Sign our open letter

Dear Mr Streeting,

 

We are writing to congratulate you on your historic decision to develop a Men's Health Strategy - and to ask you to 'look out for dads' as part of this.

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Most men become fathers at least once in their lifetime. But fatherhood remains largely unexplored by our health services: a huge lost opportunity to improve engagement with men.

 

Fathers are less likely than mothers, and less likely than men generally, to visit their GP regularly – and no-one invites them to do so, even though there’s clear evidence that their health impacts on children’s, and on mothers’.

 

The transition to fatherhood can be a ‘golden moment’ for engaging with men. They are, at this point, at their most ‘available’ to services: at least 90% of expectant fathers accompany their partner to antenatal appointments and attend the birth. But maternity services view fathers more as visitors than patients, so the opportunity to engage men in health support is too often lost: a point highlighted in former Health Committee Chair Steve Brine MP’s May 2024 letter (page 4) to your predecessor.

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Involved fatherhood is a hugely significant force for good in society, and we should be providing proactive support for men's journeys into caregiving. When men become fathers, they undergo physical and emotional changes that can bring huge benefits for them, their loved ones, and the wider community - but there are challenges too. 

 

In a recent survey by Men’s Health magazine, 56% of dads reported feeling overwhelmed in the first year of fatherhood, 37% felt isolated from their family and friends, and 22% experienced depression. More widely, evidence suggests that as many as 10% of new fathers in the UK experience poor mental health during the perinatal period (through pregnancy and up to a year after birth).

 

There is powerful evidence that fathers’ health – both physical and mental – has significant impacts on their children’s and partners’ health outcomes through pregnancy and beyond. Expectant dads’ smoking is known to affect mothers’ smoking, as well as directly impacting the unborn child for example. Shockingly, despite this, no efforts are currently made to challenge or help fathers quit.

 

We could be doing so much better for families, by building dads into our health systems. Our ‘Looking out for dad’ campaign calls for three key changes:

 

• An NHS health-check for all fathers - delivered by GP practices and promoted to new dads by maternity services. This would cover key issues like overweight/ obesity, smoking and substance use, as well as mental health.

 

• A high quality, nationally mandated guide for all new dads, containing evidence-based information to help them understand their roles and responsibilities (including parental responsibility and birth registration, for example), do the best job they can as a hands-on father and access help if they need it.

 

• Training for NHS professionals to ensure they value fathers and ‘see’ men’s fatherhood, and pilots of new approaches to data gathering, so dads’ details are routinely recorded and matched to their children’s, to support ongoing father-engagement.

 

We would be very happy to talk further about these ideas at your earliest convenience.

 

Yours sincerely,

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Kathy Jones, Chief Executive

Fatherhood Institute