The Urban Fathers Asset Building (UFAB) project is demonstrating an innovative nexus between the child support system, fatherhood programs and Assets for Independence (AFI) grant-funded services. UFAB is a collaborative initiative of the Texas Office of the Attorney General, Baylor College of Medicine’s Teen Health Clinic, and Covenant Community Capital Corporation, the local AFI grantee in Houston. UFAB targets low-income, young fathers—a population notably under-served by financial education services regularly provided under AFI—prior to their need for enforcement of child support orders.

UFAB intends to recruit and enroll up to 200 new or expectant young fathers who reside in the urban core of Houston, Texas, near the time of the births of their children in order to encourage financial literacy and asset building to become more economically self-sufficient. Simultaneously, the demonstration presents the opportunity to provide information about child support laws and enforcement to the young fathers at this early stage of family formation, as well as to personnel of collaborating entities at the community level. The grant also authorizes OAG to build awareness and support for this and other efforts of OAG’s Child Support Division throughout the state, including Child Support for College and the Bring it Back to Texas program. UFAB involves collaboration at the statewide level between the OAG and RAISE Texas, the statewide association of AFI grantees, for the purpose of disseminating child support information, including family stability initiatives to the grantees and their local partners.

The Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin has been contracted by OAG as the project evaluator to conduct process and outcomes analyses of UFAB.