New Zealand has 24,000 solo dads with dependent children, most of them in paid employment and typically plugging away without any direct support.

How they became solo dads, whether they or their children need anything or if there is useful information to help them is not known.

Another funding body has declined Father & Child’s latest application for help to research solo fathers in NZ. This initiative has also been unsuccessful in two other funding requests.

The study aims to assess the present situation of full-time solo fathers with dependent children under eight, perceived needs for themselves and their children, effectiveness of family service agencies in reaching them, and what support initiatives may be acceptable to them.

Father & Child’s last research initiative, the teenage fathers project, was funded by an international agency for Early Childhood Development, the Hague-based Bernard van Leer Foundation, after all local requests for funding assistance came to nothing.