A Partnership Approach to Paternity Establishment: Child Welfare Research and Training Project Ecological Model and Preliminary Data

This article provides an ecological model of child support facilitation through broad efforts to maintain high rates of paternity establishment via agency–university collaboration. The study utilized administrative data (2,208 electronic records from the Bureau of Health Statistics) on voluntary paternity affidavits (VPA) rejected by the Iowa Department of Public Health. These records represented all rejected VPAs from 70 hospitals in Iowa for 6 months in 2017. Results indicated that the majority of VPAs were not accepted for minor errors (78%) such as missing information rather than incorrect information. Results also indicated variation among hospitals and hospital regions in the reasons for rejection. Outreach to hospitals targeting affidavit completion is a potential step for increasing paternity establishment.