Since opening the doors on January 6th we have had over 111 contacts with fathers averaging over 200 hours of dedicated support time spent.

Brendon continues to apply his experience especially with advocacy and interagency/court preparation. In Christchurch we had swag of correspondence course modules to follow up on. We are now engaged with 5 prisons thanks to the great work Cliff is doing.

Cliff has established really good working relationships with a couple of lawyers thanks to Janet’s letter posted out last year. Cliff attended attended a session with one of the lawyers on the new Family Court Laws due for introduction in March and also had one man referred directly from Family Court.

Mauri Ora fathers group Auckland

We started with a bang with 12 dads attending discussing a wide range of topics. This included a lawyer whose article about punishing dads was in the Herald recently. This group continues to attract new and isolated dads who need to connect and share with other dads.

Topics discussed recently include…
When at an FGC, the dad may say, I want this support person in the whanau time, and it is his right, ie, If they are not allowed, the dad can say, well then I don’t want to participate…! If they need a lift to the FGC and the support person picks them up, then it is probably ok for us to ask CYF for a petrol voucher or similar…

One dad said dads are in the Family Court because of love, everyone else, inc, lawyers, judges, etc, for money.
Another said how much he’d got from the other dads that night, that he was really grateful, and esp. to our student from Auckland University, for supervising his contact with kids in the weekend just gone, kia kaha!

One dad said he relies on his faith, he regularly attends church where he asks for guidance, to keep the family safe from allegations, he said God knows if we are being a good dad, he’s the important one!

Members and supportersFather and Child Dashboard Jan 2014

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