Celebrating Fatherhood Campaign 2012

The Celebrating Fatherhood campaign is about recognising the importance of fathers and male carers in children’s lives. A number of local organisations have come together to support this campaign across Bath & North East Somerset, and it is being sponsored by the Local Safeguarding Board. Running from April 2012 it involves raising awareness of the support available to fathers, male carers and their families, provided through Bath & North East Somerset Council, local health service providers and voluntary organisations.

Bath & North East Somerset Local Safeguarding Board is sponsoring a campaign to promote the role of fathers and male carers in our children’s lives.

The campaign will focus on:

One of the events will be to support schools and settings to celebrate Father’s Day by considering a "Fathers Friday" by inviting fathers and male carers to come into the nursery, children’s centre, school to see how their child is getting on and to engage them in their child’s learning.

We all know the importance of parents/carers in a child’s life and yet despite major changes to maternity/paternity leave, equalities legislation we still fall short of engaging with fathers/male carers through our services. In fact when we talk about ‘parents’ it is often shorthand for ‘mothers’. Our campaign is aiming to address this as best we can.

A survey of 2,000 British parents which looked at the role of dads in their child’s upbringing found that the importance of dads in their child’s upbringing, and the positive self-perception as a role model for their children:

73.3 per cent of parents said dads were very or extremely important to their child’s development

Nearly 20 per cent (19.62) of dads feel left out of their child’s upbringing

62 per cent of parents thought dads could be more involved with their children

Major studies across the world which follow families over time have found fathers’ involvement with their children linked with their higher educational achievement and higher educational /occupational mobility relative to their parents (Sarkadi et al).

In the UK, fathers’ involvement with their 7 and 11 year old children is linked with their better national examination performance at age 16 (Lewis et al, 1982).