There is a growing body of research about the positive and negative impact that fathers have on their child’s development (Burgess, 2010). Children with positively involved fathers statistically achieve better educational, cognitive and emotional outcomes (Flouri 2005). Poor paternal involvement impacts upon behaviour and aggression of children; and low interest by fathers in children’s education has a stronger negative impact on their achievement than does contact with police, poverty, family type, social class, housing and child’s personality (Blanden, 2006). In recent years, many health and child
welfare services have made strides towards developing father-inclusive practice. The same progress does not appear to have happened in child protection services. In Scourfi eld’s ethnographic study of social work culture, he found that men were perceived by social workers as a threat, as being of no use, frequently absent, or irrelevant, even when little was known about them (Scourfi eld, 2001).
Ofsted’s report describes the men as being ‘invisible’ to practitioners or
ephemeral like ‘ghosts’ There is a well-documented tendency in
social work to view fathers as either good or bad, as risk or resource, rather than a mixture of both (Ashley et. al., 2010). This approach is misleading, ineff ective and at times dangerous – and can only be remedied through greater engagement and assessment.
Serious case reviews The recent Ofsted report Ages of Concern focused on learning lessons from serious case reviews over the years 2007 – 2011(Ofsted, 2011). The report identifi ed recurring messages from the reviews that concerned babies less than one year old and found that: ‘In too many cases... the role of the fathers had been marginalised’. Ofsted’s report describes the men as
being ‘invisible’ to practitioners or ephemeral like ‘ghosts’ and highlights the needs for practitioners to ‘maintain a focus on the
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Changing workplace cultures It will not be easy to change this situation. It is built into existing workplace cultures (Scourfi eld, 2001) and there are signifi cant barriers that inhibit change. These barriers are institutional, cultural and individual and are maintained by fathers, mothers and social workers. If change is to happen, then there must
Fathers as risk and resource
be acceptance of the fact that the workplace culture has to be challenged. Opening up an appreciation of gender within policies, procedures and practices is important to begin to address this issue. Appreciation of the role and implications of gender within social work needs to be explicitly addressed in training, and this must happen at all levels within an organisation for a culture to be aff ected. Creating a supportive environment where staff can discuss their concerns, their fears, their safety, and their management of risk around engaging
Barriers to
father-inclusive practice
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father of the baby, the potential implications of his own needs and his role in the family’. This is a systemic issue and not simply about failings of individuals. None of this is new. Previously Brandon et. al. (2007) noted: ‘The dearth of information about men in most serious case reviews; failure to take fathers and other men connected to the families into account in assessments.’ In the Brandon article, this is related to a bigger pattern of the lack of engagement with fathers in child health and welfare services identifi ed in the previous decade by Haskett et al (1996), describing a powerful image of men almost as an ominous and brooding presence: ‘The (health workers) were aware of the father being very much in the background and not participating. Rather, he was an onlooker standing in a darker part of the room.’
This image echoes the paper produced the decade before by Olive Stevenson (1988) which reviewed previous enquiries, where she talks of the phenomenon of ‘shadowy men’ within child protection work.