Father-inclusion in Best Start Family Hubs: our new network
- jdavies008
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
Best Start Family Hubs – 1,000 of which are set to be created across England by 2028 – represent a powerful opportunity for local authorities to finally and fully embed father-inclusive practice at the heart of family support.
But there’s also a sense of déjà vu about the Family Hubs policy agenda.
For 26 years, the Fatherhood Institute has walked the road from Sure Start, through Children’s Centres, and now into the era of Family Hubs.
When we first stepped into training rooms and onto conference stages two decades ago, blank faces, raised eyebrows, and shrugged shoulders were par for the course.
Today, it’s rare for us to encounter a practitioner who’d openly argue with the idea that fathers matter. That they make a difference. That they might be worth engaging with.
And yet…father inclusion in Best Start Family Hubs, as a universal principle, still feels like a distant dream.
Why? Because the systems around families remain resolutely mother-centric.
Systemic exclusion
Men’s exclusion from support for active caregiving starts from before conception:
We train our girls – and not our boys - as caregivers, from early childhood.
Contraception and fertility services are female focused.
Antenatal services kick in for expectant mothers but not for expectant fathers.
Postnatal services are designed to engage new mothers and babies, but not for new fathers.
Our parental leave system supports mothers to shoulder the caregiving responsibility, and pushes fathers to be breadwinners.
And so it continues - through early years education, the school system, NHS adult and children’s services, social care.
The 'mother default' is the sea we swim in, the air we breathe.
Messages from the top
The Government purports to know that things need to change.
The Prime Minister himself has said he recognises that dads need a better deal on paternity and parental leave.
But there’s still no commitment to the all-important detail on that: just a parental leave review, due to report later this year.
In his Men’s Health Strategy for England, Wes Streeting acknowledged that “services may not feel welcoming to fathers”, despite fatherhood being a “critical transition point” in men’s lives.
That’s quite a big thing to admit. Because fathers aren’t a tiny minority group. They’re half of all parents.
But to address a system failure on that scale needs more than warm words.
And while the strategy did a pretty decent job of setting out the evidence for more father-inclusive services, it announced no specific changes to policy, legislation or funding to support greater father-inclusion.
It simply promised support for dads through Family Hubs.
Postcode lottery
Now we know there is excellent father-inclusion work happening in Family Hubs across the country. Innovative, committed, inspiring practice - much of it work we have been proud to be part of.
Watch our recent webinar for some examples from Durham, Halton and Peterborough.
But despite our best efforts, there’s still a postcode lottery, where the support a father and family receives still depends too heavily on where they live, not what they need.
Where commissioning bodies can ignore or fudge the need for father-inclusive service design.
Where mainstream data systems marginalise fathers and block service improvement.
Where professional workforces aren’t consistently trained to understand the need for father-inclusive approaches, or given the opportunity to build their skills.
Where we’re too reliant on hand-to-mouth voluntary sector provision, and well-meaning interventions that sideline dads as optional extra.
Where fathers still get framed as ‘hard to reach’, rather than fundamental.
It’s 2026 and we should be doing better.
We share the frustration of many in the Family Hubs sector that the Government guidance on Family Hubs is not as strong, detailed or focused on father-inclusion as it should be.
But we also know that policy documents come and go.
Building inclusion from the bottom
Over 26 years, we’ve trained thousands of practitioners and we talk to commissioners every day.
And we take heart from the fact that since we’ve been in this game, there have been huge shifts in awareness, behaviour and aspiration.
Hundreds of our Champions are out there striving for system change, not one-off tweaks.
Family Hubs have huge potential to bring positive change – to turn intention into consistency, and commitment into standard practice.
They offer an opportunity to get it right. To ensure that fathers and their families – wherever they are, whatever their circumstances – receive gold-standard, father-inclusive support. Not as an experiment, an add-on or an afterthought. But as a core expectation of how we work with families.
That's why we're creating a new Fatherhood Institute Family Hubs Network to acknowledge, amplify and extend good practice in father-inclusive service development.
Our new Family Hubs Network
The network will be a closed group to Family Hub commissioners and practitioners to keep in touch, share best practice, ask for help, and be part of a movement pushing to bring father-inclusive services to as many dads and their families as possible.
We’ll hold ‘show and tell’ webinars open to network members - helping Family Hubs move from knowing fathers matter, to acting like they do - everywhere, every time.
The question isn’t whether we should be father-inclusive. It’s whether we will be brave enough, consistent enough, and ambitious enough to make father-inclusion normal.
To expect it. Invest in it. Measure it. Require it.
Let’s make Family Hubs the point where we get this right.
Sign up to join the network here.
Find out more about Fatherhood Institute training options here.
