In time for Fathers Day this year we have completed our study on fathers who raise young children with no or very little input by the children’s mother. This is a usually forgotten and quite ‘invisible’ family type that seems to engage little with the communities they live in.

For more detail and the full report, see here:

For the NZ Herald report with Auckland solo dad Daniel Philips, see

here

On September 4th we are hosting a Fathers Day fun event.
Bring your family, instruments, songs or dance and join in.
Local musicians will help blend the acts together,
low cost barbeque sausages will be available,
find fathering information and meet other parents.
Onehunga Community Centre – 83 Church Street
Call 525 1690 for queries or contributions!

Brendon was interviewed for a story on teenage dads published in the Sunday News last weekend.
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Southern Stars Charitable Trust have been kindly donated some Family passes which admit 1 Adult 2 Chilren, to a live performance Pantomine in Aid of Koru Care for Robinson Crusoe.

13th August 2011

10am 1pm and 4pm tickets available

Logan Campbell Centre, ASB Showgrounds, Greenlane Road West, Auckland.

Any family interested in attending this please contact david@fatherandchild.org.nz or telephone (09)5251690 to request a ticket.

NZEI is running a competition for New Zealand students who attend early childhood centres or primary schools. The School Is Cool competition will promote the internationally renowned creativity and thinking of Kiwi students.  Their fabulous artwork will be displayed on www.schooliscool.org.nz where students can make comments and rate the artwork.

www.schooliscool.org.nz

Southern Stars Charitable Trust have been kindly donated 3 Family passes which admit 1 Adult 2 Chilren, to A live performance Pantomine in Aid of Radio Lollipop for Puss in Boots.

4th June 2011 4 pm

Logan Campbell Centre, ASB Showgrounds, Greenlane Road West, Auckland.

Any family interested in attending this please contact david@fatherandchild.org.nz or telephone (09)5251690 to request a ticket.

A new trading web site called USave wants sales commissions to benefit New Zealand charities rather than an Australia-based media behemoth, and says that it is able to provide better deals for retail items as well. The charity that you nominate when you register gets half of all your commissions. The charity also gets half of the money you put into your account when you register as a shopper or seller ($10), even though the full balance remains available to you to cover commissions. We think it’d be awesome if you could support us this way.

Deputy Prime Minister Bill English told an audience of 50 ‘Key Thinkers’ at a forum in Wellington yesterday that he wants people involved in social community initiatives to ‘run down our doors’ with new ideas. He and Social Welfare minister Paula Bennett said that the government is committed to social services that strengthen communities and empower community champions. Bennett promised the audience a lively debate through the remainder of the year on social policy approaches.
The forum was organised by the Families Commission, and tried to gather the thinking of the 50 invited people in six working groups. Disappointingly, there was almost no talk about better involvement of males as a key factor in positive outcomes for children, perhaps because only one fathers ‘champion’ was invited (Father&Child’s Harald Breiding-Buss).
Bennett appeared vaguely disappointed with what she overheard from discussions at the workgroup tables, saying that perhaps the thinking could have gone further.
More details about the forum can be found here: http://www.nzfamilies.org.nz/50-key-thinkers/main

Father & Child Trust is opening an office in Wellington to complement its offices in Auckland and Christchurch.

The Trust’s head office will remain in Christchurch and the purpose of the Wellington office is to extend Father & Child services to the Wellington region. The new local coordinator is Quentin Solomon, better known simply as Q, of Ngati Kahungunu and Ngati Porou descent. Quentin is an at-home father of two of his three children, a six year old girl and one year old boy, and lives with his wife Justine.

Father & Child Trust is funding the foray into Wellington from its own reserves, and the first task is to find the financial support to create a physical office and ongoing employment.
This is Father & Child’s second attempt in Wellington, after a separate Father & Child Trust Wellington was set up in 1998 by local dads to facilitate a forum about fathers. However, no ongoing services were established and the Trust has since been struck off the company office’s register.

No separate legal entity will be created for this new initiative which will be managed jointly with the Christchurch and Auckland offices. Father & Child’s Board of Trustees, it’s governing body, contains members from all three locations.

To contact Quentin email wellington@fatherandchild.org.nz or phone (04) 9097294

Father & Child Trust and Waipuna Youth and Community Trust have received the nod from the Ministry of Social Development for a collaboration aiming to give teen dads better support and both parents to work together better in Christchurch.

The $22,000 p.a. contract is one of nine contracts for teen dad services around the country. A Father & Child proposal to combine the three contracts available for South Auckland into one was unsuccessful, and the Trust will not be awarded any of the individual contracts in Auckland as the Ministry decided to go with teen parent service providers it already funds.

The Christchurch programme is based on respective support workers forming long-term relationships with teen fathers and mothers, providing individual support and mentoring while delivering joint parenting and relationship education. The idea is to foster a sense of ‘doing it together’ in the young parents (regardless of their relationship status) and to be able to troubleshoot together in crisis situations before they deteriorate out of control.

Father & Child started focusing on teen dads more than ten years ago and researched their support needs. The study, published in 2001, found that they were highly motivated to be good dads but were not supported, even discouraged, in this role. They had even lower awareness than older dads about how state-funded services support children and parents, and most haven’t had any face-to-face contact with even the most common child or parent-related services such as a Plunket nurse.

Teen fathers can enroll in the programme before or immediately after their child is born as it is a key aspect of the initiative to establish patterns of working together right from the start.

The Christchurch Father & Child office has now employed a youth worker, Justin Makinson (photo), who comes with four children of his own and a wealth of enthusiasm and life experience.
For enquiries about the programme contact Harald in the Christchurch office on (03) 961 2326; info@fatherandchild.org.nz