It’s Father’s Day and this year we are marking the occasion by releasing three brand new policy briefings about our work with young fathers and the professionals who support them.
In Policy Briefing One: ‘Key principles of father-inclusive practice’, we outline what we have learnt about the importance of father-inclusive approaches to professional practice based on our research with young fathers and with the professionals who support and champion them. We draw on existing evidence to explain what it means to be father-inclusive, highlight some of the key barriers and consider what works in practice.
Policy Briefing Two is called ‘Models of good practice for work with young fathers: cocreating knowledge about inclusive and intersectional approaches in the ‘Diverse Dads’ project’. In this briefing we present findings and approaches from the Diverse Dads project, a peer research study that supported young fathers from the North East Young Dads and Lads to research with their own community. This important work revealed the under-representation of minoritised young fathers in policy and practice and offers important recommendations for cocreating new knowledge about ways that services can improve outreach to, and support for, young fathers.
Policy Briefing Three: ‘Models of good practice for work with young fathers: the Grimsby Dads Collective case study’, discusses the value of cocreation methodology for implementing and evaluating new social interventions with, and for, young fathers and professionals with a focus on the Young Dads Collective. This briefing illustrates the value of collaborative knowledge generation between researchers, professionals, and communities/citizens for the purposes of service development. The ‘Young Dads Collective North’ and ‘Grimsby Dads Collective’ case studies are examples of “dynamic, locally adaptive community-academic partnerships” (Greenhalgh et al. 2016: 392), that are driving social change and impact through the promotion of father-inclusive practice and policy at local, regional and national levels.
Happy Father’s Day to all the dads and carers out there!
