Dads Included: Sharing Expertise In Father-Inclusive Practice (UK)

"Addressing mail to both parents results in greater responses from fathers and mothers..."

The Fatherhood Institute is the UK's leading expert in father-inclusive practice, with a significant body of knowledge and research around improving the rates of involvement by fathers and the rates of engagement between services, children and both parents.

For many providers, a few basic changes in the way that they approach fathers can assist in improving their ability to involve dads.

• Directing communications to both parents (for example, parent education discussions) provides much better results than directing to just one parent.
• When discussing parenting issues, the approach of addressing the couple's relationship results in much greater improvements in both child behaviour and in relationship satisfaction.
• Addressing communications (mail, letters, documents) to both parents results in greater responses from fathers and mothers than simply addressing to one parent.
• Services are encouraged to ask for both the father's name and the mother's name when registering family details even if one parent is not physically present.  The act of making the record is a good step towards communicating actively with fathers in the future.

The DadsIncluded.org website and the Fatherhood Institute  website are good sources of successful father-friendly practice, good ideas and others' experiences.

Editorial Note: The DadsIncluded website has been taken down as at November 2012. Please contact the Fatherhood Institute for more details.