Preventing cycles of harm and reducing future justice involvement starts at the perinatal and early years of a child’s life. Research shows positive outcomes when fathers are meaningfully included at this stage, but they are often left out of existing systems.
At the 4th National Justice Forum, Dads Group CEO Thomas Docking will lead a mini workshop to explore what’s working, what’s challenging, and what’s still missing when it comes to engaging fathers as a genuine prevention strategy. Ahead of the forum, we sat down with him for a deeper understanding of the topic at hand.
Tell us more about Dads Group. How did it start, and what do you stand for?
Ten years ago, my wife Kate and I went on our journey of preparing for parenthood. I was full of excitement and positivity, proactive and supportive on the outside, but I was quite scared and nervous on the inside. I felt alone and isolated, and I don’t know where, how or who to communicate my feelings with. There was a disconnect between how I genuinely felt inside and how I was behaving on the outside.
I realised that the health system didn’t have a space for fathers. I felt like if the health system taught me how to help my wife and child, then I would be better at doing my job. I went through a process of trying to unpack my job as a new dad, how I can do it well and where to go for support for them and myself. A lot of different things are going on for me, and I started catching up with other dads. That was where I felt I could ask questions and just listen or learn – the first dad’s group that I started.
There have been many other dads’ groups in history, and we started to research why dads’ groups aren’t a normalised thing. Over time, we realised none of those fathers stood up to advocate for those systemic needs and the required changes. We then established an organisation called Dads Group and built programs.
We realised that there’s a bigger systemic issue here: Fathers are not included in the pre-birthing and post-birthing space, family services space and all these different parenting areas. They’re tokenistically included as a plus one. And now, we have the evidence to demonstrate that fathers should be and can be included in a meaningful way in the perinatal period.
Our passion at Dads Group is to change the health system by demonstrating ways to translate research into practice. We support new families in a simple, tangible way for mums and dads to connect and go on a journey together, both from a health pathway support process and a peer group support process.
Where are the biggest systemic gaps that make it hard for fathers to engage in the perinatal period? How might these gaps influence outcomes for children and families?
When you go into the hospital for the health service after you found out you might be having a baby, and then you do perinatal classes to learn about your role as a new mum or dad, that’s often the first place where you realise there isn’t something specifically for fathers. There’s a physiological education around the female birthing, but there isn’t an emotional preparation in a way that engages both parents well. What we noticed is that the systems have unintentionally left out fathers.
We believe that a significant amount of the terrible community and family tragedies – such as domestic and family violence, mental health and suicide, and poor child development outcomes – can be prevented through systematically engaging and supporting fathers. If we do engage them well, we’re likely to reduce the negative, tragic family outcomes in those perinatal periods.
The system doesn’t need to shift focus from women to men largely; it just needs to include fathers meaningfully. That might only be 5%, but it’s an important 5%. In the programs we run in a few hospitals across Australia, they are moving towards that model of care. We call it the Integrated Model of Care because we’ve integrated fathers and father figures into the family support or child caring space for those dads’ groups or play groups that traditionally have 80% to 90% mother attendance.
Also, almost 10 years ago, my wife and I kicked off an event called Man With A Pram. It’s a positive, strength-based public campaign to engage fathers, father figures, grandfathers, mothers, grandmothers, maternal child health nurses and health clinicians to walk together on Father’s Day to celebrate and highlight perinatal support for fathers.
Our goal is to shift the community approach towards parenting to a father-inclusive one. Rather than leaving mothers with the whole mental load of parenting and suggesting that fathers should go back to work immediately, we’re suggesting connecting them in a dialogue to ask questions such as “What do we want to do? How does our family look for us? How do we want to drive that to keep the best possible outcomes?”
Supporting mothers gives fantastic outcomes for infant bonding and development, as well as maternal development and support. Equally, supporting fathers does the same for fathers. However, there’s no support for fathers from a systemic perspective yet. If we leave fathers out of the picture, we miss an opportunity to support mothers and infants better.
We’re demonstrating that if we can equip and empower mothers and fathers to have discussions around roles, capabilities and support, then both can help each other and their infant. They will also be aware of what kind of support they may need individually, as help-seeking behaviour is low among parents and even lower among fathers. Most of the time, things get way out of hand before we go and ask for help.
If we have a health and community support approach that includes fathers, we can give resources and tools along the way to help them have joy and pride in their capability to support their families.
What does trauma-informed, culturally safe co-design with fathers look like? What lessons can we borrow from other prevention spaces?
Essentially, we’re looking at the father, mother and infant’s journey with a lens that highlights each one of the specific things in their lives related to the birth or pre-birth. If we don’t acknowledge that, we’ll start to wonder why behaviours related to that trauma happen. Trauma-informed co-design involves deeply understanding the lived experiences and narratives of the people we support, while also reflecting on our own role, power and relationship to trauma. It focuses on creating safe, empowering and collaborative processes that avoid re-traumatisation and elevate lived-experience leadership.
We’ve held over one thousand activities, events and workshops with different fathers and mothers who shared their birthing journey. We’ve often heard this narrative around a father finding the birth experience traumatic, while the mother’s birth experience was normal. Sometimes, we’ve had a mother who had a traumatic experience, and it hadn’t been so for the father. That means two people can have different experiences at the same event. Also, vicarious trauma can happen when you see someone go through the trauma.
We’ve seen fathers who’ve had a vicarious traumatic experience because they’ve seen their partners go through a complex birthing process. Hypothetically, mothers are the ones who go through the birth experience, and sometimes they’ve processed it during the journey. Whereas we hear that often, fathers haven’t processed it yet, or don’t understand that there is something to process at all. This can hold them back from growing, relationally (with mother and or child), so it often needs to be addressed, shared, developed and sometimes healed from. We need to highlight that there’s a level of normality to that and a process to walk through that with others who have walked that journey.
And we’ve heard many stories of fathers who have sought help, walked through that journey and healed through it so that their relationship with their partner and infant has become a lot closer, richer and fuller. For us, trauma-informed co-design is a very real experience in the fatherhood space, and we believe that it empowers other fathers to be the best version of themselves.
Culturally safe co-design, for me, is about recognising the people and cultures we’re working with and making sure they feel genuinely respected, understood and welcomed. It’s not just about matching backgrounds, but about creating a space where someone can say, “These people actually get me.”
And there is a culture around fatherhood. When a dad or a grandfather with lived experience steps into that space, it signals to other fathers that this is a place where their role, struggles and identity are taken seriously. It helps them feel seen and not like an afterthought.
At the same time, the connection a midwife builds with mums and dads is incredibly powerful. That’s why, for us, co-designing these spaces with midwives is essential. They bring deep clinical insight and a natural trust with families; we bring the father’s voice and lived experience. When those two come together, the support for new parents becomes warmer, more real and more effective.
And there’s something uniquely impactful about having a father figure speak with fathers. In those moments, we focus on cultural safety in a practical way — how to make the environment feel normalised, validating and free of judgement. We want dads to feel that whatever questions, worries or traumas they carry, they can be voiced here, and they’ll be listened to.
That’s the kind of space we’re trying to build: one where both parents feel understood, respected and supported from the very beginning.
What we can learn from other prevention spaces is to work out and define what prevention is. From our perspective, this program is for all fathers and mothers and father figures and mother figures. It’s not just for a particular cohort of dads who have challenges. There are tools and resources to help ourselves and others, our partners and infants, in a timely way when help is required.
There are many prevention programs that go before us in different sectors, and we need to highlight that prevention is not identified or working in a space where an acute situation or tragedy has already happened. It’s coming right back upstream and building capacity for parents and health workers at a time when we can still learn, and our cognitive neural pathways are moving in the right direction around accepting advice for how to do wellbeing to support the family throughout the perinatal journey.
How does early father engagement help shift some of the drivers of risky behaviour we see later in adolescence and the justice system?
We look at the window of opportunity for engagement around risky behaviour being larger during our transitions in life – relationship changes, birth, death and marriage. In the birthing space, there’s often a positive window of opportunity to connect with fathers. Early engagement in that space, before the baby comes, can help shift risky behaviours afterwards, because those behaviours are so often linked to stress, overwhelm and not coping.
If we’re able to normalise those challenging life transition circumstances, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Without that sense of light or support, risky behaviours – such as self-medication through alcohol or drugs – become more likely. In our work, fathers realise that some of the parenting challenges are expected, such as a baby crying. There is a threshold of what’s normal, and if we can help them understand what’s not normal, it encourages early help-seeking when their child’s not well.
And then, looking at their partner and themselves, it’s the same question — what’s typical stress and what might be a sign that more support is needed? Early conversations make it easier to get help for themselves or their partners during those times. It’s about early engagement so that you can prevent some of these challenging behaviours later.
When it comes to the risky behaviours we see later in adolescence and even in the justice system, it comes back to the environments we build in the early years. If you build an environment of safety, care and concern around the little minds and hearts of children in their early years, the likelihood of them moving into high-risk behaviours and elements that get them closer to the justice system becomes less. That’s well evidenced by many researchers, and our work is about translating that research into practical, supportive environments for families and better, safer foundations for children to grow.
We don’t need perfect environments; we need reasonably good environments, with parents trying hard to be the best they can be in those early years. And that’s what we need our health system to support with – not by expecting perfect parents or pushing every issue to specialists, but by owning its part in helping parents navigate challenges early and confidently, and knowing when expert help is needed.
What opportunities could we create, across sectors, to test and grow these prevention pathways?
The cross-sectoral opportunities lie within the models of care around the perinatal period and the early years sector. Look at the models of care for mothers, families and children. It’s about integrating those models of care, hence the reason we called our program the Dads Group Integrated Models of Care.
We have these silos of care working together across sectors so that we can build opportunities where fathers, mothers and young people are likely to fall through the gaps, and together we can build barriers at the tops of the various cliffs. If we co-design ways in each sector that will create barriers to avoid families falling off, then we have these huge opportunities to create prevention pathways.
Opportunities to connect with our national health and family services leaders, Health Minister Mark Butler and Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Minister Ged Kearney, reflect the beginning of meaningful change for fathers and families in Australia. These leaders are beginning to lean in to growing evidence that systematic father inclusion is part of the solution to a better, healthier generation of families – both in the perinatal period and early years, which are critical foundational years for the next generation of Australia’s young people.
What should people look forward to in your session?
We’re not providing answers; we’re exploring an unexplored opportunity. If we look at unexplored areas, we are more likely to find something with a high chance of impact. What do I mean by that? By doing what we’ve always done, we’re likely to get what we’ve always got.
In spaces such as domestic and family violence, mental health and suicide, and child development, the outcomes are not great. We need to start innovating and doing things better. And with innovation comes the questions, “What aren’t we doing, and what have we not looked at? What’s a major part of the puzzle that’s sitting there or hiding in plain sight that we haven’t engaged with?”
In the health sector and the perinatal period, fathers are unengaged by the health system. If we engage fathers even in a small area, we’ll already see the positive impacts of that. Thus, engaging fathers is the highest untouched opportunity in providing better family wellbeing if we do it well.
We’re here not to tell you the solutions but to highlight the obvious. No model of care includes fathers in this space. And there is a higher likelihood that children who have absent or abusive fathers will be in the justice system. We need to start looking at the longitudinal data and ask what we can do better 25 years earlier. And that’s what we’re looking for.
Thomas Docking invites participants to co-reflect, co-design and imagine how father-inclusive approaches in the perinatal period could contribute to safer families and communities. Register for Justice Forum now.
Geraldine is currently the Content Producer for Third Sector, an Akolade channel. Throughout her career, she has written for various industries and international audiences. Her love for writing extends beyond the corporate world, as she also works as a volunteer writer at her local church. Aside from writing, she is also fond of joining fun runs and watching musicals.
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