Duncan Fisher

Eight things I think should change….

….to create a stronger expectation of and support for fatherhood.

Government is making good progress in some areas of policies and services – early years, work with the most vulnerable families in the community, and promotion of involvement by schools of fathers in their children’s learning.  In short, all areas of policy over which the Children’s Minister, Beverley Hughes, has influence.

But these areas need some more action.

1. How men work

We need a new approach to workplace culture that focuses on the working patterns of men.  The single biggest external influence on how parents organise caring and working between themselves is expectations on them at work.  By and large, workplaces still penalize those who compromise work for caring responsibilities and they assume that women will do this rather than men.

Discrimination follows, pushing mothers and fathers into separate roles.  Workplaces lose out on women’s contribution and children lose out on their father at home.  Government policy reinforces this: mothers get 39 weeks paid leave after a baby is born, fathers get 2 weeks, the biggest difference between parents in the world.  Gender equality policy focuses only on regulating employers and supporting mothers with professional childcare; the working patterns of men are not tackled and the economic incentives to discriminate against women remain in place.

2.      Maternity care

We need to develop a new family focused approach to maternity care, where the birth of a baby is the birth of a new family.  Even if we remain within a purely medical model, fathers are the biggest influence on the health of mother and baby and must be engaged systematically on those grounds alone.  Whilst individual midwives, who see more fathers than any other health professional, find their own ways to provide good support to both parents, they are not backed by Government policy.

Policy requires only two questions to be asked about a father – whether he has genetic abnormalities on his side of the family and whether he is violent.  Whilst important, on their own these questions convey a negative message.  Every mother is given a magazine as she leaves the maternity unit, Mum Plus One and the NHS guides for parents are addressed to the mother alone.

3.      Youth services

We need to take seriously the fatherhood of young men, particularly those who are emotionally undernourished and culturally alienated.  Fatherhood offers an opportunity for entry of these young men into a new domain of positive relationships and provides an increased opportunity for their children to escape the cycle of disadvantage.  25% of young men in the youth justice system are fathers – 6 times the national average for the age group.  Youth justice and teenage pregnancy services are often unable to engage with young men as fathers; they often communicate very low expectations of young fathers even sometimes welcoming their absence as a convenience.

4.      Employment services

We need to create targeted support for unemployed fathers, to enable them to continue a financial contribution to their children and to find work compatible with a caring contribution also.  Employment services ask only women if they have caring responsibilities.

5.      Careers services

We need to promote the care of children as a valuable occupation, and one that men can do as well as women.  25% of boys are interested in considering caring professions; only 2% are offered experience in this area by careers advice services.

6.      The system for separated families

When parents separate, we need a system that sees two parents operating apart, both having to adapt to new earning and caring roles that cannot be allocated as previously.  The systems for child support, benefits, tax and housing all assume that one of the parents no longer has any caring role, just a financial one.  The terms “lone parent” and “absent parent” reveal social constructions about separate parenting that usually accord little with reality.

7.      Domestic violence services

Domestic violence strategies need to listen more carefully to what victims want and need – often the cessation of the violence of a partner, not just temporary physical removal and punishment.  Perpetrator programmes, particularly those working with parents, have been shown to be effective.

8.      Child protection

A common theme in child protection and child death cases is weak or no engagement with either natural fathers or men living in the same household as the victim.  These men may be perpetrators of abuse or potential protectors of the child and the safety of children requires their systematic engagement.

Fatherhood

I leave the Fatherhood Institute after its most successful year so far.  In the last year, the Institute has:

• led the Kids in the Middle Campaign which, having mobilised all the nation’s Agony Aunts, the Prime Minister and his wife Sarah, secured £55m of new funding to provide support in schools for children whose parents are separating;
• made a decisive contribution to the debate among health professionals about fathers in maternity services, stimulating a Government summit on the issue early in 2009, led by the Secretaries of State for Children and for Health;
• influenced a growing number of key national policy initiatives, including the Children’s Workforce Strategy, the Child Health Strategy, and the Child Health Promotion Programme;
• seen the adoption by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and others of its narrative on improved leave entitlements for fathers as a key element in gender equality for women;
• achieved £250k worth of sales of consultancy and publications to children’s services, such that this is now a sustainable business contributing a surplus each year to core funds;
• seen its research summaries impacting on policy and practice throughout the world.

The Institute has recently been awarded a 50% increase in its core funding from Government for next year.

Fatherhood fathers, organisations

In February I am leaving the Fatherhood Institute.  I have, along with two others among the founders, been with the organisation for nine years.  We started off marginal, obscure and mistrusted and now the Institute has been recognised as a positive influence.  As with other organisations I have created in the past, it is now time for me to move on to do what I do best – make new things happen.

I am setting out now to do three things in this same field.

• I would like to help some larger statutory organisations and children’s organisations to develop work on fatherhood and childhood, particularly around the issues where little progress has been made in the last ten years.  There are things that the Fatherhood Institute has not been able to achieve that other organisations could.  I will be offering my services to these organisations in the coming years.
• I want to create a new national campaign of health professionals, children’s organisations, parenting organisations and equality organisations to bring about a new “family friendly” culture in maternity and health visiting services.  I believe the way mothers and fathers are channelled in such different directions as soon as a baby is born in the UK is a fundamental cause of family breakdown, gender inequality and weak father-child relationships.

• I will continue to manage www.dad.info, a service that tries to correct the direction of all parenting information only to mothers.  I will work with the Dad Info team to expand the distribution of materials to every maternity unit and every Children’s Centre in UK.

Fatherhood

The OBE was awarded “for services to children”.  I was given it for my work as CEO of the Fatherhood Institute and in response to the success of the organisation in helping to establish a new child-focused narrative about fatherhood in British policy and politics.

The success of the Institute has arisen from a once-in-a-lifetime team of people, several of whom are nationally acknowledged experts in their fields.  I don’t believe in individual achievement – the best things happen when the right team of people come together.

Although I am grateful for the recognition of the work done so far, I feel I have hardly started making a real difference for children.  In later blogs I will outline what I think still needs to be done.  I hope this OBE can help to push forward the work another small step.

Fatherhood children, fathers, OBE

I think the best chocolate ever invented is the Coppeneur fruit truffle, made in Germany.  Just how much fruit flavour can you pack into a truffle?  I sent a box of these to my brother and his family in the Outer Hebrides for Christmas.  Available at Hotel Chocolat.

Chocolate