TOP TIP - University of Brighton Repository

Reaching and Engaging Young Fathers
✱ TOP TIPS
• The lifestyles of some very
young fathers and fathers-to-be
of compulsory school-age,
means having a dedicated
worker with time to be flexible
and re-schedule appointments
can be helpful.
• During initial contact, allow the
young father to choose the
venue to help them feel safe.
Fathers First in the Isle of Wight
tell us that this is a particularly
effective way of re-engaging the
young father on subsequent
occasions.
• Avoid going headfirst into
parenting issues. For the
youngest fathers, issues such as
education, exclusion, housing,
and money issues may well be
more pressing. Fathers First and
the TPSS in Hull say that nonparenting
concerns (e.g.
educational exclusion,
relationship difficulties, and
enquiries about employment and
housing) are most often to the
fore in their work with the
youngest fathers.
• Look at how you can develop
positive working relationships
with local schools and networks
(e.g. designated mentors, school
nurses, Connexions Personal
Advisors etc.). Such contacts
can be an effective route to
promote the services available to
school-age fathers and schoolage
fathers-to-be. The Health
Initiatives Team at Education
Leeds receive nearly all their
referrals of school-age fathers
directly from contacts within the
school system. However, other
sources of referrals also include
teenage pregnancy midwives
and school-age mothers.
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Supporting Young Fathers
Learning Points
‘School-age dads can be reached… it’s taken a lot of work to
challenge and give other professionals a helping hand up to
understand that - we work hard to ensure health professionals reach
young dads as well as the mums. Every bit of information for young
dads is there… and they’re really interested.’
✱ Perhaps the largest barrier to engaging with school-age fathers is finding them in the first
place. In school, acknowledging the young father often relies on him coming forward,
whereas for the mother recognition and support are much more visible and explicit. It is
important to explore how best the culture and ethos in schools can be influenced so that
pupils who are parents-to-be (male or female) feel more able to come forward early to
access the support that is available to them. In doing so, it is also important for such
support (where available) to be rendered more ‘visible’ to both schools and pupils.
✱ Evidence from work with school-age/teenage fathers shows the youngest fathers want to be
involved in the care of their child, but their circumstances can conspire to exclude them:
‘…often it’s a case of the status of their relationship - they may have
only been together a matter of weeks and not officially in a
relationship - and that relationship isn’t recognised by either family.
So, very quickly the young man will be pushed out of the equation.’
✱ It’s not just the attitudes of many professionals that must be challenged about working with
school-age and teenage fathers. The attitudes of young mothers and young fathers
themselves also need to be challenged. Pilot research in Croydon and Lewisham (South
London) by Working With Men (WWM) has revealed that many young fathers are much
more involved with the young mother and their child than professionals believe:
‘It’s not only professionals’ attitudes that are problematic here - we’re
talking about something much more complicated. We’ve got to point
a finger at those young mothers and young fathers… as there are
some attitudes here that need to be challenged in their perception of
the housing and benefits system. They think that to present as a
couple is problematic – so young mothers are saying very little about
the young dads - they want them involved, the young father wants to
be involved - but neither are telling anyone that they are involved.’