It doesn’t wait for a father to fall behind in child support before asking whether he had stable employment, transportation, parenting time, or legal clarity. It doesn’t wait for child welfare, reentry, housing, behavioral health, or family court to inherit problems that could have been addressed earlier with the right investment.

Yet the funding model for fatherhood often lives downstream. We fund crisis. We fund removal. We fund enforcement. We fund incarceration. We fund emergency housing. We fund remediation. We fund systems after harm has occurred. Then we ask why prevention is so hard to sustain.

The answer is simple: We haven’t built a permanent funding architecture for father engagement.

The responsible fatherhood field has too often been expected to chase grants rather than build institutions. A grant opens, organizations apply, programs launch, staff are hired, fathers enroll, relationships are built, data is collected, outcomes begin to emerge, and then the field holds its breath for the next funding cycle.

That kind of instability doesn’t just strain organizations. It weakens the very communities those organizations serve.

Fathers who are trying to rebuild their lives need consistency. Families navigating co-parenting conflict need consistency. Children trying to trust that Dad will remain present need consistency. Staff doing the delicate work of engagement, navigation, coaching, and accountability need consistency.

You can’t build generational stability on temporary scaffolding.

Braided Funding for Responsible Fatherhood

The field needs a new funding imagination.

That begins with recognizing that responsible fatherhood should not depend on a single grant. 

Federal Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) funding should remain an anchor, but it can’t be the only anchor. These grants are among the clearest federal pathways for supporting father-child engagement, healthy relationships, marriage and relationship education, co-parenting, and economic stability. They allow organizations to build structured programming, hire staff, collect data, evaluate outcomes, and serve fathers with intention. 

But no field should be dependent on one federal stream to prove its national relevance year after year. It should be braided through every system that benefits when fathers are engaged. Here are several examples from critical sectors.

State-Level Funding for Responsible Fatherhood

A state legislature could create a direct line item for responsible fatherhood. That line item could fund fatherhood programs, legitimation navigation, child support education, reentry fatherhood services, father-centered workforce development, and statewide capacity-building for local organizations. It could create a dedicated home for work that too often falls between systems. Fatherhood is relevant to child welfare, workforce, courts, public health, corrections, education, and housing, but when no system owns it, every system can pretend it belongs somewhere else.

Fatherhood Funding at the Local Level

A city council or county commission could do the same. Local government contracts could support fatherhood work as part of violence prevention, family stability, youth development, neighborhood revitalization, or public safety. Imagine a county investing in a fatherhood navigation program inside its family court, child support office, jail reentry program, or workforce center. Imagine a city funding fatherhood coaches in the neighborhoods where young dads are already showing up: barbershops, schools, recreation centers, community colleges, churches, and housing communities. That’s not charity. That’s local infrastructure.

Using TANF Funds to Support Fatherhood 

TANF, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, should also be part of the conversation. If TANF is meant to promote family stability, economic mobility, and child well-being, then responsible fatherhood belongs inside that purpose. TANF can potentially support noncustodial parent employment services, job readiness, job placement, parenting support, co-parenting education, financial literacy, transportation assistance, and public benefits navigation when these activities align with TANF goals. A state could use TANF dollars to support fathers who are trying to work, pay child support, stabilize their families, and remain connected to their children.

Partnerships Between Child Support and Fatherhood Programs

Child support systems should be central partners for fatherhood programs. Too many fathers first encounter government through enforcement, not support. That doesn’t mean child support is unimportant. Children deserve financial support. Mothers deserve reliability. Families need resources. But a system designed to collect support should also invest in the conditions that make support more likely. Child support agencies could contract with fatherhood programs to provide employment coaching, parenting-time education, arrears navigation, order-modification assistance, mediation referrals, and co-parenting communication support. Access and Visitation funding can support services connected to custody, parenting time, mediation, counseling, education, parenting plans, supervised visitation, and safe exchange. These aren’t side issues. For many fathers, these are the very conditions that determine whether they stay connected or disappear under the weight of confusion, conflict, and debt.

Child Welfare Funding for Father Engagement

Title IV-B can support family preservation, family support, reunification, and services that help stabilize families before removal becomes necessary. Title IV-E prevention funding can support time-limited, approved services connected to mental health, substance use, and in-home parent skill-building for children and families at risk of foster care involvement. The strategy isn’t to simply rename every fatherhood activity as child welfare. The strategy is to position father engagement as a child-safety, permanency, kinship, reunification, and foster-care prevention strategy. If child welfare systems are serious about keeping children safely connected to family, fathers can’t remain an afterthought.

Health System Collaborations With Fatherhood Organizations

Medicaid and behavioral health systems offer another opportunity, especially when fatherhood organizations partner with eligible providers. Medicaid may not directly pay for a fatherhood curriculum, but it can support health-related services, including behavioral health, substance use treatment, care coordination, community health worker services, health homes, Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, and certain health-related social needs, through state plans or waivers. A fatherhood organization could partner with a Federally Qualified Health Center, a behavioral health provider, a Medicaid managed care organization, or a community health worker program to support fathers dealing with stress, depression, trauma, reentry health needs, substance use, or family stabilization challenges.

Father-Inclusive Public Health Initiatives

Public health and maternal and child health systems should also see fathers as part of the solution. Healthy Start, Title V, home visiting, perinatal health initiatives, and maternal health efforts often focus, understandably, on mothers and babies. But fathers influence prenatal support, postpartum stress, infant care, breastfeeding support, safe sleep practices, maternal well-being, and early child development. A public health department could fund father-inclusive prenatal education, father-focused maternal health outreach, rural father support, paternal mental health screening referrals, or father engagement inside home visiting systems. If the health of mothers and babies matters, then the support system surrounding them matters, too.

Father-Focused Employment Supports

Workforce funding is another natural fit. WIOA, SNAP Employment and Training, apprenticeship programs, community college partnerships, and sector-based employment initiatives can all connect to responsible fatherhood. Many fathers don’t need a lecture about responsibility. They need pathways to work that pays enough to support their children. SNAP Employment and Training, in particular, can allow community-based providers to use eligible non-federal funds and receive reimbursement through state SNAP E&T partnerships. That could support job readiness, credentialing, coaching, case management, transportation, and employment placement for fathers who need to move from survival work to sustainable work.

Reentry Services for Fathers

Reentry and justice funding should also be braided into the fatherhood field funding infrastructure. Second Chance Act grants, Bureau of Justice Assistance opportunities, OJJDP programs, state corrections dollars, county jail partnerships, probation and parole funding, and accountability court resources can all support fathers returning home. A reentry fatherhood program could begin inside a jail or prison before release and continue in the community with parenting education, child support navigation, co-parenting support, employment planning, family reunification, and emotional health services. A man coming home isn’t just reentering society. He may be reentering fatherhood. If we miss that, we miss one of the strongest motivations for change.

Housing Resources for Fathers

Housing and homelessness systems should also be part of this strategy. A father without safe, stable housing may struggle to exercise parenting time, participate in reunification, provide overnight care, or maintain consistent contact with his child. HUD Continuum of Care partnerships, emergency housing programs, rapid rehousing, family stability resources, and local homelessness prevention dollars can all intersect with fatherhood. A fatherhood program doesn’t have to become a housing agency, but it can partner with one. Together, they can help fathers address one of the most practical barriers to parenting: having a safe place where fatherhood can actually happen.

Block Grant and Title XX Funding for Fatherhood 

Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) funding, or Title XX, should not be overlooked. Because it is flexible and state-directed, it can support social services connected to economic self-sufficiency, prevention, family support, case management, and stabilization, depending on the state’s priorities. A state could use SSBG to support fatherhood case management, parenting education, family stabilization, responsible fatherhood navigation, or community-based prevention services. Flexibility matters because fathers rarely come through the door with only one need.

Philanthropic and Corporate Investments in Fatherhood

Philanthropy and corporate partners also have a critical role to play in fatherhood, but not as charity alone. Foundations can fund pilots, research, evaluation, innovation, communications, technology, and proof-of-concept work that public systems may be too restricted or slow to support. Corporate partners can support father-friendly employment pipelines, transportation solutions, financial coaching, digital access, work uniforms, tools, training, and family economic mobility. A local employer can partner with a fatherhood program to recruit and train dads for high-demand jobs. A foundation can fund the evaluation that proves the model works, and then state agencies can scale it. That’s how innovation becomes infrastructure.

This is what braided funding looks like. It doesn’t ask one system to carry the whole responsibility. It asks every system to invest according to the benefit it receives, and it asks us to deepen our understanding of fatherhood.

The Foundation: A Deeper Understanding of Fatherhood

If we only see fatherhood as a private relationship between a man and his child, then we will continue to underfund it. But if we understand fatherhood as a public good, as something that affects schools, courts, neighborhoods, health systems, child welfare agencies, labor markets, and the emotional development of children, then the funding conversation changes.

A father who is engaged is not only giving his child a hug, a ride to school, help with homework, or a weekend visit. He is contributing to a larger ecosystem of stability. That’s why fatherhood cannot remain trapped in the language of charity. We must embrace it as an investment, a prevention strategy, and infrastructure. 

When fathers are supported, children benefit. Mothers often benefit. Co-parents can communicate with more structure and less conflict. Child support is more likely to be paid. Schools gain another adult who can participate. Courts may see fewer unresolved disputes. Communities gain men who are more connected, accountable, and hopeful. Systems spend less time reacting to crises and more time building capacity.

We have to stop asking whether responsible fatherhood programs are worthy of funding and start asking why so many systems have been allowed to benefit from father engagement without helping to sustain the field that makes it possible.

There’s a familiar saying in public health: Instead of only pulling people out of the river downstream, we should go upstream and find out why they are falling in.

Responsible fatherhood is upstream work.

It stands at the place where a father is trying to decide whether to stay connected. It stands where a co-parenting relationship is beginning to fracture. It stands where a young dad is afraid he does not know enough to raise a child. It stands where a father wants to work but does not know how to overcome barriers. It stands where a man feels ashamed because he has fallen short, but still wants another chance. It stands where a child is waiting to know whether Dad will keep showing up.

If we fund only what happens after these moments are lost, we’ve already waited too long.

The future of responsible fatherhood requires courage, coordination, and a fatherhood program funding model equal to the complexity of the work. It requires: 

• Public systems to stop operating in silos
• Philanthropy to help build long-term capacity, not only short-term innovation
• Policymakers to see fatherhood as connected to outcomes they already care about
• Practitioners to document impact, tell the truth about what fathers need, and refuse to let the field be reduced to a single grant category.

Most of all, it requires us to believe that fathers are worth investing in before the crisis arrives. When fathers are equipped, children are strengthened. When fathers are supported, families have more options. And when fathers are engaged, communities carry less preventable pain. 

The responsible fatherhood field doesn’t need another temporary lifeline. It needs a sustainable investment strategy that’s braided through every system, reflecting the depth of its impact.