Webinars
To grow our community and open up important conversations relevant to young fathers and father-inclusive practice, the Following Young Fathers Further team is running a monthly webinar series in 2023.
The main aims of the webinar series are too:
- Mark the final funded year of the Following Young Fathers Further study (2020-24)
- Disseminate some of the findings and advances made in the study so far
- Reflect on the current state of debate in key areas relevant to young fatherhood
- Bring together researchers, practitioners and policy makers with an interest in young fatherhood, and
- Establish a network around young fatherhood and family research.
Watch our past webinars on this page.
Current series
Exploring the needs and challenges of young fathers
This webinar focuses on international perspectives of (young) fatherhood with Dr Brianna P. Lemmons and Professor Mark S. Kiselica from the United States and Francesca Salvi from South Africa.
A longitudinal, multigenerational study of teen mothering
In this webinar Lee SmithBattle, RN, PhD, the Emeritus Professor of Nursing at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA discusses her longitudinal, multigenerational study of teen mothering.
09 November 2023 • Webinar
Researching with young fathers using creative and participatory methods
17 May 2023 • Webinar
Fathers and Mental Health
In this webinar, Scott Mair of Fathers Network Scotland and Professors Paul Hodkinson and Ranjana Das, University of Surrey, share their expertise about father's mental health.
26 April 2023 • Webinar
Supporting diverse young fathers
Elliott Wright-Clarke of FutureMen and Greg Borthwick of DadsRock provide essential insights about how their organisations support young fathers.
20 February 2023 • Webinar
Launch of the Think Dad! father-inclusive practice with the North East Young Dads and Lads
With our fantastic partners the North East Young Dads and Lads we launch a new Think Dad! father-inclusive toolkit for professionals that we co-created together.
18 January 2023 • Webinar
The current state of debate in young parenthood research
In this webinar, study Director Professor Anna Tarrant provides a brief overview of the current state of debate in young parenthood research. She also introduces the main aims of this free, monthly webinar series for 2023, designed to promote young fatherhood research and establish a network of interested advocates.
Older webinars
21 April 2021 • Webinar
Diverse Dads Webinar 28th April 2021
20 October 2020 • Webinar
Establishing the Grimsby Dads Collective
The Grimsby Dads Collective started with a community led question; what if we could? Funded by the Following Young Fathers Further study we are working in collaboration with young dads and public service organisations to drive social transformation through longitudinal research processes. In so doing, our process involves community informed problem solving and solutions that have import for national and international practice and policy agendas around father involvement.
Learn more about the early establishment of the project and its ‘story’ via the following recording of a webinar we held with local Grimsby professionals in October 2020.
From our partners and young dads
“[daughter]'s almost two-year-old. She came up the house and she actually really liked it. Preferably my house is the best place for her to, for the contact to be, if I’m honest, 'cause we just buy toys for her all the time. We’ve got a lovely garden that she can play in, lovely, big, and we’ve got a sandpit in there. We’ve been buying loads of things for her to play with to keep her occupied.”
“[Speaking about support of young fathers] We’ve done a lot of kind of advocation and representing them, a lot of the time there’s involvement with statutory services. They don’t have the care of the young person, the care’s provided by the state or the mother, so we’ve attended lots of meetings with the young person to offer additional support and facilitated contact where necessary and offered just general emotional wellbeing, support, improving robustness and resilience, encouraging them to have as amicable relationship as possible.”
“And I suppose it goes back to what we were saying before about behaviours, maybe the education side of stuff and the fact that men aren’t involved in those early conversations, you know, whether it is, I know they’re invited to come along to bumps to babies but I don’t know whether we go into the detail around some of that brain development side of stuff and things like that. Maybe that is the thing that really would change things. You know, if you were given all of that information about what happens to a child as they grow, in a scientific way, as easy to understand as possible, could be the thing that impacted on behaviour in the home.”
“I wanna fight for more stuff for dads. Like I do wanna have that extra support for new dads or even existing dads that we don’t get now 'cause we’re still important too although obviously the mum does need the majority a’ the care because obviously of the after care and the birth. But like the dads take it extremely hard as well. And obviously with having no support I think it increases the rise of mental health.”
“I think both a mother and father combined, it’s communicating and both being on the same page of what’s best for your child or children, and for both, it’s just being there 100% for them and not, like, putting yourself first, it’s, you know, putting the child’s interests first... ”
“We need to be including, we need to not [just] be focusing on mum and child […] That’s a great focus but dad … dad’s not invisible, dad needs to be in the picture as well because there’s research that shows you the effect it has on children and families as a whole when dad isn’t in the picture, so services need to be changing the way in which they work so it’s more inclusive.”
“Cause I think a lot of the time, some of young people who end up having children have been through the care system or support systems and they can feel quite judged or labelled by organisations and it’s breaking the cycle and breaking them out of that to feel empowered to be able to take stuff back, that’s the real interest to me. So, it’s about getting support right, as in being there and giving advice and guidance and all them things that we can do, but also making sure that we are doing with people as opposed to people.”
“One of the most successful projects we ever did was an informal dads’ group, and it used to be on Saturdays […] they did what they wanted, they used to do things like breakfast, and they would have breakfast together and talk about dad stuff and where they were taking their kids. And that group was always really well attended because there was never an agenda. They were never judged. They were just there together.”
“...the whole stay at home dad thing is not something to be ashamed of, you know, if you’re a dad and you wanna take your daughter out for the day, or you wanna take your kid out for the day on your own, well why is that frowned upon, why can’t you take your child out for the day ”
“Oh…patience…compassion…tolerance, a whole boatload a’ that! Honestly, I like a whole lot of life. Sacrifice…compromise, yeah I think, yeah I think they, they would be the, the big, the five, I feel, I think that was five, they would be the main. ”
“We’re currently in touch with social services for two [dads] because they don’t understand why they can’t see their children because they haven’t been informed by social services, their partner. So there’s a massive communication breakdown with those young men, so that’s the main focus of what we’re dealing with at the minute.”
“it’s still…the…sense of judgement I get from other people when they find out that I have a child.And they say, ‘oh how old is she’.I say, ‘oh she’s ten’. And they say, ‘oh how old are you?’. Like you don’t need to know that....I know exactly where that thought process is going, you know. It’s like, ‘oh you look really young and you’ve had a kid’. It’s like, ‘yeah I know, I was there!’”
Partners
