Monday 7 March 2011

"Preparation for Fatherhood" course

Carolyn and I met with Chris Latham this morning. Chris is Development Manager for the Open College Network's south-western region (OCNSWR). We worked out what we need to do next to try to get the course accredited. The following discussion of the issues involved appears on page 4 of the CSJ's response to Frank Field's report.

Coming alongside young fathers-to-be

There are few programmes to help young fathers-to-be, although Graham Allen made the point that ‘Health and early years services need to do more to ensure that expectant mother and fathers are offered high-quality community-based preparation for parenthood that includes learning about the needs of babies during pregnancy and early life and how to make the successful transition to parenthood.’


U-Too, a 2010 CSJ poverty-fighting Award winner runs such programmes to help young fathers-to-be. It used the Award money to fund a rewrite of their course so that it could gain accreditation and be made available to other agencies that would then be eligible for funding. Although they completed the rewrite using National Open College Network’s Progression Units, the current restructuring of acceptable qualifications might mean that the Units used are no longer available. If this is the case, they will fail to receive accreditation. Smaller organisations who are trying to establish the validity of a programme and have designed it according to recognised tenets, may still struggle to obtain the necessary accreditation for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with programme effectiveness.


The complete CSJ response can be found at:

http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/client/downloads/2011182_CSJresponse_childpovertyconsultation.pdf