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Published: Friday, 12 May 2017 12:46

Here is a short video introducing Families Need Fathers to donors and supporters.

FNF has been going for over 40 years, helping parents to restore contact with their children and grandchildren when it is denied by an ex-partner.  In addition to helping parents, we work closely with many governmental and other agencies in order to draw attention to to improve the very poor state of the family justice system when it comes to difficult cases.

Every day we come across parents - mainly dads - who are refused contact with their children by angry ex-partners who want to punish them and exclude them from the lives of their children.  More than a million children in Britain are cruelly condemned to growing up today without a father in their life, too often at the mercy of angry mothers and of a system which actually encourages mothers to exclude them.

Dedicated to changing the above, FNF remains an essential part of Britain's landscape today and is a national charity with branches all round the country. Families Need Fathers needs everyone's support, not just for the dads, mums and grandparents we support, but also to make Britain a fairer and more balanced place in which to provide a future for our children.

Thank you for watching the video above and for any contribution you may like to make. Donations can be made directly through the button below or please contact us if you would like to support a particular project or campaign.

Thank you

Greg Downing
Chair and Managing Trustee - FNF

chair@fnf.org.uk

More on the issues:

CAFCASS, the "eyes and ears" of the courts, regularly ignore the alienating behaviours of some parents.  This often leads not just to denial of contact but also to open hostility by children who before separation dearly loved their dad. Even when contact is ordered by a court, it can easily be frustrated with impunity by mothers whilst attempts to secure enforcement of visitation rights granted by the courts, in 99% of cases do not result in an order for enforcement. This is a failure of the system which is not fit for purpose in these many difficult cases.

Parents regularly now claim to have suffered violence and abuse, not because they have, but rather because saying so can entitle them to Legal-Aid. The number of cases have sky-rocketed since 2014 when Legal-Aid was removed (LASPO) from all cases other than those involving (or claiming to involve) domestic violence or abuse.

Finally the DWP's Child Maintenance Service (CMS) continues the long tradition of poor performance and incompetence set by the CSA over many years - Absurd assessments are made forcing (usually) fathers to pay more than they earn or own, and forcing them live in poverty and resentment, unable to care for their children whilst their ex receives, in addition to any Child Maintenance, all the state child and other benefits and may not feel inclined to work. The old view of father-provider and mother-carer lives on in a supposedly gender-neutral country and the whole system rewards mothers financially and often otherwise for giving up work and for excluding the children's father. It is absurd that the mother's income doesn't even get taken into account in assessments of how two people who may be are ex-partners but are certainly not ex-parents should contribute.

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