Facilitating father engagement: The role of Family Relationship Centres
Richard J Fletcher
Family Action Centre, Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle, Newcastle NSW
Amy L Visser
Family Action Centre, Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle, Newcastle NSW
PP: 53
Abstract
The default position of the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006 is that children are able to spend substantial and meaningful amounts of time with each parent following separation, The legislation also requires (with some exceptions) that from July 2007, former partners make a bona fide attempt to resolve parenting disputes through family dispute resolution processes.
To this end, the establishment of 65 Family Relationship Centres has been approved and funded. In this paper, we argue that fathers and mothers attending the new Centres for dispute resolution may typically have different approaches to mediation and counselling. Furthermore, some individuals’ or service providers’ beliefs and stereotypes about men’s emotions may inhibit fathers’ engagement and reduce the effectiveness of the services being provided. Although difficult to measure, ‘father engagement’ in dispute resolution processes can be taken to include engendering trust and setting goals with the father, while simultaneously balancing the inclusion of the mother.
Instruments to gauge fathers’ degree of alliance with the mother as a co-parent, and investment in the child, may provide useful outcome measures of the process of father engagement. Professional competencies identified in the cross-cultural literature, such as self-reflective capacity, offer a starting point for equipping practitioners to engage with fathers to ensure that Family Relationship Centres meet their goal of improved outcomes for separating families.
Keywords
fathers, mediation, relationship conflict, counselling, father engagement
Article Text
The Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006 signals a fundamental shift in the approach to parenting disputes following family dissolution, from a legally-informed and ultimately court-based adversarial system to a dispute resolution and conflict management approach using an Australia-wide network of community-based support services. Two important principles incorporated into the 2006 family law reforms are a default position of mothers and fathers sharing the care in ways that permit ongoing meaningful relationships with the children and, in normal circumstances, the resolution of disputes about this position, using dispute resolution processes.
The reforms signalled a new recognition of the importance of fathers in children’s development and in family well-being. By emphasising a connection between the child and both parents as a fundamental right of the child, the legislation challenged earlier common practices that tended to see one parent (usually the mother) as the key parent after separation, while according ‘visiting rights’ to the other parent. In addition, by requiring parents, under normal circumstances, to negotiate over their child’s future contact and activities with them (eg by completing a parenting plan for example), the legislation aims to set in place a process that can support any future adjustments that may be necessary. At the same time, the deleterious effect of violent and abusive behaviour, an area in which men are over represented as perpetrators (Scott & Crooks 2004) is also recognised by the legislation. Former partners are not required to attempt to negotiate parenting arrangements where allegations of violence or abuse have been made.
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