Transcript for
Supporting dads in their role as fathers

Narrator [00:00:02] Welcome to the Emerging Minds podcast.

Sophie Guy [00:00:08] You’re with Sophie Guy, and today I’m joined by Dominic Alford, coordinator of the Support for Fathers project at Relationships Australia Victoria. He’s worked in the welfare sector for 12 years across child protection, foster care, parent education and teaching. Dom has experience facilitating fathers groups, implementing father-sensitive practice and through the Support for Fathers project, has developed an extensive network and knowledge base of fathers programs and fatherhood research around Australia. In today’s episode, we talk about what he’s learnt from travelling around the country speaking to dads, and why it is helpful for services to think about how accessible and engaging they might be from the perspective of men and fathers.

Sophie Guy [00:00:53] Hi, Dom, and welcome to the Emerging Minds podcast.

Dom Alford [00:00:56] Thanks for having me, Sophie.

Sophie Guy [00:00:58] In looking through the Support for Fathers website, I came across the Introduction to Working with Men and Family Relationships Guide, and it struck me as I was starting to read it, about how we’re living at a time that seems to be really polarised, and this seems to lead to simplifications and generalisations about groups of people or topics when actually things are always inherently really complex. And it’s stood out to me that there are these fairly sort of stuck stereotypes, which can sometimes be a bit negative about men and fathers, and I really feel this is unhelpful and needs to change. And so I’m looking forward to this conversation today to learn more about supporting fathers and fatherhood and how men view about their roles. To start with, perhaps if you could tell us a bit about your background and how you came to be working with fathers and in the area of fatherhood.

Dom Alford [00:01:59] Yeah, for sure. So my background as a social worker, I’ve come from working in residential care in the child protection system in Victoria. So working with the children and families who are part of that system and then also working in foster care primarily. And really just that sort of built up a lot of my knowledge and experience around vulnerable children and families going through child protection systems and, and the supports around them. And from that, I’ve definitely seen the huge gaps in terms of how parents of those children are supported. So when those children go into care systems, that the parents, you know, just often left for good reasons or bad reasons, they’re often left to sort of figure it out themselves and the support systems are there, but they’ve got so many complex issues going on. And then usually it’s the women and the mothers’ role to those children who take on the responsibilities, and the men and dads are quite often not present. So that’s sort of spurred my passion to work with fathers, and coming to this role as just a really nice fit. It was a pretty rare project to be able to focus solely on fatherhood. So I was quite excited by that, and now the role just really just discovering more about what Australia’s view on fatherhood and discovering what sort of seems to be working and what doesn’t, and in terms of how we support families and dads in those families and also just finding out from dads what kind of stuff they want to learn about and what drives them.

Sophie Guy [00:03:42] Could you tell us then about the Support for Fathers project and give us an overview of that?

Dom Alford [00:03:48] So we’re funded by the federal government through Department of Social Services, and it’s part of a 12-year plan to reduce family violence in Australia, put together in 2010. So there’s been numerous projects funded through this, this plan. So it’s a fantastic initiative but we’re in a unique position in this plan also because most of it’s funded to around the response to family violence in Australia. So response services, when you’ve had those crisis, when you had family violence incidents, but we’re actually funded to do primary prevention work with men and dads and families and services. So we’re being asked to provide opportunities or dads to learn about fatherhood and to have better engagement with support services and for professionals to, you know, support services to understand more about how to engage dads and get more dads involved in those services as well. So I say it’s a bit of a two-way street, but it’s probably like a seven-way straight where it’s not just services and dads putting up brick walls or letting each other engage, there’s so many different elements there. So as part of that, I guess deliver on that, we’ve put together some resources around fatherhood, so some key topics that we’ve found that people want to talk about, and then also the research and the evidence indicates is, is what we need to be discussing. And one of those things is what you mentioned at the beginning there around the roles of dads and the types of dads that we accept in our society. And that’s what’s expected of men, and we’ve explored that in our resources, and with the services, we’ve put together a bit of a toolkit for them, to… and it’s it’s a bit of a step-by-step guide to give them support to engage dads, to get more dads involved in the services, and also just to share some of the research to say, hey, look, you know, it’s really important to work with dads for these reasons and it’s really important to work with dad because it’s gonna have a great benefit on the whole family and the whole community.

Sophie Guy [00:05:55] Yeah, I’m really keen to start hearing about what you’ve learnt from speaking to fathers. You were telling me the other day that earlier in the project you travelled around Australia and held quite a number of workshops, was it?

Dom Alford [00:06:12] Yeah, that’s right. Yes, so it’s a national project, so I’ll be based in Melbourne. I’ve been travelling around Australia at the beginning of the project as part of a consultation to do the workshops and forums with dads and services and, and find out really what those topics we should be talking about. And lots of dads, I think they, they get that their role is the sort of traditional role is that’s expected of them is to be a breadwinner kind of role and, and to go to work and provide for their family. That’s sort of a safe or a comfortable position that a lot of men sit in and they feel like they’re raised to be that way. And it’s expected of them from themselves, from their family, from the community, from media, from their workplaces that, you know, dads go to work and provide for their family. And then so then on top of that, a lot of dads were sort of saying, “well, also, I really want to spend a lot of time with my family and my kids and I, I go to work and I see them for half an hour when I get home and then they’re off to bed.”

[00:07:12] And we’re finding a lot of dads are just really craving more engagement with their kids in particular. So it’s sort of a bit of a clash there where they’re expected to be the breadwinner, but they’re also wanting to have more. So that’s really that stuff we’re talking about, about roles. That’s really where it dawned on me that, you know, we really need to talk about this more and help dads explore what else they can do other than bringing that breadwinner on a dad.

Sophie Guy [00:07:40] Mm hmm. Yeah. So what were some of the other themes that came at this meeting with dads in this way?

Dom Alford [00:07:46] Yeah. I think when the other big thing I noticed is that there’s more diversity in dads than I guess I even expected coming into it. When I just think of dads or if I say the word ‘dads’, I just have one category and one column that I fit them into. But the more sessions that I did, the more I discovered that dads come in all different shapes and sizes, and I guess when you say it now, you’re like, “oh, of course”, but at the time I sort of go into this thinking, “well, what are dads all about?” And there’s a diversity there in terms of dads that are in healthy relationships and they’ve got kids and then you’ve got single dads or you got separated dads or granddads in one group who had all those kind of dads. And we even had to foster that in there as well. So it’s a really diverse group, and we only met 25 dads together and there was probably 10 different types of dads there. And what the commonality there was around their roles as a dad and the kind of dads they wanted to be that they found when we explored the different types of dads, I primarily use a resource called ‘7 Types of Dad’ and help dads explore their roles and what they want to do. They found a lot of commonality and they bonded really well, despite the diversity and differences in their lives.

Sophie Guy [00:09:07] Okay. How did you engage these men to come along to the workshops?

Dom Alford [00:09:13] So from the beginning, I really reached out to the services and local council networks because we’ve had this project that’s had absolutely zero sort of awareness outside of our little bubble in Melbourne, or just in Relationships Australia Victoria. So I just really relied on kind of the goodwill of other people to share the project and to get engaged and get involved and really found that there’s such a thirst for more knowledge around fatherhood and more work around this, that I just was inundated with people coming back to me and saying that they want to be involved and they want to help support the project, and they want to host a forum or a workshop or whatever it is. And they’re like, “Yep great, I’ve got 10 dads that we catch up once a week and I’ll bring them along to a session when you come to Adelaide or whatever it is.” So it was just this real passion out there, because I think there’s such a huge gap in that we don’t provide many services focused on fatherhood, and there’s people out there just doing this individually and people will just see the gap, and they’re really excited to do something about it.

Dom Alford [00:10:27] Okay, so you get the impression from the men that you spoke with that they don’t feel that there’s any services specifically or programs for them and that they really want that they’re looking for something like that?

Dom Alford [00:10:43] Yeah, definitely. I always say to people, to professionals that when they’re engaging with dads is if you’ve got a dad who’s turned up to your service, it means they’re really keen, so don’t just assume that they don’t want to learn or they don’t want to listen to what you have to offer them, because there is a bit of a sort of a stigma, I guess, around men engaging the services that they don’t want to engage. But, well, they’ve turned up, so they’re really keen then. Really, yes, I think they feel like there’s not much on offer for them, and maybe they’ve engaged with maternal child health centres or have engaged with, you know, through local council, through whatever sort of community parenting stuff they’ve got going on or family events and just find that they’d like something that’s a bit more focused on fathers. And they don’t see themselves in the imagery or the posters or the pictures that are put out by the services. When they see families, it’s definitely mums and kids and not always dads in those pictures. And we, I talked about that as being really important, is that you can’t expect people to turn up if they don’t see themselves in a picture, you know.

Sophie Guy [00:11:54] Yeah. Is it that a lot of services and publicity material things, we’ve kind of not realised, but it’s subconsciously more appealing to women or mothers? Is that kind of what it looks like out there for fathers?

Dom Alford [00:12:09] I think if we had to generalise it, yes, there’s definitely cases where people are doing fantastic work around engaging men in services, but on the whole, yeah for sure. And there’s a couple of reasons behind that. There is that traditionally these services, when they’re focused on families, they will focus on mothers and children first, and that’s sort of a historical thing, something that can’t change, so culture’s quite ingrained in that. But you’ve also have reasons to why men don’t access services, for men, maybe they don’t want to, maybe they’re not interested, maybe it’s just not something that they want to do. Maybe they’re not aware that they can access the services, and maybe then they’re also not comfortable around feeling confident enough to put their hand up and say, actually, I need some support. And then on the flip side, with the services, that culture around that they’re used to working with mums in the families and they’re used to dads not being present when they engage with services. And so that’s really, really ingrained in the culture, and as myself as a social worker, I’m definitely part of that. And I remember in working in Family Services that if you saw a mum and a dad listed as contacts and you’re like, “well, who am I gonna call first?” And you’re like, “well, I’ll call mum, because she’ll answer, and she’s not at work.” And maybe you don’t want to call the dad, and maybe you’ll feel more confident in the conversation with the mum, so you just go that way. It’s also just a bit of a leap of faith for professionals to say, “no, actually, let’s call dad, let’s see what he has to say.” And so there’s quite a few barriers that have been put up by dads and families and services.

Sophie Guy [00:13:51] Yeah. What else did we learn from fathers that you met with about what it is they’re wanting to learn or their perspective on being fathers in Australia?

Dom Alford [00:14:02] I think the biggest thing was coming back to the balance between work and life that they want to fit in more parenting into the day, and dads really enjoy being nurturing and affectionate with their kids. And they’re not just that, you know, talk to the breadwinner dad or the playful dad. They’re the two sort of safe dads that I talk about with people but they really love the nurturing stuff, the cooking dinner or putting the kids to bed or bath time stuff. And they really love being affectionate, they love hugs and cuddles and kisses and saying, I love you to the kids. Again, I’ll say this now, you might sort of think, well, that’s obvious, but, you know, when you, there’s this sort of perception around dads and particularly with services engaging dads, that we generalise them a bit too much, so looking a bit more at dads as individuals and not just the same as the next dad who walks in the door.

Sophie Guy [00:15:00] And how comfortable did you find these dads were in talking about these different parts of their roles? Is it still hard because of stereotypes or stigma about how men are supposed to be or, how did you find it?

Dom Alford [00:15:14] Again, maybe comes back to that it’s getting to know your dad is the one of the first things I talk to professionals about. So that maybe comes back to that is they’re actually spending time to get dads to share their stories and asking them what it’s like to be a dad. Building some trust in getting them and sharing stories around fatherhood is a great way to get men to open up around what it’s like for them as a dad. With the groups that I’ve run, or the dads I’ve talked to one-on-one or whatever it is, once they get started, they’ve got a thousand stories to tell. They’re very reflective, they’ll open up and it’s hard, particularly in the group sitting, I feel like I barely get through all this content I’ve got plan and all these great activities I’ve got planned for these dads, because by the time I do the first activity and they get started, the conversation just goes and goes. And I don’t really want to stop it because I feel like these men don’t ever have this opportunity to talk to other dads and so I was like, “well, why stop this now.” And that’s what I share with a lot of people that, you know, once you get dads talking to each other, they’re not going to stop and they really enjoy it, and, and it’s that connection that they’re developing or they’re realising that, you know, “oh, this guy actually gets me because he’s another dad and there’s something unique about being a dad that maybe only people and those father figure roles can understand.”

Sophie Guy [00:16:39] Was there other things that came out of that as well?

Dom Alford [00:16:42] Yeah, there’s definitely the big things around the roles, the types of roles that dads can play. The other thing was around relationships, so relationship with their partner, but also with their child. So just having some sort of guidance around what is, I guess, a healthy relationship and providing some sort of benchmark to say, you know, this is what is a positive relationship, and that was really important for us to get that out there as well, because if we’re talking about reducing family violence and we’re talking about engaging men in this discussion, healthy relationships is huge. We want to provide some sort of benchmark around that is huge. (Mm hmm). Also, just around dads being a really good role model for other dads in their life. So whether it’s their brother or brother-in-law or another dad they see at the playground, some of the things that came out was that dads want to be good role models in their community or their junior footy club or whatever it is, and that was really great. And one of our topics there is called ‘Dads raising the next generation’ and that’s really saying that dads are really important in raising the next generation of kids and here’s some reasons why.

Sophie Guy [00:17:47] And so this information that you gathered, you have used this have you, to develop resources or select resources to put on the website and make available?

Dom Alford [00:17:57] Yeah that’s right, yeah, he just gave us a bit of guidance to put together our first seven resources. The seven key topics that we’ve found were coming out. And then we’ve got a few more to come, and they’re all just based on the feedback we got from the national survey and from those forums with dads and professionals and from the research that we’ve gathered that other people have done.

Sophie Guy [00:18:18] And do you have a sense of, to what extent men are engaging with the resources on the website? What happens now in terms of ongoing work?

Dom Alford [00:18:28] Yeah. So the workshops that I have been talking about were at the beginning of the project, and now we’re sort of at the other end where after publishing our website and the resources and toolkit, we’re actually running training and delivering on all those things. And now with Coronavirus and the shutdown in Victoria, meaning that we can’t travel anymore, we’re running all, everything online. So up until March, I was travelling around Australia doing training for services and I was doing dad sessions for dads and using our resources in those sessions. And now we’re doing it all online and that will continue through until March 2021.

Sophie Guy [00:19:08] And the trainings for dads?

Dom Alford [00:19:09] Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, it’s called ‘DadStuff’ and so they’re webinars, I’m running them monthly, and then the Working with Dads webinars, we’ve got them running as sort of a series.

Sophie Guy [00:19:21] Okay. And that’s directed at practitioners and services?

Dom Alford [00:19:26] Yeah. And that’s really around the focus around the toolkit and the resources and train them up in, in hopefully engaging dads more effectively.

Sophie Guy [00:19:34] Yeah. Could you talk a bit more about that side? And you mentioned the toolkit, could you talk a bit more about that?

Dom Alford [00:19:40] Yeah, sure. So really just trying to increase the opportunities for dads to access services. And so I guess I’ve talked a bit about the side where dads are on, but with professionals, really just getting them to think more about why it’s important to engage dads. So in the toolkit, we’ll talk about some of the research that’s out there and that showing that there’s, there’s actually evidence to show that dads have a parenting influence. That’s a really important factor in childhood development, and it’s a parenting influence that’s separate to mums.

Sophie Guy [00:20:14] What does that look like? What is that influence?

Dom Alford [00:20:17] When I say ‘separate’, it’s not better or you don’t have to have one or the other or have both. It’s just something unique, I guess, is probably a better word. And that’s, that’s really just about saying that there’s an approach that dads can have to parenting that traditionally in and, you know, generalising that is different to what women provide and that can be really important in child development. And maybe an example, might be around the way that they play or the way they interact with a child, or the way that they teach their child may not be the same way. And maybe it’s around being a role model rather than being a teacher or showing their child by example rather than explaining it to them, maybe. Look, I’m just giving some examples.

Sophie Guy [00:20:59] I guess what I was curious about is, does it link to developing specific traits or competencies in kids or is it not that specific?

Dom Alford [00:21:07] Look, I haven’t got the research study in front of me, but yeah, it’s specifically around when we talk about toddler development, it’s around all areas of their development. It’s about healthier outcomes overall for the children. And, yeah, I also talk about the research that that it’s saying that when dads are having really positive involvement or a great day, a great month in their life, this has really positive impacts on the whole family. So we’re just highlighting that, you know, dads can be unique in their parenting styles or influence that it’s really important to focus on the positives in their life as well. And then the more that dads get involved in their family life, the more they get involved in healthy community activities. So we really talk about that there’s a bit of a pathway you can follow to say that dads are important. They can have a really great impact on family life and they can have a great impact on the community as well, if you’re supporting them to be involved. Sharing lots of that research with professionals is the first step, and I think that’s really important because I remember as a worker myself, the one thing I was always sort of was frustrated with was that there’s such great research out there, but no one’s really making it, you know, putting it in layman’s terms and making it easy for workers just to access or understand, because if you read a research study, you know, or a paper or, gotta be able to just understand the language. You can’t just pick it up and read it in two minutes sort of thing.

Sophie Guy [00:22:30] That’s right. And also a lot of it’s behind paywalls anyway. You can’t access this stuff.

Dom Alford [00:22:34] That’s right, definitely. Yeah, so that’s, that’s been a big aim for me is to get that research into simple terms, and, you know, I’m sure some academics probably aren’t wrapped with that because they spend so long precisely describing their work, that I just put it into simple language and probably could be more eloquent with it, but I’m trying to make it so that the average worker in Australia, case manager, can pick it up and use it or a dad can just go, “oh, yeah, I get it, great”, and that’s it. They don’t need to do much more, then they’re like, “oh, it’s good to know that I’m on the right track” or, “well, actually, I could do that next time.” They’ll give that a go.

[00:23:15] That’s sort of the starting point for professionals is around just sharing that research and then focusing on the ways that they work with that. So from all the way from the flyers they produce, the imagery they use, the venues they host their events in, and also where they share their flyers and all their marketing tools. So just saying to them that, “well, look if you’re sharing your flyer or your social media stuff through the same networks that you’ve always been sharing through, have a think about who’s actually reading those things.” So if you’re sharing them through your community networks and your schools and your kinders and childcares, well, the majority of people reading those posts are women are mothers, because they’re joined up and they follow those places. So think about where else you could be targeting your promotions to say, “well, this is actually going straight to men or this is going straight to dads.” That’s the kind of stuff we talk about in the training from the promotion all the way through to how they run groups with dads and how they keep dads involved and there’s lots more in that, I guess.

Sophie Guy [00:24:18] Yeah. And what are some of the places you talked about where you might leave flyers? Where would you leave them where fathers are more likely to find them?

Dom Alford [00:24:26] Acknowledging that definitely going through dad’s partner is one avenue to get dads sort of engaged in a service. But just say, wouldn’t it be great if we go straight to dads? So I explore with those personals and say, “well, in your community, where would you go and find a group of dads? If you had to go find them right now, where would they be?” So the answers usually are at work or on a Saturday you might find them at Bunnings or you might find them involved in a sports club. And it depends on where I am and the answers you get in rural communities. You do have that sort of link with the sports clubs on the weekends that are a bit stronger but say, “well, where are dads, they’re at work”, and we base that off the statistics from the Australian Institute of Family Studies and saying that the majority of dads are at work and they go to work from shortly after the child’s born and they go to work full-time and they remain full-time for the child’s sort of life. So we can’t deny that they’re at work, so we try and find ways to engage them, if they want. You’re running something during the day or want to engage those dads, let’s go to workplaces and let’s go through dads that way.

Sophie Guy [00:25:35] Mm hmm. Yeah. What else is in the toolkit or is important for practitioners and services to think about in engaging fathers?

Dom Alford [00:25:43] So we talk about language being really important as well. So from the language used in the flyer to the language using your course or whatever content you’re sharing or delivering to these dads, again, just coming back for that starting point of, if you’re running like a parenting course and you want to do one just for dads, “well, where does this parenting course come from?” And then going back to that and have a look at, “well, who actually informs this parenting course? Was it primarily done with mothers and as a research group or was it a focus group? And then if you’re just changing the word from ‘mum’ to ‘dad’ all the time in this course because you want to make one for dads, then that’s a starting point.” But really just going a bit further and providing case scenarios and context that is a bit more relevant to dads and getting people just to think a bit more and taking it a step further, rather than just swapping out the word ‘mum’ for ‘dad’ in their flyer or their course or, or their work. So that’s, that’s a big one and when they engage dads, actually sort of inviting them to attend things, so if they have the opportunity to send out a letter or a flyer, so like a school might be sending out a letter to their parents saying, you know, “we’ve got a Father’s Day event on or we’ve got a parenting, family event that they want more dads to come along to.” And we say, “well, you’ve actually got to invite dads because they’re most likely not going to read that newsletter, and mums will and they may pass it on or not, it just sits on the kitchen table for two weeks. And then also that it just says ‘Dear parents’. There’s an assumption there that that’s for mum and that’s not for dad. And again, we’re generalising here, but if you can just have the opportunity, say, “hey, dads, this is for you. We want you to come along.” You’re going to get more dads coming along, because they’re like, “alright, yeah, great, you know, I’ll do this because it’s for my child and it’s me and it’s for our family and it says ‘Dear dad'” and, you know, it’s called Dads Family Day or something like that. So just making it really explicit around inviting dads to your service. And then when they get to your service, you know, you have that imagery where they see some dads around, they’re like, “oh, great, this is where I belong, because there’s pictures of dads here.” And again, it just sounds really simple, but it’s stuff that just doesn’t happen. So I don’t feel like I’m doing anything groundbreaking here but in professional services, they haven’t had many opportunities to explore this stuff really. (Yeah). That’s really what is the biggest benefit is they get the chance to sit down for a couple of hours in a training session and kind of go, “oh, yeah, look, I can do that.” And I try and provide things in the toolkit, things that they can actually just go and do straight away, and it doesn’t require an overhaul of their case management system or it doesn’t require an overhaul of their marketing tools. It just requires little tweaks here and there that work for them, that they’re happy with, that they can just go and do. And hopefully it has a good impact on how they engage dads.

Sophie Guy [00:28:42] A question that was popping into my mind, but I was just curious to ask whether you heard from dads around how they see their role in supporting their children’s social and emotional wellbeing. Did you have many conversations about that?

Dom Alford [00:28:59] Yeah. So the thing that drives dads the most is their connection with their child. So I say to people that that’s something we should focus on, and dads are saying, “you know, let’s celebrate this and let’s explore this. Let’s develop this even more.” And for professionals, I say, “well, this is an opportunity to engage with these dads if you engage with them around their children, that’s what drives them the most.” So with dads always just talking about whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it with their kids and really just getting them to explore that connection with the kids and how their kids are going. And maybe that links into that the social and emotional wellbeing stuff that you’re talking about and getting into explore the different ways that they can connect with the kids. And that would have a great impact on their wellbeing and getting them to say, “well, there are different ways you can bond with your kids and one of them might be is that you’re playing with them one-on-one.” Another one is that, “if you have, you have to be at work all the time, there’s, there’s ways that you can still bond with them.” And we explore that with dads and I think that goes a long way to improving that connection between the kids and the dad and also that social emotional wellbeing.

Sophie Guy [00:30:09] Mm hmm. We’ve covered pretty well what I’d hoped we would cover. Is there anything else that you would like to add before we wind things up?

Dom Alford [00:30:18] I think really just that from our work, we’re just really hoping that dads get the opportunity to learn more about fatherhood and that there’s not enough options out there for dads. Wouldn’t it be great if, you know, a dad had choices in the types of programs he could be involved in rather than just having one option all the time? And for dads, I like to focus on them as a role model, not just in their family, but in their community, and just say to them, “you’re really important for your family and you’re really important to your community, so, you know, when you’re at the playground with your kids, you know, you’re a role model to that other dad or that dad who’s expecting or, or whatever it is, it’s really important, all the things you do around your relationships and being respectful and promoting healthy relationships.”

Sophie Guy [00:31:05] That sounds like a really good note to end on. So, thank you very much for your time today, Dom. I really appreciated it.

Dom Alford [00:31:12] Not a problem, Sophie.

Narrator [00:31:15] Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au to access a range of resources to assist your practice. Brought to you by the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, led by Emerging Minds. The National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.