4. A quick guide to approaching father-inclusive practice
While using this Guide you may discover that you need to make only minor adjustments to your current practice, or you may want to consider more substantial changes. Whatever the case, the following steps will help you find ways to develop more father-inclusive services.
Note that this is a quick guide to approaching father-inclusive practice and a more comprehensive explanation of these steps can be found in the correlating sections which follow.
a) Exploration: Where are you now?
Having accepted the need for action, it is then useful to start gathering information by exploring all components of your service. This will help you obtain a clear picture of how well your service engages men and fathers. At this early exploration stage, consider the following:
- what is it that we do? This may involve an audit of:
- your services’ activities and programs
- the current emphasis on father-inclusion
- the type of training provided to staff
- the organisation’s effectiveness in engaging fathers
- your service delivery environment.
- what is it that we currently do well (service strengths)?
- what is it that we could be doing better (potential)?
- what are the barriers you can’t change that may impact on achieving your goals?
b) The Vision: Where do you want to be?
The clarity gained from the exploration stage will help you understand:
- what is currently being done
- what needs to change
- why these changes are needed
- how these changes may best come about.
It’s important to have a vision of what you are trying to achieve, what changes you want to see in the organisation, its service delivery and for your clients.
c) Goal Setting: Breaking it down so it’s achievable and realistic
Achieving clarity about the changes required to develop more father-inclusive practices allows a service to set one or more realistic goal(s). These may relate (but are not limited) to factors such as service delivery, the service delivery environment, philosophies, policies, staff skill and attitudes, staff gender ratios, awareness and application of relevant literature or business planning.
Clear goals are critical to success. They provide a foundation for the development of strategies to change practice and enable what appear to be insurmountable issues to be broken down into achievable outcomes. They will also help you measure the effectiveness of your efforts through monitoring and evaluation.
To ensure the goals can produce effective change, it is important to make sure they are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic, explicit and agreed by all
- Time limited.
d) Strategies: What is needed to move forward?
Having determined clearly achievable goals, it is now time to identify and plan strategies (i.e. actions) to achieve each goal. Strategies are small steps that include consideration of:
- what tasks are required to achieve each of your goals
- when strategies will be implemented or completed
- who is responsible for implementing each strategy
- who will oversee this process
- how they will be undertaken
- how you will know the strategies are implemented and goals are achieved.
e) Targeting: Who is your audience?
You should become aware of who you are targeting, exactly ‘who’ you want to reach with your services. It is useful to consider:
- who are your primary, secondary and other audiences?
- what are the characteristics of your primary audience?
- which of these characteristics can be used to help you engage with your target group?
f) Staffing: Knowledge, skills, values and attitudes
Your organisation’s capacity to become more father-inclusive is dependant on the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes of its staff. It is important for staff to critically reflect on these areas and identify skills gaps, areas of required learning, awareness of values and possible shifts in attitudes.
g) Implementation: Some practical tips
Having worked through the previous steps, you should now have a plan of clearly defined steps to progress each of your goals. Some areas to consider when implementing father-inclusive practice are:
- Organisational qualities that support best practice.
- How to engage fathers.
- Types of groups for fathers.
- Tips for facilitating groups for fathers, including for female facilitators.
- Making effective referrals.
- The physical environment.
- Promoting your services as father-inclusive.
h) Action Learning: Let’s do it
Throughout every step of this process it will be necessary to critically reflect on, and review progress. For instance, considering the steps of the process, the following questions may be considered:
- Where have we come from?
- Where are we going?
- What is working well?
- What could be working better and how?
- What may be getting in the way that we can’t change?
- What are alternate solutions?
- What have we learnt?
- Do we need to go back and explore a particular issue further?
- Given what we have discovered, do we need to change any goals or strategies?
Ongoing review beyond the father-inclusive practice implementation process will help you remain responsive to the changing needs of this target group.