Engaging Dads and Male Carers
A toolkit by Better Start Bradford
Better Start Bradford has long understood the importance of the role of dads and male carers in their children’s early years, and how their involvement leads to better cognitive and social development, empathy and self-esteem.
Our work with dads and male carers has enabled them to experience this first-hand by engaging in activities with their 0-3s and spending focused time with them. Following consultation with families, feedback suggested there was a lack of focus and engagement from organisations for dads and male carers with 0-3s. Our Family and Community Engagement Team tackled this in a number of ways:
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Raising awareness of the services and provision already available in Bradford.
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Setting up a dads’ WhatsApp group – as feedback told us this was the best way to communicate with them – and growing it to over 150 members.
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Recruiting a specific dads and male carers’ engagement worker.
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Developing a range of activities for dads and male carers to do with their 0-3s, from cooking sessions and woodworking, to trips outside the local area and lots more.
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Encouraging dads and male carers to run their own activities via our Happy Early Years (HEY!) Fund.
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Addressing barriers to engagement, such as having sessions at weekends, and holding sessions in convenient, local venues.
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Holding a Men’s Information Market, with stall holders from different organisations promoting their services specifically for dads and male carers.
…and now by developing the special toolkit below:
Engaging Dads and Male Carers: A Toolkit
Based on our experience and learning, we've developed a toolkit to help other organisations in their work with this important group, and we're delighted to present it here.
The purpose of the toolkit is to:
- Outline a model for working with dads and male carers.
- Share successful approaches based on our experience.
- Signpost people working with dads and male carers to other learning materials and resources.
Dads' Directory
To accompany the toolkit, we've developed a directory of organisations providing dads and male carers' focused services and support, as well as early years activities.
If you're in Bradford, this is a useful starting point for providing support and signposting. If you're outside Bradford, perhaps it's something you can develop in your own area.
Further reading and listening
Shummel Uddin, Community Engagement Manager, shares insights into our work with dads
Our Dads Engagement Worker, Zafar Kayani, looks at how ‘cook and eat’ sessions have proved to be another effective vehicle for dads to learn new skills and bond with their young children.
Better Start Bradford’s Dads’ Engagement worker shares how he has successfully engaged with dads with children in their early years by providing woodworking classes.
Do we regularly look for the signs of adverse mental health in fathers? In this podcast episode, Zak and Kerry discuss how early years professionals can spot the signs and encourage fathers to open up on this subject.
You may also like to look at...
The Happy Early Years (HEY!) Fund enabled parents and carers in the Better Start Bradford area to apply for up to £2,500 to develop ideas and initiatives for local families and their 0-3s.
The Innovation Fund enabled organisations to pilot new, innovative approaches robustly over a period of a year, with potential for them to become a fully-fledged Better Start Bradford project.
Dive into our Earliest Years of Life podcast episodes - an uplifting and engaging series that looks at how formative babies’ earliest months and years are.
Dip into our library of research and evaluation reports, articles, family and early years resources, videos, podcast episodes and more!