INCLUDE: Understanding and developing father Inclusive Practice in Children’s Social Care.

Background Of the 12 million children living in England, just under 400,000 (3%) are known to the social care system at any one time.

Currently, within the children s social care practice landscape fathers are not systematically included in child welfare interventions, often being described as an unheard gender .

The absence of fathers in children s social care has been explained by fathers being viewed as a risk to exclude rather than a potential family resource.

Consequently, the potential for fathers to improve child outcomes is not realized and paternal risk factors, such as domestic violence often go unaddressed.

If fathers are to be better engaged and supported by social care, the style, content and approach will need to be adapted inclusive of considering how cultural conceptions of fathering should be integrated into the intervention design.

There is an urgent need for child welfare interventions which both include and target fathers in order to better support and safeguard children.

Aims and Objectives The aim is to understand the support needs of fathers whose children are involved with children s social care and develop novel community-informed good practice guidance' that can be delivered by social care teams to promote father inclusive practice.

Objectives: • To establish how best to support fathers in practice, through conducting a systematic literature review of existing father-inclusive support strategies available to fathers whose children are involved in children s social care. • To generate a qualitative evidence base combining the perspectives of fathers with lived experience of children s social care, organisations engaging in father inclusive practice and social care professionals providing support to fathers in the children s social care environment. • To co-produce evidence-based and community informed, good practice guidance to promote effective support for fathers whose children are involved in children s social care.

Methods This ambitious, multi-perspective and participatory study will take a mixed methods approach, inclusive of: A systematic review to examine the effectiveness of interventions aimed at fathers with children involved in children s social care (the duration, content and father specific engagement strategies used within interventions) Qualitative case studies to examine innovative models of father-inclusive practice within England.

Qualitative interviews will be conducted with fathers with lived experience and key professional delivering father-inclusive interventions.

Participatory workshops with stakeholders (fathers with lived experience and key professionals) to co-produce the good practice guidance for father-inclusive practice.

We will use participatory methods throughout the project to ensure the inclusion of the father s voice, this will result in research that is authentically co-produced; wherein fathers influence the design, data collection, analysis, and dissemination of the research. Timeline for delivery The project duration is 24 months.

Anticipated impact and dissemination We will disseminate our findings to a large social care practice audience.

To maximise impact, we will do this via regional, national, and international networks, including: Two short animation films A live illustration A conference (aimed at social care and practice partners) Policy and practice briefings We will also produce journal articles which we will publish in peer reviewed academic journals.