Good Practice: How improving the behaviour of dads makes families feel safer

PROJECT

Caring Dads: Safer Children

FUNDING

It costs £14,100 for a 17-week group programme for six to 10 fathers

BACKGROUND

Witnessing domestic abuse can have a huge impact on the wellbeing of children. This is one of the key messages brought home to fathers who embark on the NSPCC's Caring Dads: Safer Children programme. "Caring Dads is not a perpetrator or a parenting programme, but a programme for men to look at their behaviour and how living with domestic violence affects children," explains Karen Gillard, team manager at the NSPCC's Cardiff service centre, which has run the programme since October 2010.

ACTION

The programme aims to use men's role as a father to motivate them to change their behaviour and reduce the risk of them further harming their children. "The way we look at it is that men always have an emotional attachment to their children, whereas they may not have that attachment to their partner," says Gillard. To be eligible, fathers must have some kind of contact with their children and "must acknowledge they need to change", she explains.