Child Protection and Welfare Practice Handbook - Health Service ...

Social Work Procedures and Practice
3.6.1 Working with fathers/male partners as part of
the assessment
See also Section 3.27 on ‘Unknown male partners’
Messages from research
• Research shows that child welfare systems are often not making
adequate efforts to establish contact with fathers, even when
fathers were involved with the family.
Agencies are less likely to assess the needs of fathers, to search for
• paternal relatives as possible placements or for other involvement,
or to provide fathers with services as they do for mothers.
If the mother was not contacted, then the father was also not likely
• to be contacted.
Practice Note: Working with fathers/male partners
If the father of the child is not living with the family, all efforts must be
made to locate and involve him in the assessment/investigation and,
if possible, any intervention plan for the child. Engaging fathers in the
assessment or the plan (the latter may include therapeutic help) is
crucial to a comprehensive assessment, where the child is central. The
importance of parental roles is clear, yet research shows that the focus
of many assessments is the mother.
Excluding fathers from assessments can mean that both positive and
negative effects of an important element of the family relationship may
be missed. When engaging fathers in assessments, practitioners should
bear the following points in mind:
• Physical
absence of fathers should not be equated with
psychological absence.
• It is not advisable to make a second- or third-hand assessment of
the father role in a child’s life.
• It is unfair to put a child’s mother in the situation where she is
allocated all responsibility for her child’s safety and welfare, and
forced to mediate between her family and child protection and
welfare services.
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