'Invisible' young fathers need the same support as teen mothers, says new report

A new report by the Family Strategic Partnership (FSP), a consortium of four organisations - Barnardo’s, Action for Prisoners’ Families, Children England and the Family and Parenting Institute - warns that a culture shift is needed in ‘mother-centred’ family services, because they often treat dads as invisible.

According to the FSP, services from pregnancy care to housing support are driving fathers away from their children as they do not value them.

The Department for Education funded report, ‘Are we nearly there yet, Dad?, which features six young fathers’ journeys into fatherhood and examples of good practice, says that maternity services and children’s centres fail to even ask about fathers.

It claims that despite many children’s centres having targets for engaging with dads, there is no data on how many young fathers they come into contact with. While the report acknowledges that some children’s centres offer specific activities for fathers, it says that in many cases some settings will only ever come into contact with the mother and child.

Along with highlighting the Barnardo’s Babyfather initiative, a programme used in London children’s centres to help support professionals in working with fathers and male carers, the report makes a number of recommendations for children’s centres, including:

• Adopting a culture of asking about the father whenever they have contact with a mother, and to keep a record of the young dads that attend the setting.
• Introducing targeted activities for fathers such as dad and baby days out and sports events.
• Setting up weekly drop-in clinics for young fathers to address parenting concerns.

It goes on to suggest that maternity services work with their local children’s centres to offer a paediatric first aid course to all young dads, as well as health visiting services to work with children’s centres to share their knowledge of local need and ensure new families are always registered by health professionals with their nearest setting.

The report also criticises local authority housing benefit rules which prevent dads from accommodating their children, and a lack of basic local authority data on the numbers of profiles of teen fathers.

According to the charities, young parents are often forced to live separately and decisions about where the baby stays are normally made by the maternal household.

To create a culture of support for young fathers, the report recommends that every local authority appoint a lead professional for young fathers to enable the public and voluntary sector to work together to provide holistic support to teen dads. It also suggests a systematic approach by central government be developed to collect data on young fathers in England, and for relationship support to include provision to help young parents maintain contact and value the father-child relationship.

Jonathan Rallings, Barnardo’s assistant director of policy and research, said, ‘For too long fathers have been treated either as optional extras or completely invisible by mother-centred family services.

‘Young fathers want to play their part in bringing up their children. However, they all too often receive the message that they’re worthless from services that ignore or marginalise them from the point of pregnancy onwards.

‘To be properly involved in their children’s lives, young fathers need to the same kind of support as teen mothers. This includes easily accessible parenting advice, help with housing, and special timetabling for training and study.’

He added, ‘We are calling on local authorities to help lead a cultural shift in family care by introducing practices across their services that universally support young men’s’ journeys into fatherhood.’