“You are the first person who has ever wanted to know what actually happened, what I went through. No one has ever asked me before….no one has ever bothered with me – you are the first person that has ever sat down and asked me my story.”Quote from a man convicted of killing a baby, interviewed as part of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s review of non-accidental injury of infants by male caregivers, ‘The Myth of Invisible Men’
The UK’s Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s in-depth and hard-hitting report, The Myth of Invisible Men, published today (16 September 2021) shines a light on the rare but tragic phenomenon of fathers and father-figures who kill or injure babies (not by accident).
Dr Mark Osborn writes:
As our European safeguarding project begins to draw towards its close, the results from the different countries are being pulled together.
Jeremy Davies writes:
Two years ago the Fatherhood Institute published a global research review which identified and explored the evidence on parenting and other programmes’ promotion of father-involvement in the first eight years of children’s lives.
Removing a abusive father from a family, while often a positive and even essential first step, provides only a partial solution.
Writing in Every Child Journal, part of the Teaching Times group, Fatherhood Institute trustee Tim Linehan outlines the benefits (for children, fathers, mothers and wider society) of services’ engagement with fathers….and the potential dangers of their failure to do so.
Steps must be taken to address the failure of child protection services to work with fathers and other men around children.