From the ‘fathers team’ at CRCF, Georgia Philip in particular, has been working hard to build the reputation and impact from the two Nuffield funded studies on fathers in child protection. These are the 2017 study, Counting Fathers In and the study completed in the summer of 2020, Up Against It: Fathers in recurrent care proceedings.
From the widely read 2019 practitioner focused report: ‘Building a Picture of Fathers in Family Justice in England’, (on Research Gate) one tweet singled out gender differences in practice:
“Professionals tended to view women’s difficulties as ‘vulnerabilities’, whereas similar characteristics for men were considered ‘risk factors’ - this can negatively albeit tacitly, influence levels of empathy and expectations for change.”
Our impact is stretching as far as Australia where Marian Brandon, Georgia Philip and John Clifton won an award for their 2019 article ‘Men as Fathers in Child Protection’ in the journal Australian Social Work where the award was given for practitioner influence.
Here in the UK, practitioners are using our research on fathers too – for example in the Research in Practice Frontline Briefing Document ‘Working effectively with men in families’ which features the ‘Counting Fathers In’ study as a key resource. Free practitioner resources are also available from the CASCADE website as a result of Georgia’s workshop for the Welsh research Centre in 2019.
In 2019, for the second successive year, Georgia provided three days of training for Norfolk and Suffolk probation staff on working with fathers who are offenders. The Probation Service are keen to partner in future research on this topic.
She also delivered practitioner training on working with fathers to social workers and family support workers in October 2019 in North Lincolnshire.