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The UK's leading Shared Parenting charity
State support for paternity leave is £148.68 a week for two weeks. A gender 'pay gap' of 96%? The signal to dads is 'you are not valued'!
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FNF dads share their experience of domestic abuse as victims of abuse, coercive control, denial of parenting and false allegations
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Three experienced family separation professionals, including FNF patron Dr Hamish Cameron, make recommendations for reform.
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Advance Notice of Families Need Fathers Annual General Meeting and Conference - Saturday 14th September 2019
Trustees hereby notify members of the date for an Annual General Meeting in London’s Euston on Saturday 14th September 2019. Details of the venue will be confirmed separately with the formal announcement and agenda for the AGM.
The vital administrative business of the charity benefits us by ensuring that we have Trustees who are able to support the development of our work. We cordially invite as many members as possible to attend. The AGM itself is expected (to be confirmed) to take place at 3:30pm.
Seminars and Discussions
There will be an opportunity to discuss the future direction of FNF at this conference as well as practical guidance on family justice. We will provide further details of registration and event speakers separately.
Please reserve the day in your diaries.
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Child Maintenance Debate in Parliament 23rd July 2019
URGENT ACTION REQUIRED!
Deadline is Monday 22nd July at midday
There’s going to be a debate on the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) on Tuesday next week, 23rd July 2019 at 2:30pm, in Westminster Hall at the House of Commons. The debate will be led by Martyn Day, the Member of Parliament for Linlithgow and East Falkirk.
He wants to hear about your experiences of Child Maintenance on the House of Commons Facebook page or through a short private survey.
Sorry for the short notice. We did not have much ourselves - the survey need only take a minute or three.
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Government to Consult on Extending Paternity Leave
FNF lobbying is making a difference. Could properly funded Paternity Leave become a reality?
Yesterday the Government announced their intention to consult on extending paternity leave. It would be difficult to over-state the importance of this initiative. When other countries introduced policies that properly support paternity leave, this was the single biggest factor that began the process of shared parenting after family separation. We will keep you informed of details of this consultation as they become available.
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Spotlight on Child Protection in Family Courts
In our Newsletter of 31st May 2019 we informed you of the Government's announcement to have a review of how children and parents are protected in family courts. The issue was brought to a head by women's domestic violence organisations on the Victoria Derbyshire Show on 15th May 2019 and an independent review was supported by 123 MPs. The Government rejected an independent review, but announced on 21st May 2019 that it would have a review led by a panel of 'experts'. We contacted the man from the ministry...
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In the News and in Parliament
FNF Contribute to Article Growing Scientific Evidence for a Presumption of Shared Parenting in Law
Families Need Fathers get a mention by the journalist writing in support of a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting in The Times of Malta, having disussed with him our experience, and shared some of our research sources. In this wide-ranging and interesting article, he explores the substantial and growing scientific basis for the benefits of shared parenting and how current policies cause unnecessary harm to children's and public health. Plus several other articles.
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Harmful Gender Stereotyping in Advertising is Set to End
On 14th June 2019 new regulations by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) came into force. One example offered by the ASA is that under the new regulations is:
'An ad that depicts a man or a woman failing to achieve a task specifically because of their gender e.g. a man’s inability to change nappies; a woman’s inability to park a car.'
We think this is a positive step that will assist fathers in being seen as carers of their children and at the very least put an end to negative depictions.
How the biggest German supermarket, Edeka, got it wrong on Mother's Day - video will shock many
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Unicef Ranks UK as one of the Least Family-friendly Countries
The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) declared the UK as one of the least family-friendly countries in the developed world (OECD nations). Their key findings were released last week. Support for maternity leave is poor and for paternity at just £148.68 a week for two weeks is shameful. Their announcement states 'Paid paternity leave helps fathers bond with their babies, contributes to healthy infant and child development, lowers maternal depression and increases gender equality' and their report calls for 'national policies ensuring paid paternity leave and encouraging fathers to use it.'.
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Father's Day Message 2019
It’s Father’s Day again. A day to celebrate fatherhood, but a day too, on which many of us may not have the good fortune to be with our fathers or our children. One of the reasons for this may be that Parental Alienation (PA) has affected your life and relationships.
But you’ve probably heard the good news. PA has been recognised by the World Health Organisation at last. It's about time...
PA was first identified in the '70s and the debate has continued ever since. Some people, notably some latter-day feminist activists, continue to deny its very existence (Just for the record, we support egalitarian feminists, but we are less open to those who campaign in the name of equality for special treatment of women and girls). Others see PA as very widespread in separated families. Some, myself included, have even observed it in un-separated families.
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Review of how family courts protect children and parents in cases involving domestic abuse and serious offences
Families Need Fathers seeks to provide balance on the Victoria Derbyshire Show
A number of organisations have lobbied MPs to persuade them to back a campaign for an independent review of how family courts protect children and parents in cases involving domestic abuse and serious offences. The campaign's focus appears to be the suggestion that courts are making orders for 'contact at all costs', following the deaths of four children over the last four years or so who were killed by fathers on contact. The Victoria Derbyshire Show earlier this month in which we took part (this episode can be viewed here until 13th June 2019) was based on this premise, whilst ignoring incidents of children killed by mothers, including those on contact. It was also the basis of a letter from 123 MPs calling for an independent review.
Most of our service users will know that the suggestion of 'contact at all costs' is far from the truth and certainly not based on any evidence. Our experience tells us that is is precisely the opposite.
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Indirect Contact: On what basis do such orders promote the welfare of children?
We regularly hear from many dads and some mums about judges and Cafcass Family Court Advisers proposing indirect contact only with children after separation i.e. sending and receiving of letters, cards and gifts, without any parenting time at all. Often they express the view that this will consequently lead to direct contact developing. What, we ask, is the basis for such optimism? A survey we carried out suggests that there is no basis for this at all, with just one out of 154 respondents saying it led to direct contact. The May 2019 issue of legal journal Family Law Journal published an article by barrister Sarah Phillimore and Families Need Fathers exploring the issues further, sharing some of the detail of our survey results and calling for the Ministry of Justice to publish data on how often these orders are made by family courts and to commission research into their outcomes.
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Parental Alienation Recognised by World Health Organisation (WHO)
And Other PA Updates
Positive news - The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced on 25th May 2019 that they have accepted Parental Alienation within its classification of health conditions. It does not come into effect until 1st January 2022, presumably to give nation states and researchers time to catch-up. It is, however, an important marker that the effect on children of alienating behaviours is a major health problem that needs to be more widely recognised and addressed.
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FNF Action Results in Fundamental Re-interpretation of Family Court Data
Our Article 'Not 1 in 10' (but 38%) is Published in The Stowe Family Law Blog
Until recently the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) and others, periodically stated that just 10% of family separations resulted in court applications for Child Arrangements. A Government minister said the same thing just a few weeks ago, implying that is broadly ok as it is. Except that the information that they relied on for years was wrong. It was not a little wrong, it was a lot wrong.
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Parental Alienation Discussed on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour
Families Need Fathers are Mentioned
BBC's Woman's Hour on 26th April broadcast an excellent discussion portraying the grim reality of Parental Alienation following publication of a judgement (Re MFS (Appeal: Transfe r of Primary Care) [2019] EWHC 768 (Fam)) where a child whose primary care was reversed.
The programme also highlighted FNF's involvement on International Parental Alienation Awareness Day, following a march from the Royal Courts of Justice to Downing Street organised, we understand, by an alienated mother and supported by us.
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We speak to Men's Radio Station about all things FNF
Families Need Fathers were invited on 28th April 2019 to spend an hour or so talking to Russ Kane about all things FNF on their Sunday afternoon show. We wish Russ, James, Goldie well with this project.
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Indirect contact: on what basis do such orders promote the welfare of children?
Families Need Fathers
Sarah Phillimore, St John's Chambers Bristol
Article first published in the May 2019 issue of Family Law journal and reproduced here with acknowledgement and thanks.
Indirect contact: on what basis do such orders promote the welfare of children?
This article examines the evidential basis supporting orders for indirect contact to provide a mechanism whereby direct contact may at some point resume. The authors are concerned that this ‘wait and see’ strategy at best achieves nothing and at worst is actively harmful. They call for better research about the impact of indirect contact in cases of entrenched opposition, and greater willingness to consider psychological intervention at earlier stages.
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If you've not done it yet, please sign a petition to Make Parental Alienation a Criminal Offence
Each year thousands of children, who love both their parents, find themselves orphaned from one parent due to the poisonous behaviour of the other. Children are put under so much pressure to hate a parent that it becomes 'the real love that dare not speak its name' as Bob Geldof once said. It is devastating to target parents whose loving relationships end up slowly but surely being destroyed . It is simply child abuse and a form of coercive control, the effect of which is every bit as harmful as other forms of criminal abuse. This petition addresses this very comomn scourge and deserves everyone's support. Please SIGN THIS PETITION and share it.
Smash the 10,000 Signatures Target
10,000 signatures are needed for the government to have to take notice or at least acknowledge the petition. So please SIGN IT AND SHARE IT. If everyone who receives this email signs and then forwards it to other family members, friends and colleagues who then do so too, we will smash the 10,000 limit and make some progress.
To achieve our objective of ending this abuse we'll also need to keep up our future campaigns, so please encourage family and friends to REGISTER WITH US AT FNF AS WELL, FOR FREE. They'll be able to receive our Newsletters, progress reports and other updates.
Further Action
Please ask to meet your MP or write to them. Tell them of your experience of parental alienation, tell them how many people have signed the petition to outlaw it and how ineffective family courts currently are at dealing with it. Tell them that the World Health Organisation (WHO) is considering formal recognition of PA and that the recent research by Colorado State University identifies it as both child abuse and a form of intimate partner violence. Suggest that your MP contacts the relevant ministers at the Ministries of Justice and Health to get their response. Please feel free to share any responses you get with us at admin@fnf.org.uk (we will not publish identifying details without your permission).
Thank you!
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March Against Parental Alienation
25th April is International Parental Alienation Awareness Day
Many of you will already be aware from social media that a march on PA Day from the Royal Courts of Justice to Downing Street. It is an opportunity to make this terrible phenomenon more visible so that it can be properly addressed. The assembly point is outside the Royal Courts of Justice on The Strand between 11am and midday when the march will progress to Downing Street. We understand that speakers will include:
Andrew Bridgen MP, Neil McEvon Welsh Assembly Member and parents and representatives of parents who have been affected by parental alienation. There will also be music by singer/songwriter Mark Hegarty.
No doubt there will be FNF supporters there so please join them and make your presence felt.
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If you are using Amazon for purchases, please use their "Smile" programme and select us as the charity they will donate to.
Families Need Fathers has been awarded the Help and Support for Separated Families Kite Mark which is a new UK government accreditation scheme for organisations offering help to separated families.
Families Need Fathers work with a range of family law professionals, including Family Law Panel.
FNF are pleased to announce a partnership with MyDaddy who have built this excellent app for the significant proportion of fathers who are now newly sharing parenting after separation.
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