Professor Catherine Panter-BrickA new world-wide study has identified key barriers to engaging fathers in parenting support programmes, despite the crucial importance of fathers. Catherine Panter-Brick and other authors reach this conclusion in a new paper published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Child Psychiatry.

They conclude that despite robust evidence of fathers’ impact on children and mothers, engaging with fathers is one of the least well-explored and articulated aspects of parenting interventions.

Their study identified 199 publications that presented evidence on father participation and impact in parenting interventions. With some notable exceptions, few interventions separate out ‘father’ or ‘couple’ effects in their evaluation, mostly looking only at the mother and child.

Some parenting programmes do manage to invlove fathers, and the study quotes examples of good practice from the USA, Niger, Turkey, and Brazil.

Having looked at a range of reasons why fathers are missed out, the researchers go on to suggest how the design, delivery and evaluation of parenting support programmes could be radically changed to include fathers.

Families Need Fathers Scotland has been awarded a grant of £9,970 from the Big Lottery Communities and Families Fund to run a parenting support programme for fathers who are separated from their children following family breakdown.

The grant supports Glasgow-based training sessions that will be provided in partnership with Parent Network Scotland in Autumn 2013.  A further programme of training in Spring 2014 will lead to fathers gaining ILM accredited awards and being able to run parenting support groups within their own community.

The first courses start in September - you can register your interest by filling in a short survey or ring 0131 557 2440 for more details.

We will also be developing a parenting section on this web site, and further activity to help separated parents share experince on parenting issues. 

We know that all parents could benefit from more support, especially when they live apart, and are carrying out this work in order to develop ways to assist separated fathers in Scotland.