Learning goals

This chapter will enable you to:

1. Recognise the potential of child and family practitioners in health and education settings to engage fathers (and father figures) of vulnerable children in ways that will enhance their ability to nurture and protect their children

2. Understand how community and staff perceptions, social policy and institutional practices may act as barriers to fathers' participation in child and family settings

3. Become familiar with recent research evidence pointing to fathers' positive influence on children's well-being and consider the implications of this

4. Recognise the complexity of changing service procedures and practice to include fathers fully in a way that enhances family well-being

5. Reflect on the professional and personal challenges that may be faced when attempting to include fathers in services targeting vulnerable children and their families.

Introduction

Involving fathers in the lives of children is consistent with the goals of nearly all family services. Child and family services routinely declare that they wish to form partnerships with parents to ensure the best outcomes for children and most practitioners would consider that having both partners involved in parenting programs is likely to be associated with better outcomes than if services rely on the mother to relay information and ideas to her partner. The reality, however, is that while staff might wish to see fathers involved, when services say parents they usually mean mothers and when evaluators record family involvement in the service it is the mothers' involvement that is assessed.