Engaging Male Caregivers in Effective Prevention Programming to Reduce Risk of Violence and Violence-Related Injury

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Abstract Fathers are disproportionately involved in and responsible for child maltreatment and violence directed toward children and family members, as the average amount of time spent with their children each day is less than that of mothers (Hoffreth et al., 2002; Straus et al., 1998). Forty percent of maltreatment cases include the child's father (US DHHS, 2011), which is actually quite considerable when one considers mothers spend more time with the child during the day and engage in a greater variety of activities, relative to fathers. Contrary to these potential negative impacts, fathers contribute positively to many aspects of child development and overall family functioning, making unique contributions to child peer relationships, language development, academic skills, and the proficiency of the other parent in parenting tasks. There are many potential prevention programs that have been developed to support male caregivers, including the Nurturing Fathers program (Bavolek, Comstock, & McLaughlin, 1983) and the Coaching Our Children: Heightening Essential Skills program (COACHES; Caserta Fabiano et al., 2018; Chacko, Fabiano, et al., 2017; Fabiano et al., 2012; Fabiano et al., 2009) are two examples of father-focused preventive intervention efforts. However, these approaches have not typically been evaluated as preventive interventions in community-based samples using scientifically rigorous methods (e.g., Smith et al., 2015). Thus, the present study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches in reducing family violence and improving male caregiver competencies in a randomized, controlled trial. One hundred forty-four male caregivers of a 3-6 year old child will be randomly assigned to (1) the Nurturing Fathers program (N=48); (2) Nurturing Fathers + COACHES integrated (N=48); or (3) an attention control (N=48). Participants will engage in eight weeks of prevention intervention and then have evaluations at post-treatment and 1-month follow-up.