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Good practice Imported

Caring Dads — Canada's Child-Protection-Linked Programme for Fathers Who Have Used Violence

Canada · London · See the Canada profile · See the London profile

Evidence: Quasi-experimental Top 17% 89/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Caring Dads is a 17-session group programme for fathers who exposed children to domestic violence, developed in Ontario, now run in 8+ countries. A two-year evaluation found child-protection re-referrals fell to 20.5% for completers vs 36.0% for waitlisted fathers.

20.5 %
Child-protection re-referrals — completers (2-year follow-up)
36.0 %
Child-protection re-referrals — waitlisted comparison (2-year follow-up)
30.3
Average caseworker contacts — completers
16.7
Average caseworker contacts — waitlisted comparison
Caring Dads — Canada's Child-Protection-Linked Programme for Fathers Who Have Used Violence

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Caring Dads (developed with Changing Ways and Western University's Centre for Research & Education on Violence against Women & Children)
Period
2006–present
Keywords
fatherhood intervention, child protection, domestic violence, family services

Context

Caring Dads is a 17-session group programme for fathers who have exposed children to domestic violence, developed in London, Ontario by researchers Katreena Scott and Claire Crooks with the men's service agency Changing Ways, following a five-year pilot before its manual was published.

Activities

Fathers who have used violence against their children's mother, maltreated their children, or are at high risk of doing so attend the 17-session group intervention; the programme has since spread to sites across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Wales, Germany, Australia and Sweden.

Results

A quasi-experimental evaluation compared two-year child-protection outcomes for 85 programme completers against 100 fathers who remained on a waitlist, finding verified re-referrals for further paternal maltreatment fell to 20.5% among completers versus 36.0% among the waitlisted group, a statistically significant difference; completers also had far more contact with caseworkers (30.3 vs 16.7 contacts on average), suggesting greater engagement rather than avoidance.

Conclusions

Because the design is quasi-experimental rather than randomised, causal claims warrant some caution, but the study remains one of the few fatherhood-focused domestic-violence interventions with a published comparison-group outcome evaluation.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
group facilitators trained in the Caring Dads curriculum, child-protection caseworkers who refer fathers into the programme

Conditions for success

  • a referral pathway from child-protection agencies into programme intake
  • sustained facilitator-father engagement, reflected in the much higher caseworker contact levels among completers

Where it fits

Governance type
NGO-delivered, child-protection-linked
Scale
multi-site across 8+ countries
Income level
high-income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes Philanthropic / foundation funding

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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