Rolling Up The Sleeves
1999 Wellington Father's Forum
..and getting to work. At the Social Policy Forum, delegates and speakers were prepared to dive into the issues and sort the myths from the facts.
'Time to get into the issues', thought Paul Callister and Stuart Birks when they set out to bring some high-quality speakers on family policies, Family Law and issues affecting fathers in society together to educate an audience of leaders in law, community work, social work and child welfare about fatherhood. The result was a conference, densely packed with information and differing opinions, the first of this kind in New Zealand. Where previous events have focussed predominantly to attract the media and educate the public, this one was focussed more on quality than media appeal.
Both, Paul Callister and Stuart Birks, have been in the game for several years. Paul is an independent economic and social researcher, one of very few researchers in this country with a focus on fatherhood. His work includes a paper on fathers as primary caregivers and several papers on changing family arrangements in changing economic conditions. Stuart is the head of Massey University's Centre for Public Policy Evaluation, and well known for his work on the father's perspective on family law and legal practice, and gender policy in general.
The event got off to an uneasy start when Social Services Minister Roger Sowry in his opening address told the audience how he made his wife get up to his baby's crying after a few nights, because he couldn't be bothered anymore. "How can you open an event like this with a story like that?" a member of the audience commented to me.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the section about "Fathers and the Law" attracted the most discussion. Judge June Johnston, filling in for Family Court judge Pat Mahoney, had people shuffling their bottoms on their seats, when most of her speech was devoted to summarising American David Blankenhorn's book "Fatherless America" without any comment. Having been given only short term notice she was obviously unsure about the task at hand. "You're probably asking yourself what I'm doing here", she said when she finished the part about Blankenhorn. “So do I”. She believed that "most of you won't come to any different conclusions than the Family Court" on disputed custody cases.
"She couldn't have demonstrated the Family Court's ignorance for fathers issues any better". commented one disgruntled member of the audience.
During the discussion, Christchurch "Caring Fathers" group facilitator Don Rowlands got up, pointing out the "crisis in access enforcement" to her. Johnston replied the Family Court was aware of this problem, but was reluctant to make Access Orders automatically enforceable, because of abuse issues.
Another member of the audience put a human face to the problem, when he told his own story of false accusations and denial of access, which prevented him from seeing his children for five full years..
Stuart Birks pointed out that the Family Court is trapped in the narrow concept of “primary caregivers”. The Court undervalued the contribution of everyone else, and did not recognise that children’s needs change over time - which means that custody/access arrangements have to change with it.
The crowd thinned significantly towards the end, but co-organiser Stuart Birks was pleased how things worked out: “Indications both at and following on from the forum are that there is the goodwill and capability for many beneficial developments. It was particularly pleasing to see the common ground shared by many diverse groups, and the general interest in promoting the overall health of our society to the benefit of all, especially children.”