This chapter reflects on a range of research and evaluation projects engaged with by the author in a variety of contexts in the last decade. As Chapter Eight noted, a boost to work in this area in England was the funding of a range of initiatives under the family support grant at the Home Office in 1999. Since then a range of specialist and mainstream initiatives have been funded. The chapter explores some of the research and evaluation initiatives the author has been involved in. It identifies some of the key issues when considering who will engage fathers, the differing contexts in which the work will be carried out, and the implications of engaging with diversity, complexity and vulnerability in relation to men who father.

Meeting fathers: a learning process

In 1999 the author was involved in the evaluation of a project seeking to engage young fathers in a centre offering a variety of activities to men, women and children (see Featherstone, 2003, 2004). The men who eventually did engage with the specially recruited woman worker were mainly White, young and unemployed.

The centre hosting the project was involved in government developments to foster employability and the men were initially attending in that context. Thus workers who asked about their fatherhood status and invited them to take part in activities were treated with suspicion. Why were the men being called upon as fathers? Was it for child support purposes? And, indeed, the fathers’ suspicions keyed into an important aspect of this agenda. This was an early lesson in the need to engage with the variety of differing agendas motivating this work and the delicate tensions in relation to government sponsored initiatives in this area.

The importance of working with mothers was highlighted in this evaluation. Many of the men were not living with the mothers of their children and had contact difficulties. The worker often had little choice but to get involved with such difficulties. Her work often seemed to reassure mothers anxious about contact and fathers’ parenting skills. As has already been noted in Chapter Seven, the fear of violence is not the only reason women may resist contact by men.