On November 13, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order (“Fostering the Future for American Children and Families”) that includes a call to modernize the child welfare system by, among other things, modernizing state child welfare systems and information exchanges in order to reduce unnecessary foster care placements, improve caregiver and child matching, increase caregiver recruitment and retention and accelerate permanency.

While increasing child placements with fathers and paternal relatives is not explicitly mentioned in the Executive Order, Fathers Incorporated released a blog post on December 1, 2025, that ties the Executive Order’s call for modernization as an “opening to bring fathers and paternal kin out of the margins” in child welfare. FRPN’s state-by-state report (Chapter 3, Table 1) shows that, as of 2019, states made concerted efforts to actively involve the father in the case planning process for children in only 49% of applicable foster care and in-home cases surveyed in the Child and Family Service Review (CFSR). State rates of father engagement varied widely, ranging from 12% to 75%. Among the reasons for low engagement are exclusive reliance on mothers for information about fathers and inadequate efforts by workers to locate nonresidential fathers at the outset of a case including failure to use the Federal Parent Locator Service (FPLS). FRPN, along with the National Child Support Enforcement Association (NCSEA), have called for child welfare and child support agencies to better coordinate and for child welfare workers to access the FPLS more routinely to improve identification and location of fathers and paternal relatives. Hopefully, the new Executive Order will further these coordination goals.

Stay tuned for FRPN updates on father engagement in child welfare cases based on federal data generated in 2023.

A new pre-print article by Emma Flanagan and Quentin Riser (University of Wisconsin–Madison) examines how ending pandemic-era SNAP recertification extensions affected program access. Using data from 17 states, the authors find that once recertifications resumed, SNAP participation dropped by between 2% and 4%, suggesting that the return of administrative paperwork and interviews likely pushed otherwise-eligible households off the program. The study reinforces what administrative burden research has long shown: even small compliance requirements can have meaningful effects on whether families retain essential benefits. As noted in the recent FRPN brief examining the impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) on Medicaid and SNAP, the imposition of new work and reporting requirements are expected to decrease benefit participation and prevent eligible fathers from accessing critical food and medical supports that help them remain employed and meet their child support obligations.

The National Partnership for Community Leadership (NPCL) is now accepting workshop proposals for its 28th Annual International Father & Family Practitioners Conference, to be held from June 8-10, 2026, in Bethesda, MD. Proposals are due December 18, 2025. Full details and submission guidelines are available here.

Happy holidays! We are looking forward to a two-week respite at the end of December and will return in January to highlight promising research, practice and policy initiatives for fathers and their families. Enjoy the season and Happy New Year to all members of the FRPN community.