Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare Project

Instrument 7: Discussion Forum Prompts

A Breakthrough Series Collaborative for

Engaging Fathers and Paternal Relatives in Child Welfare

The purpose of the information collection is for improvement teams to share information with each other about how best to improve engagement of fathers and paternal relatives at their agencies. Interactions through discussion boards help with team engagement and idea generation in the Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC) process.

The Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare (FCL) team will conduct secondary analysis of the discussion forum postings to determine whether participation in the online discussions promotes more successful engagement in and implementation of the BSC for participants. It will also be used to identify the most common themes and topics that are discussed, which will reveal the challenges that improvement teams faced while implementing the BSC as well as any self-identified changes in practice.

Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 15 minutes per response. Providing information is voluntary, and all responses will be kept private to the extent permitted by law.

An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The OMB number for this information collection is 0970-0531 and the expiration date is 07/31/2022.

Discussion Forum Prompts

An interactive SharePoint site will be developed for teams to use throughout the project as a forum for sharing ideas and participating in collaborative problem-solving to improve practices and organizational capacity. Teams will be encouraged to post whenever they have a success to share or problem to solve. The FCL project team and faculty coaches will also provide periodic (two to four per month) discussion prompts on the site to encourage interaction and cross-sharing between the teams. The FCL project team may use the documented conversations as a part of the pilot study, which will be used to understand implementation of father engagement BSCs in child welfare.

Potential example prompts include:

• Challenges that the teams might be facing related to making change, addressing specific domains, or implementing the BSC overall

• Changes that teams have tested (both successful and less successful)

• Specific topics of interest to increase knowledge and skills

• Best Practice sharing with other participants in the BSC

• Resources and tools that the teams or faculty coaches have found helpful in their implementation

• Cross-team relationship-and community-building questions.