Research - Treoir

Establishing meaningful relationships between children and fathers who do not live together: Challenges and solutions: executive summary

Fathers’ involvement in children’s lives has been proven to provide many benefits for the children, the father, and the mother. Yet, in Ireland, we know that the role of fathers can often be marginal for various reasons. This is why Treoir undertook to research the key barriers and drivers of successful relationships between children and their non-resident fathers.

We partnered with Women’s Aid, the Men’s Development Network, Daughters of Charity Child and Family Service, Doras Buí, From Lads to Dads, SPARK, and One Family, to attempt to uncover barriers to fathers’ participation in parenting.

This report covers the barriers and drivers of successful relationships between children and non-resident fathers, the analysis of the legal and policy issues that impact these relationships such as guardianship, maintenance, access and custody, social welfare, the impact of the relationship between the mother and father, socio-economic barriers, and the impact of domestic abuse on children.

The recommendations of this report provide a number of sensible, sensitive, and practical approaches to moving forward, including mapping services available to families, fathers’ support programmes, early intervention programmes for families where the parents do not live together, domestic abuse screening and risk assessments, supported access and child contact centres, and a collaborative working pilot with mediation services.

The report and executive summary will be launched by Senator Eileen Flynn on the 17th of October 2023 in the EPIC Museum.

Establishing Meaningful Relationships between Children and Fathers Who Do Not Live Together: Challenges and Solutions: Full Report

This is why Treoir undertook to research the key barriers and drivers of successful relationships between children and their non-resident fathers.

The report and executive summary will be launched by Senator Eileen Flynn on the 17th of October 2023 in the EPIC Museum.

State of the World Fathers Final Report

The State of the World’s Fathers Ireland report is to be launched by the Men’s Development Network and Treoir at a public event in the EPIC Centre Dublin on Friday 16^th of June at 10 AM. This research is part of a larger, global project entitled ‘State of the World’s Fathers’ which has run every 2 years since 2015. This is the first time Irish data has been included. Globally this round of the survey was answered by 12,511 people in 17 countries.

The research has found that caring for children brought joy to parents with 84% of men and 81% of women saying that caring for their children is the most important thing they had done in their lives.

Over two-thirds of men and three-quarters of women surveyed said would give up career opportunities to care for children while 69% of men and 78% of women stated that they would be prepared to work part-time to care for their children.

The research has also found that Men are taking their care and household responsibilities seriously with 82% stating that they share caring responsibilities equally and 86% stating that they feel as responsible for care work as their partners.

Despite this, men still lag behind women on hours spent and on average women spend one hour and 18 minutes more per day on unpaid care and domestic work than men do.

CEO of Treoir Damien Peelo also welcomed the collaboration between The Men’s Development Network and Treoir saying ‘We are delighted to work together on what is a timely contribution to forthcoming discussions on a constitutional referendum on Article 41.2. For both organisations this work confirms what we encounter on a daily basis, that many fathers want to be active in caring for their children, that they want to take time out from their careers or work part time and be considered as “a go to” person if their child needs a parent during the working day’.

Family Law – the case for reform and a review of cohabitation legislation by Helen Coughlan

The current family law system is broken and failing the most vulnerable in our society. This failure is two-fold: there are chronic delays in accessing the courts and the facilities in the actual buildings are Dickensian and not fit for purpose. While we have excellent legislation – a Rolls Royce standard – there is a severe lack of resources to give effect to and implement these laws.

The Family and Child Law Committee of the Law Society has examined the current system and made a number of recommendations to Government, the latest of which involved written and oral submissions to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice and Equality in February of this year.