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The following table includes public comments received through March 30, 2026 and ACF’s responses. Several of the comments were requests to retain questions for the 2025 cohort that ACF dropped from the 2020 cohort surveys. However, the most frequent and consistent feedback received from the 2020 cohort was that the surveys were too long. ACF dropped questions throughout all surveys, focusing on questions that were less aligned with the core HMRF functions, that numerous grant recipients expressed concerns about, and/or that were not or were rarely used in analysis for ACF.
#
Date submitted
By whom
Comment
ACF Response 
1
2/23/2026
Leah Burke, Auburn
All Auburn comments relate to the HM adult entrance/exit surveys.

On document #4 (The Healthy Marriage Adult Program Exit Surveys), we suggest adding an open-ended text box where participants could answer a question like, “Do you have any other thoughts or comments about your experience in the program to share?” at the end of the survey.
Thank you for these suggestions. ACF acknowledges and values the insights that open-ended responses can provide, but has decided not to add the option because of the added burden for clients and grant staff. First, providing open-ended responses is more time-consuming for clients, compared to close-ended responses. Second, clients sometimes include personally identifiable information in responses, which grant staff must regularly monitor and remove, if identified, to protect client privacy, adding to staff responsibilities.  
2
2/23/2026
Leah Burke, Auburn
On document #1b (The Healthy Marriage Adult Program Entrance Surveys), we suggest adding a text box to response #10 (“Other”) on question E1 for grantees to better understand how participants have heard about the program if the participant selects the “Other” option. 
See response to Question 1.
 
3
2/23/2026
Leah Burke, Auburn
On document #1b (The Healthy Marriage Adult Program Entrance Surveys), we suggest adding an “Other” response and a text box to question E2 for grantees to better understand the reason a participant may have chosen to enroll in the program that is not covered in the current answer choices given.
See response to Question 1. 
4
3/12/2026
Mighty Crow
All Mighty Crow comments relate to the RF community fathers entrance and exit surveys. 
New cover page is much more detailed and includes a lengthy amount of text compared to the cover page in 2020. This is less user-friendly. Fathers will likely not read all of the information. We have concerns that it might deter some fathers from wanting to consent and complete the surveys. The 2020 cover page had 3 simple notes which was more straight-forward and less burdensome to clients. The brief points emphasized clearly that:
    1. participation is voluntary
    2. we hope you answer...but you may skip any questions
    3. answers will be kept private
Including the full HMRF privacy statement on the cover page of the client surveys facilitates survey administration, so grant staff do not need to offer clients the privacy statement separately.  
5
3/12/2026
Mighty Crow
About the Program/E2.  There are a list of options for the reason they chose to enroll in the program, but they can only select one option.  This does not give us a comprehensive picture of why someone came to the program.  Allowing fathers to choose two options would at least account for (1) wanting to join; (2) being court-ordered to join, which could be a common situation – maybe a father is being coerced but also maybe he is also looking for a helpful program for himself
Thank you for sharing your perspective on the value of previous survey questions. To reduce burden on clients, ACF dropped the question asking about all enrollment reasons, which was included on the survey for the 2020 cohort. Unfortunately, reducing the length of the surveys required dropping some questions that grant staff used, such as this one. To prioritize the client experience, ACF has decided not to return this question to the surveys. 

6
3/12/2026
Mighty Crow
Demographic Characteristics/A4. What is your current foster care status?  
    • This question is worded strangely
    • Additionally, this seems burdensome and unnecessary
Serving children involved in foster care is an ACF priority and this question helps ACF determine if HMRF programs are reaching this population. Consistent with the 2020 cohort surveys, this question is only asked of clients ages 20 and younger, so most RF clients are not asked this question.
ACF appreciates your feedback on wording and will update the question, pending OMB approval, to: “Which of the following describes your experience with foster care?” 
7
3/12/2026
Mighty Crow
Demographic Characteristics/C8.
    • Removed responses from the previous round of surveys re: do not have documentation for legal employment (e.g., birth cert) & have substance use or mental health challenges. 
    • This provides important information about the populations we serve.
ACF is sensitive to burden on clients to complete the surveys and has decided not to return these options to the surveys. 

8
3/12/2026
Mighty Crow
Economic stability.
    • Question about participant earnings has been omitted from entrance and exit surveys. This question is important to tracking change in earnings over the course of the program. Its omission is a concern.
    • Question about whether participant has health insurance/Medicaid was also omitted
    • Additional important questions were also omitted:
        ◦ Whether participant has updated resume,
        ◦ Checking account,
        ◦ Savings account
    • Section does not ask about not working due to receiving disability benefits or something that would indicate a person is disabled and not looking for work.
As previously noted, ACF eliminated multiple questions from the surveys to reduce client burden. To prioritize client experience, ACF has decided not to add these questions back to the surveys. More information on specific items follows.
    • Earnings. Many HMRF clients complete the Entrance and Exit surveys about four weeks apart, which often is not enough time for substantial changes in earnings. 
    • Health insurance/Medicaid. Health insurance/Medicaid is not a core focus of the HMRF programs. 
    • Resume/checking account/savings account. These outcomes are not a core focus of HMRF programs. 
    • Disability benefits. Although the survey does not directly ask if someone is not working because they receive disability benefits, some related information is available. First, the Entrance survey asks if the client (or anyone in their household) is receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI); and (2) the Entrance and Exit surveys ask if one of the barriers to work is “I have a physical disability or poor health.” This was the same approach used for the 2020 cohort.
9
3/12/2026
Mighty Crow
Parenting/B3-B8. Asking only about the YOUNGEST child is limiting.  In situations where fathers have multiple partners, the relationship with the mother of the youngest child could be the most fractured – we have no idea.  So, they may answer that they never see this child, etc.  And it would be a skewed view of their involvement.  I would either remove these questions or ask them about their children in general or their children under the age of 18 to get an overall understanding of their involvement.
Although parenting is a focus of HMRF programs, ACF made the difficult decision to remove questions about parenting of the oldest child to reduce client burden. ACF recognizes this provides more limited information about parenting, but to prioritize the client experience, we cannot collect all data of interest. Learning about how the client parents their youngest child at program entrance and exit is important to better understand HMRF clients and programs.

Asking questions about children in general could degrade the quality of the data. ACF would not know whether and how clients aggregate data across their children, such as answering about a child with whom they have the closest or most distant relationship, or calculating a mental average across children. 

10
3/12/2026
Mighty Crow
Parenting/B10. In this question we ask fathers how often they feel overwhelmed, but there’s nothing that asks them how often they feel fulfilled/happy/etc. with parenting.
ACF appreciates this feedback and in interest of being more strengths-based in the surveys, will add a question about the client’s confidence in their parenting skills. 
11
3/12/2026
Mighty Crow
Parenting/B11-12. Asking only about the co-parent of the youngest child is limiting yet again.
    • Ask first, how many co-parents do you have (meaning, how many mothers of your children are there?).  
    • Then ask about them in general or say, “Answer these questions about the co-parent that is the most challenging relationship for you.” 
To reduce burden and align with the decision to not ask questions about the oldest child (see Question 9), ACF will keep the questions focused on the coparent of the youngest child only.
If the question allowed the client to select the coparent they are answering about, they might not select the same coparent at entrance and exit (especially if the relationship changed during the program) and thus ACF would not be able to accurately measure change over time.
12
3/12/2026
Mighty Crow
Program Perceptions/D2-D6. Exit survey asks fathers to rate their communication skills primary with spouse or partner, or boss and coworkers. Just one question asks about using communication skills with “the coparent of your youngest child” and “your children.” These before/after questions would also be helpful when it comes to parenting and economic stability, but they are not asked in these sections. Also, there is a lot skip logic here so not all fathers will get all questions.
ACF added questions at program exit about communication skills, because they are central to content offered by all HMRF programs. The questions are intended to cover a wide range of client relationships without being overly burdensome to clients. 
The skip patterns are automatically implemented if clients take the surveys through nFORM. They are necessary to route clients to relevant questions (such as if they have children and had contact with at least one child in the past month, if they have a partner, if they are employed, etc.). 
13
3/12/2026
Mighty Crow
Program Perceptions/D7. This version of the survey asks about the program’s overall helpfulness only. Previous version also asked about helpfulness specifically for:
        ◦ Parenting
        ◦ Coparenting
        ◦ Financial well-being
The separate questions helped identify areas of programmatic strengths and areas for improvement. Grouping into overall helpfulness results in a loss of important data for programs.
ACF eliminated these questions because of the addition of the new communication skills questions (Question 12). 
14
3/23/2026
Lucia Jude
I support the revisions to the Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) data collection. The changes proposed will help make the program more efficient but still allows for them to be held accountable and receive feedback. The revisions still allow for a strong oversight but now it is more practical.
By reducing the amount of surveys and reports required, it lowers the amount of administrative tasks the program staff has to take on so they can focus on helping their students as opposed to filing and completing reports. This is important because the program is designed and should focus on improving relationships of families. But because the rule does not get rid of data collection completely, important information on the program outcomes is still collected. It ensures that federal resources are being used efficiently. No accountability is being sacrificed. 
A suggested change to this rule would be to have the new data collection method reviewed after a certain amount of time, for example, every 3 months, to make sure that it is running smoothly. This would be helpful to examine if the less amount of surveys and reports affects any data. If any issues arise then changes can be made.
Thank you for your feedback; ACF plans to monitor data quality after performance measures data collection begins. 
15
3/23/2026
Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated
Fathers Incorporated appreciates the opportunity to provide comments on the proposed revisions to the Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) performance measures information collection. Fathers Incorporated implements Dad & Company: Strengthening the Parenting Team, a 16-hour marriage, co-parenting, and financial-stability curriculum with wrap-around case management that serves 600 fathers and co-parents across metro Atlanta and Columbus. Our work is aligned with the Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HEART) objectives of promoting healthy relationships, marriage, co-parenting stability, economic mobility, and domestic violence prevention to improve child well-being. Dad & Company is delivered as an eight-module, father-focused program with two-hour sessions for a total of 16 instructional hours, and is designed for group-based facilitation with flexibility for one-on-one, virtual, or on-demand delivery. While father-centered, the program intentionally includes co-parents, extended family members, or other support persons, fostering shared understanding and relational alignment around the child’s best interest.
ACF’s proposed revisions reflect a strong intent to reduce administrative burden while improving consistency and comparability across grantees. Fathers Incorporated supports that direction. Our comments focus on ensuring that the revised measures and the nFORM system accurately reflect how relationship and co-parenting services are delivered in the field, particularly for programs that work with parenting teams and families, including families navigating incarceration.
Thank you for your feedback.  
16
3/23/2026
Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated
1) Necessity and practical utility of the proposed collection
We support a performance measures approach that balances feasibility with practical utility. Participant-level entrance and exit tools, combined with standardized reporting, can be necessary and useful when the data collection structure aligns with real program models.
For Dad & Company, practical utility depends on whether the measures and data system can accurately represent the outcomes of a co-parenting-team model. The “unit of change” in co-parenting work is often the parenting team, not only the individual father. The collection will be most useful if it can capture both:
    • direct outcomes for the primary father participant, and
    • measurable impacts on the co-parenting team or support circle that the intervention is designed to influence (co-parent, spouse, extended family member, or other support person involved in child-rearing decisions)
If the revised measures and system logic only accommodate a single participant type, the data collection risks misclassifying co-parents, undercounting participation, and obscuring the relationship-level changes that HEART-funded programming is designed to produce.
For co-parenting teams in which both members will enroll and receive services in the program, HEART grant staff can enter both partners in nFORM and link them. With the grant’s Family Assistance Program Specialist’s approval, the grant can establish participation targets that reflect the challenges of both partners participating in workshops together.  
If a grant serves an individual target population and supporting partners or co-parents are not enrolling in the program, grants can document that in annual progress narrative reports. 
17
3/23/2026
Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated
2) Quality, utility, and clarity of the information collected
Fathers Incorporated recommends targeted clarifications to strengthen data quality and interpretability across diverse program models.
2.A. Co-parent and support-person tracking
Programs like Dad & Company are father-focused but intentionally inclusive of co-parents and supportive adults. To preserve data quality and enable meaningful federal research and evaluation, ACF should provide clear guidance and system capabilities for:
    • classifying co-parents and support persons consistently
    • linking co-parents or support persons to the primary participant in a way that reflects a “parenting team” approach
    • ensuring relationship- and co-parenting-focused outcomes are not reduced to a single-person framework
This is not merely a grantee data-management preference. It goes to whether federal evaluation will be able to distinguish between programs that deliver individual father education versus programs designed to change co-parenting dynamics through intentional involvement of the co-parenting team.
Grant staff will be able to link all data in nFORM for partners or co-parents who both enroll in a program (see Question 16). This includes outcomes data, which all enrolled clients are asked to provide through surveys at program entrance and exit.  
18
3/23/2026
Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated
2.B. Incarceration-related participation and access constraints. HMRF services frequently intersect with families where one parent may be incarcerated, temporarily detained, or otherwise unable to access standard survey workflows. This dynamic can occur even in HEART contexts, where a program may be working with couples and whole families while one partner is incarcerated. In these circumstances, the “normal” process for completing intake, surveys, and assessments may be impractical due to facility restrictions on technology access, limited privacy, limited time, or administrative barriers.
We encourage ACF to ensure nFORM and related guidance explicitly address how grantees should handle participant records and survey expectations for incarcerated individuals and their family units. Specifically, ACF should clarify and support:
    • acceptable alternative administration methods when standard electronic completion is not possible
    • how to document participation and dosage in facility-based settings
    • how to treat missing entrance or exit surveys when completion is constrained by facility access rather than program noncompliance
    • how to link the incarcerated participant to the co-parent or family support circle so that the system can reflect the full service model and intended outcomes
Without clear policy and system support, programs are forced into inconsistent workarounds, which diminishes federal evaluation quality and increases administrative burden.
Clients can complete surveys by paper if standard electronic completion is not possible. Grant staff manually enter any paper surveys in nFORM so the data are easily accessible for program monitoring and improvement. Data from enrolled client partners are linked in nFORM data tools. 
Grants will receive instruction and support on how to administer paper surveys and record and track them in nFORM, and how to follow-up with clients who need to make up surveys in challenging situations, such as with incarcerated individuals. Grants will also receive instruction and support on how to set up workshops and record participation to reflect a program’s workshop offerings (including workshops provided in facilities). 
19
3/23/2026
Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated
2.C. Completion and exit survey rules that reflect family and team impacts
Clear completion and exit-survey guidance is essential. Fathers Incorporated recommends that ACF provide definitions that accommodate the realities of relationship education and co-parenting programming, including hybrid delivery and family-structure variation.
Exit survey guidance should ensure the federal evaluation can capture:
    • outcomes for the primary father participant
    • outcomes experienced by the co-parent or support circle when they participate in the intervention
    • relationship and co-parenting improvements that occur even when participation is not perfectly symmetrical between both adults (for example, when one parent participates consistently and the other participates intermittently due to work schedules, safety planning, custody restrictions, or incarceration-related access barriers)
The performance measures will be stronger and more interpretable if completion and exit rules are designed to measure impact across the parenting team when the program model is designed to produce team-level change.
Grant staff will ask program applicants to complete an entrance survey when they enroll in the program and an exit survey at their last workshop session. If the client’s enrollment and last workshop are less than 14 days apart, grant staff should ask the client to complete the exit survey at least 14 days after the entrance survey, such as during an individual service contact. These rules facilitate consistent data collection across clients and programs so ACF can measure performance for each grant and aggregate across grants, as appropriate.
Grants will receive instruction and support on survey administration. 
20
3/23/2026
Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated
3) Minimizing burden through automation and information technology. Fathers Incorporated supports ACF’s emphasis on burden minimization through information technology and recommends that nFORM enhancements prioritize the areas most likely to reduce staff workload while improving data integrity.
The highest-impact improvements would include:
    • Participant linking functionality to connect a father participant with a co-parent or support person so “parenting team” participation can be accurately represented without duplicative records or misclassification
    • Guided workflows for special access contexts, including facility-based or incarceration-impacted participation, where survey completion may require alternative administration or documentation
    • Hybrid modality support that clarifies how attendance, dosage, and completion are captured across group-based, one-on-one, virtual, and on-demand programming
These enhancements would reduce manual work involved in tracking family units, improve consistency across sites, and strengthen the validity of federal evaluation efforts related to relationship stability and co-parenting outcomes.
Thank you for these suggestions. 
Linking participants. As previously noted, grants will be able to link enrolled participant partners in nFORM (see Question 16). 
Collecting data from clients who are incarcerated or in other facilities. Grants will receive instruction and support on collecting data from clients who are incarcerated or in facilities with restrictions, such as not being able to access the internet. 
Hybrid modality. Grant staff will be able to track participation across group and one-on-one services, as well as in-person and virtual services. Grants will receive instruction and support on how to use nFORM data tools to monitor and report on these services. 
21
3/23/2026
Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated
Closing position. Fathers Incorporated supports ACF’s effort to refine HMRF performance measures to reduce burden while preserving data quality. We urge ACF to ensure that the revised measures and nFORM system explicitly accommodate father-focused programs that intentionally include co-parents and support persons, and to incorporate clear guidance for incarceration-impacted participation where standard intake and survey completion processes may not be feasible. These targeted clarifications and system supports would improve practical utility, strengthen the integrity of federal research and evaluation, and reduce the need for inconsistent grantee workarounds.
Respectfully submitted, Fathers Incorporated
Dad & Company: Strengthening the Parenting Team
Thank you for your feedback and identifying data issues that could affect your program. 
22
3/30/2026
Concerned Women for America
Concerned Women for America (CWA) strongly supports the proposed information collection relating to sex-based terminology in the Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grant programs. The proposed collection seeks to respect the biological differences of men and women created male and female which are central to clarity in federal information and regulations and to protecting the dignity and privacy of individuals.
When the characteristic of sex is implicated, federal law and policy must be accurate regarding the immutable binary classification of sex as objectively and genetically determined, not conflating or overruling it with a preferred, self-identification claim of “gender” or “gender identity.”
CWA applauds the Trump Administration for taking seriously our call to uphold the unique dignity of women as expressed in CWA Legislative Action Committee’s Presidential Promise to American Women which was signed by Donald J. Trump. It states:
As President of the United States, I promise to uphold the truth that women are exclusively female. Only women can be pregnant and bear children. Only women can be mothers. 
Under my Administration, the status and dignity of women and girls will not be compromised in law or policy.
That sex is binary is a scientific reality, and all federal agencies will be directed to uphold this fact in every policy and program at home and abroad. A persons’ claim of “gender identity” does not overrule their sex. 
My Administration will focus on affirming sex-based distinctions that protect women in every area, such as shelters, prisons, housing, healthcare, defense, education, and sports.
I will protect the dignity of women and motherhood in all circumstances. 
https://concernedwomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CWA-Presidential-Promise-to-American-Women.pdf 
The proposed information collection seeks the important objective of restoring and maintaining the undisputable distinction between the male and female sex as an enduring binary differentiation. Such clarity is essential for upholding truth and accuracy in implementing programs requiring identification, documentation, treatment, procedures, or enforcement, and ensuring consistency, uniformity, and relevance in research, data collection, and analysis. Fabricated terminology associated with gender ideology, which is subjectively defined, unbounded, prone to exploitation, and compromises legal protection based on sex, must be corrected across government and put to a stop. 
Concerned Women for America applauds this action and urges implementation as swiftly as possible. 
Thank you.
Thank you for the feedback; ACF is using the sex-based survey question language, as described, in alignment with the Executive Order issued on January 20, 2025.