Instigating compassionate and father-inclusive support for young men who are fathers: capturing and evaluating the Family Hubs and Start for Life Prog

Global shifts towards the value of father-inclusive service design and professional approaches are increasingly acknowledged for their potential to better support fathers to be positively involved in the lives of their children and co-parents (Bateson et al 2017; Pfitzner et al. 2017). Yet, the concept of father-inclusion remains unsettled among researchers and professionals (Tarrant et al. 2023) and its mobilisation in practice remains constrained by a relative lack of interdisciplinary scholarship and varying interpretations and perspectives about what it is and means, among multi-agency professionals.

Knowledge about how fathers, especially those who are marginalised, are best supported and engaged by multi-agency services, is therefore lacking yet sorely needed.

From an empirical perspective, recent government investments in the national Family Hubs programme provides a timely and pertinent opportunity to both research and address this societal challenge. In 2021, 75 local authorities across the country were selected to receive funding from the Department for Education, to establish Family Hubs because they were identified as areas with high deprivation.

Family Hubs are local support centres for families and young people aged 0-19, where they can receive early help. Each of these new Hubs are expected to consider father inclusivity in the support offers that they develop. While there is strong potential for the introduction of the Family Hubs to increase and improve support for fathers across the health and social care landscape, many of these services are implementing these offers without an adequate framework for father-inclusion and with limited access to training and education.

This has created a situation where specialist support services for fathers including the North East Young Dads and Lads and FutureMen, are being commissioned ad hoc for advice and guidance. This doctoral studentship therefore provides an unmissable opportunity to establish a unique, state-of-the-art evidence base about how Family Hubs are responding to the policy nudge towards increasing and improving support and engagement with fathers, as well as providing a timely and in-depth investigation into what works and what doesn't in instigating father inclusive services and policies.

Such an evidence base can be mobilised nationally, in real time and also by multi-agency professionals into the future.