Places, Spaces & Faces
“I really want something to do at the weekend with other dads and their kids.”
Many dads struggled to engage in what was available to them due to the practicalities of their daily life. Most made it clear that they would not be able to engage in things that were not held at the weekend due to working commitments.
We also know from this and other research, that ‘getting support’ can be a difficult concept. Dads generally valued being able to enter into spaces with a purpose that related to their baby or their co-parent, rather than themselves specifically. This might be a fun activity that they could do with their baby, or an opportunity to learn with their co-parent about pregnancy, birth or the postnatal period.
Some dads did not feel it was right for them to be engaging in support for themselves when the baby’s other parent was having a more difficult experience. This is an important consideration for any project or intervention design, as some dads said that they would be much more likely to attend a group or engage with support if they felt that it was focussed on enhancing their ability to support their co-parent or provided something for their co-parent.
Dads told us that, to run successful ‘dad interventions’, they should:
Be held at the weekend.
Be informal (i.e. not with lots of ‘professionals’ attending, and not marketed as ‘support’ or 'help’).
Have an activity or event at them that allows dads to do something structured with their baby. This should be explicitly mentioned in marketing to encourage dads to attend. Dads sometimes felt self-conscious in unstructured groups with their baby, particularly if most of the attendees identified as women, so a clear activity was seen as a positive way to give them some structure about what to do and take them focus away from them as individuals as well as providing learning about bonding with their baby.
Be bookable online or drop-in, dads overwhelmingly said that they would not call somewhere to book in.
Be held regularly so that there was time for them to become established and for dads to build attending into their schedule and encourage peers to attend.
Consider leveraging the role of partners and co-parents by providing a separate activity or space for co-parents to engage in something related to well-being at the same time.
Get Practical
Here are some suggestions for getting started. Check out the Resources & Worksheets section at the bottom of the page for useful tools to support you.
How well do you understand the day-to-day experiences and context of local dads? Context helps us to better understand people’s needs and therefore design services that work for them. For example, if local dads are mostly living in poverty then their needs will be different to dads who are not. Considerations can sometimes be very specific, for example if breastfeeding rates are high locally then the kinds of activities and information that a dad might want and need will be different to in areas where babies are more often formula-fed. You could try Context Mapping to start thinking about some of these things and considering how your service meets those contextual needs. For this you might need to speak to lots of people, look at data and do some wider research and reading.
How well do you understand the needs and opinions of local dads? Have you considered the particular needs of dads with a variety of identities? You could go out and speak to some dads! What would work for them? What do they want and need from a service? You might want to think about times, locations, activity offers, transport and childcare along with many other things. Try using the 5 Wh Questions worksheet to gain deeper insights.
Lay out the practical aspects of your current offer on a big piece of paper, consider things like times things are held and locations, what the spaces look like, how the offer is advertised. Put a big red sticker against anything that stands out as a barrier for a dad. Then explore how those elements could be tweaked to lower that barrier.
Now it’s time to think about your own barriers. There are reasons that your service is set up the way it is and change can be hard. Be open about the barriers to any changes you have identified are needed and weigh up carefully the risks of change against the risks of remaining the same. If change is going to happen effectively, it’s important that these things are not ignored. You could try the Stinky Fish activity to make this more fun. At the end of the activity make clear plans for where changes can be made and where they cannot.
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Context Mapping - helps us to understand the bigger picture of a particular situation and gives unexpected insights into what a dad is going through in his life.
The 5 Wh Questions - can be used to gain new knowledge and information and understand needs in a structured way.
Exploring Client Centricity - This exercise promotes collaborative exploration and reflection around an organisation’s approach to its clients. This tool can be used to think specifically about dads as ‘clients’.
Stinky Fish - focused on sharing any concerns related to the overall theme. The activity creates openness and an opportunity to creatively explore barriers to change.