What Can You Do To Help?

 

FNF has long term demands. We will probably only want to give up when the relationship of children with both their parents is equal in law and practice, unless there are evident child-centred reasons for departure from that in individual cases.

There are steps towards this that are attainable more quickly, and which attract support of more people than will support complete equality.

Families Need Fathers is first and foremost a child-centred social welfare organisation.

Our first list, therefore, is what you can do to help our social care work.

We are secondly a lobby for shared parenting. Our niche is the information, educational and representational work that charities traditionally do. We have reasonable, rational but also robust dialogues with politicians, judges, CAFCASS and other parties, We draw attention to the social need for shared parenting as well as the terrible distress and wicked wrongs we have at present.

Our second list is of things you can do to prevent divorce and separation resulting in a high proportion of our children being made, effectively, orphans.

But please Join, preferably paying more than the minimum. This not only funds our services, it adds to our credibility. The first call on our money is developing services to members and the public

 

Social Care Needs

1) Our children come first. In your own case always indicate to the authorities - such as schools, CAFCASS, the judiciary - that your most important role in society is as a caring parent. Demonstrate this above all to your children and your ex and your family. The role of a contact parent is often an unpredictable one. FNF activities are limited, and on occasion disrupted by the participants being called away for family reasons. Understand this.

2) Ask on your own case for the following:
i) a shared residence order. This does not have any direct implications for parenting time. But it puts parents on an equal footing symbolically.
ii) an adequate amount of parenting time. A demand for equality is not one that is listened to yet in the majority of cases. All demands should be on the basis of what is best for the children. But ask for - as a minimum, continuation of the role you had before the split if that was less then half the care. Ask for mid-week time rather than just week-end time. Ask for half the school holidays rather than half the time the works are shut. Ask for a fair share of bank holidays and other odd days. Ask for special days - children's birthdays. religious and cultural events - to be joint or fairly shared. Ask for the right to attend a fair share of school concerts and the like. Ask for a fair share of attending to the children going to parties and the like. Ask that the children not be put in daycare or babysat by others etc when you are available to care for them. Fathers in intact families now provide 30% of child care. Point this out and ask for it. Ask for the children to be involved in anything special you do - events to do with your hobbies and the like. Listen to the children when they say what they want. Most want more time with their 'second parent' than they are allowed. They also want more say in how it is organised.
iii) Never breach your deal with your children.
iv) Respect the children's rights to their other parent and wider family.

2) Join a branch. There are always things to be done. Contact the national office who will put you in touch with the Home Office funded project to develop our branches and support our volunteers. If there is no branch, set one up.

3) Attend meetings of branches. Meetings vary in size frequency and nature. But people turn up to them in states of great distress, needing someone to talk to. Some need help of specific sorts, which you may or may not be able to provide. But some need simply to share their pain and isolation and to talk about their family issues with others who may contribute simply on the basis of being another human being with whom they can share things. For some, meetings are partly social occasions where they can talk about issues that they cannot at other times.

4) Become a helpline volunteer. You will need to be selected, trained, abide by policy and procedures and accept advice and support. But there is an enormous need for this service and great satisfaction in helping.

5) Become a volunteer facilitator in our 'Both parents matter' workshops. The main qualification for this role is that you are a parent or have seen parents hurting for themselves and their children when a relationship is coming to an end. What you definitely don't have to be is an expert or a teacher. the experts are those who attend.

6) Become a telephone contact. You will still need to abide by our values and codes, but this is more like the support you might offer at a meeting - another person to whom to talk. This can be very valuable so long as you do not overstep the role of befriending.

7) Become a McKenzie friend. Many of our people have to argue their case in court without professional help. A McKenzie friend is a person who cannot normally address the court but can take notes and offer help and support .

8) Tell us of any other particular skills you have that might be useful. For example, many children can communicate with their excluded father, or find out about him, via the Internet from school or without their resident parent knowing, Someone able to tell fathers how to set up suitable sites, and to advise them what to put on it (eg no criticism of their resident parent) could be put in touch with parents whose children would benefit...many other ideas.

 

Lobbying needs.

Of course we support the demands of Bob Geldof and others for a total recast of the law. The following things are on the agenda right now, often as a result of our work. Action from you could make a difference. Write to the papers about them, lobby all and sundry, but the most effective technique is often to see your member of parliament and ask her or him to make representations to the relevant Minister.

1) A bill is currently (October 2005) in the House of Lords and awaiting a detailed scrutiny of this clauses by peers. If passed without serious emasculation (and preferably with improvements) it will be the successful end of a seven-year lobbying effort which would never have existed without FNF. It will lead to the more effective sanctioning of defiance of contact orders. If you have any excuse to make contact with a member of the House of Lords please do so. Say how important it is that contact orders are enforced, but that the following changes need making. That the parent whose child has lost contact should not have to do the work to get enforcement. That a public authority, such as CAFCASS, should take the enforcement action if they are notified that a child is being denied contact ordered. Say also that the bill should provide for any parenting time the child has lost as a result of defiance should be given back to them in the form of an increase of parenting time. There are other ideas - and risks. Ask our national office for a copy of the letter we have written to various parties about other changes.

Always keep your member of parliament in touch with problems you have. It is the job of 'experts' to devise solutions and FNF has of course a lot of ideas....but individuals can make a difference by ensuring the politicians know what the problems are and what issues need tackling.

2) The diversion of Legal Aid funds, currently used to fuel conflict between parents, into non-adversarial ways of achieving what is best for children. There is a semi-open door on this. Write with experience of legal aid to your MP asking him to forward it to Lord Filkin, junior minister in the Dept of Constitutional Affairs.

3) Ask for government guidance to promote shared parenting orders

4) ask what is being done by CAFCASS to promote guidelines to promote better contact arrangements

5) Ask what is being done to give appropriate training to judges and CAFCASS staff.

6) This an issue that FNF is seeking to open up. Ask what is being done to divide the monies available from the state (tax credits and the like) pro rata the care of the children rather than one parent (by legal preference the mother) getting it all.

But above all, JOIN.

 

Updated 28 September, 2005