Nursery World - Work matters: Management focus

Early years services have some work to do on reaching out to fathers who are interested in being involved, says Karen Faux.

Younger fathers are in the vanguard of change when it comes to making early years services more user-friendly for men, according to the Fatherhood Institute's recent ICM survey.

'The fact that a younger generation of dads are more involved with services, yet less happy with the way services treat them, doesn't mean they are necessarily getting worse,' says the Institute's research manager, Adrienne Burgess. 'It means that their expectations are changing.'

Ms Burgess points to studies made by the Pen Green Centre that highlight the extent to which mothers and fathers are often treated differently.

'It videoed staff greeting mums and dads at different times of the day and it was clear from this that they assumed the fathers were rushing off and were too busy to engage,' she says. 'Fathers typically do the morning drop-off and it is often assumed that they have to rush off to work - although this is not necessarily the case. Simple practical strategies can help to bring fathers properly into the nursery, such as moving coat hooks away from the entrance and adjusting opening times.'

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