Engaging with fathers in our practice

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Engaging with fathers in our practice
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How we engage with fathers and paternal family
and whänau

• Think about the children and young people you
  work with. Consider the following points
• What do you know about their fathers?
• What do you know about the wider paternal family?
• What involvement have fathers had in your work
  with the family or whänau?

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How the evidence helps us

• Fathers are important to a childs life
• Better outcomes for children with well engaged
  fathers
• Gaining access to paternal whänau and family

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Fathers are important to a childs life

• Fathers knowledge about child development is
  associated with positive engagement with their
  children. Pleck and Masciadrelli, 2004248 (cited
  in Burgess and Bartlett, nd12)
• Women are not natural experts left in charge of
  babies men and women develop skills at the same
  rate (Fathers Direct et al, 2000, note 15)
• The best predictor of a mothers ability to cope
  with the demands of a new baby is the quality of
  her relationship with her partner (Fathers Direct
  et al, 2000, note 222)

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Better outcomes for children with well engaged
fathers

• Even quantity of time seems to matters children
  who spent a lot of time with their fathers before
  age 11 are less likely to have a criminal record
  by age 21 (Fathers Direct et al, 2000, note 13)
• Children with involved, loving fathers are much
  more likely to do well in school have healthy
  self-esteem exhibit empathy and pro-social
  behaviour and avoid high-risk behaviours such as
  drug use, truancy, and delinquent activity than
  children who have uninvolved fathers (Horn and
  Sylvester, 200215 cited in Martinez et all
  20111)

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Gaining access to paternal whänau and family

• (fathers) are a resource in a childs life that
  a social worker needs to know about. A father or
  father figure who is positive not only has value
  in his own tight but is a conduit to another
  network of support among family and friends that
  is often overlooked. (Community Care, 2010)

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Examples from our practice

• Lets look at the challenges when engaging with
  fathers

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What helps our engagement with fathers

• Think about all male figures in a childs life
• Normalise the inclusion of fathers
• Record details of fathers
• Flexible meeting times
• Look for opportunities to engage with fathers
• Fathers can better work with us when we make an
  ongoing effort to keep them included.

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Fathers as a resource or a risk

• What do we currently do to understand if fathers
  are a resource and/or a risk?
• Understanding when fathers are both a risk or a
  resource
• If we identify them as a risk what happens next?

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Understanding fathers parenting capacity

• Fathers are not always as involved in the day to
  day parenting of their children as are mothers.
• Whats our thinking about this?
• Our expectations
• Fathers opportunities to be involved
• How do we understand a childs fathers parenting
  capacity?
• what are we looking for?
• What information do we need?
• What about fathers pro-social role-modelling?
• Primary and secondary caregivers

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Practice Example

• Lets look at a case example.
• In your groups, develop a social work plan for
  how you would involve the fathers and both the
  paternal families
• Include details of how you will
• build engagement
• maintain contact with him so hes included
• get to know and include his family in decisions
  and plans

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What fathers tell us

• I would have gone to antenatal classes if it
  wasnt in a group setting. I went to the GP and
  Plunket. Im not interested in the group
  experience
• Being an effective father is about being
  supportive with your kids, being positive not
  so much critical, but guiding. Then theres the
  obvious things like food and shelter and all
  thatand ensuring they grow up with good self
  esteem
• Whakapapas a big thing for Mäori. It identifies
  you to your whole tribe Its good know where
  your roots are

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Conclusions and taking this forward

• What does this mean in practice?
• What will the child or young person notice when
  we engage with their fathers?
• What is the outcome we are seeking from engaging
  with fathers?
• What do we know about agencies who work with
  fathers?
• What agencies can we draw on in our area?

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Useful reading

• Dominelli, L., Strega, S., Walmsley, C.,
  Callahan, M., and Brown, L. (2011) Heres my
  story fathers of looked after children
  recount their experiences in the Canadian Child
  Welfare System. British Journal of Social Work
  (2011) 41, 351-367
• Turnell, A and Essex, S (2006) Working with
  denied child abuse the resolutions approach.
  Maidenhead Open University Press
• Scourfield, J (2006) The Challenge of engaging
  fathers in the child protection process. Critical
  Social Policy 2006 26440

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Real time Real Play