Engaging Aboriginal fathers – challenges

A colleague, Craig Hammond – the coordinator of Indigenous Programs at the Family Action Centre, and I are running a workshop on engaging Aboriginal fathers next week for a group in Canberra. I thought it was a good opportunity to discuss some focus groups Craig and I held with 19 family and community workers a while ago about engaging Aboriginal fathers.

We held two focus groups in Raymond Terrace and one in each of Lake Macquarie and the Upper Hunter: some participants came to more than one focus group. Nine of the participants (47%) worked with families, four (21%) had a community development focus, four (21%) came from Schools as Community Centres, one (5%) worked for a children service and one (5%) was a support worker at a public school. Four participants (21%) identified as being Aboriginal and six (32%) were male.

In the focus groups we explored the challenges they faced in trying to engage Aboriginal fathers and some of the strategies they found that worked. The focus groups were transcribed and we undertook broad thematic analysis. The research was approved by the University’s Human Research Ethics Committee, including providing the participants with the option of using their real name or a pseudonym. Most participants elected to use their real name.

In the following discussion of some of the challenges the participants are extensively quoted. Tomorrow I’ll focus on the strategies they thought worked.

Challenges in engaging Aboriginal fathers

There was a strong sense, that for at least some of the participants, trying to engage Aboriginal fathers could be frustrating, challenging or plain hard work.

Trent: Yes, it got really, really frustrating. You put all that work in. Especially with this [project] – and I went and saw the boys [who hadn't showed up at an event] and said, “You make it look so silly, you let yourselves down really.” I sort of put it all back on them. And then after that the group sort of kicked off again and we just let it go for a while and then it just dies off.

Jennifer: Whereas for the women, you can send them to a playgroup or set up even a coffee and chat group and they will just come, just to catch up with the other mums and talk about the kids. But with the dads, it’s more just that energy required in continually having something, or the materials or the resources so they’ve got things to keep them going.

Creating and maintaining momentum

A common challenge was creating or maintaining the momentum.

Craig: I found that word of mouth was the best way of doing this, however, 12 people say, “Yes” but only one will turn up.

Aaron: At [name of location], I told them that I’ve got all these ideas and I wished to put forward to everybody and they’re saying, “Oh yes, we’ll be there, we’ll do it, just tell us when.” Then when the word gets around, they don’t move. Had to go around and knock on his door and chase him up and drag them out of the house [chuckle].

Some of the participants felt that fathers were inclined to leave contact until a problem had reached a crisis. At times this meant that the problem had escalated to the extent that services were limited in the support they could provide and the fathers were unsatisfied with the response, making further engagement less likely. There was also the potential that by the time the worker could make contact, the crisis had passed and the father no longer wanted assistance.

Craig: I don’t know whether it’s me or men in general, but I think the problem we have in this building is that people don’t access it until the problem has escalated, which makes it difficult to deal with and maybe the misperception of not assisting men comes from a backup once they come here. You know, there’s legal processes in place, lost their house, lost the kids, it’s so huge. And so we then say, “Well this is what we can do” and that’s just not enough right there and then…. I think the problem is that men don’t do anything until it gets to some sort of a pressure crisis point.

Bruce: By the time I’d got in touch with them and was able to make a time, things had quietened down, or they’d avoided whatever possibility had hung over their head like gaol, or whatever. So it was very difficult to even just start and get that first meeting going.

Liam: There’s a lot of safety nets there to catch females, especially when it comes to families, like through the hospital systems, through all those different types of things and the fathers are sort of left out. So they deal with the things and it’s not until they start to crack that someone notices and they push them in our direction, rather than someone noticing prior to them actually cracking.

FaHCSIA (2009, p. 19) suggests there are “window periods” where men are more likely to seek assistance and that if men “experience high levels of frustration and are unable to access services” they are likely to “give up trying and find other solutions to deal their problems.” These solutions may include strategies such as ignoring the problem or aggression and may not necessarily contribute to long term solutions.

Quite often focus group participants found that they would establish an effective group for a while and then numbers dwindled off. Attendance could be spasmodic or decrease for a range of reasons – many of which were external to the program.

Dane: I started a men’s group at the end of last year called ‘Kinnecting Fathers’ at our school. It went real well last year – had about 15-18 people there, but this year because of all of the kids that are moving on to high school and a couple of families moving away, we got down to about six, seven people.

At times workers expressed some frustration that some of the fathers (and mothers) showed little commitment.

It’s what’s happening today rather than instead of going, ok it’s happening next Wednesday, I’ll go to this group because I said I will, but next Wednesday, “Oh, no, no, no, the car’s got to go in for a service”, or whatever……. There’s always a reason why they can’t make it. You think, well they’re not working; they’ve got five days a week.

At one stage I was getting on a bus and going up to [location] to pick blokes up and come back to [location]. Sometimes you’d get there and – a lot didn’t work and didn’t do anything. This is what I couldn’t understand, if you weren’t doing anything or going anywhere, well gee, it’s a day out, go and get a feed, have a bit of a yarn with a couple of blokes and come back, you know. But sometimes you’d go and pick them up and sometimes one bloke would give us a bit of a yarn, you know, “Mary died last week” and then you’d go to the next one and he’d be, “Is he going?” “No, he’s not going.” “Oh, well, I won’t worry about going.” And it just rolled on.

At other times, there was a sense that numbers had dropped off because the fathers or their children had moved on (e.g., gone to school, or got jobs).

Jennifer: Yes. I think it’s just life too, with a lot of people. With the playgroup for instance when we first started, none of the dads were working…. Then a lot of the dads moved on and got work.

This challenge has been found in other programs (FaHCSIA, 2009). For example in a Koori fathering program out of 29 participants only 10 (34%) attended more than half the sessions (Newell, et al., 2006). The Hey, Dad! trial with Indigenous dads, (Beatty & Doran, 2007) was successful in some areas in recruiting fathers and struggled in other areas. Despite “considerable effort” (p. 10) to promote the workshops in Cessnock, and transport being offered, only two participants (one non-Aboriginal) attended the first night, one of whom attended the second night, and none attended the third night. In other places they were more successful in attracting and retaining workshop participants. Some of the factors organisers believed contributed to recruiting Aboriginal fathers included:

• Employing men, preferably Aboriginal men, as facilitators
• Ensuring the program was relevant to Aboriginal men
• Providing incentives to attend
• Using word of mouth and existing networks
• Having existing relationships (Beatty & Doran, 2007).

FaHCSIA (2009) suggests that low numbers of referrals and participants at the commencement of a project is common in all community programs, but when it occurs in male focussed programme “it is easily interpreted as an indicator of male disinterest” (p. 19).

Working with Aboriginal men in correctional centres has been another way in which the problem of engagement has been addressed with some success (Beatty & Doran, 2007; Stuart & Hammond, 2006).

Lack of male workers

Most of the focus group participants were female and/or non-Aboriginal, and this was clearly a challenge for some of them.

Gina: I just think maybe because I’m female and I’m not Indigenous. I just think that was just – already that’s something there. You’ve got to just keep trying to say ‘hello’ to people and just try and build up a relationship with them and just take it to the next step – but I just find that quite difficult.

Particularly when there were sole female workers, there was a sense that there was need for a male presence.

Whitney: I think the thing that’s lacking is just that male presence. Just thinking of the three meetings that we’ve got set up. We don’t even have men on the planning side of things, so that’s – we could start there….
Trent: It starts from there doesn’t it, so there’s no men involved in that meeting or in that group, you’re not going to get men to —
Whitney: Exactly.

Alison: I think it comes back to the intimidation factor. If we run a group it’s mainly all women that show up.

Ros: Sometimes I have problems with the young men, because I’m not a man. I don’t know what a young boy thinks like; what’s happening when they’re going through their emotions, when they approach us at playgroup.

The lack of a male presence was linked with the lack of men in family and children services, and a perception that these services were mainly for women.

Trent: I’ve got to admit, it starts at meetings up there, I’ve been to plenty of meetings and I’m the only bloke there – I just freak out and say, “I’ve got to go.” [laughter] And you get up and go.
Jennifer: And you’re a worker!
Trent: That’s it and you shouldn’t, but yes you do. As you can get more men involved in that sort of thing and you can get men from the community involved as well…. If there’s no men in those meetings to start with, well you’re not going to get the men to attend.

Liam: One of the Aboriginal men I work with at the moment, he came to me he said, “I thought you only looked after women. I didn’t think you looked after men.” And he only came to me because I think he wasn’t sure, I think Ros may have spoken to him…. But one of the first things he said to me was, “I didn’t realise you looked after men. I only knew that you looked after women.”

Interestingly given the prominence of mining in the Hunter Valley, in two of the focus groups there was discussion about how the mining industry could lure men away from employment in the community sector.

Liam: And it’s what they say, if you moved up here and you’re married, you’ve got a wife and two kids and a house that’s $400,000 and then someone offered you a job in the mines paying $140,000 do you go for the $140,000 or do you go for your $40,000 job here? So with that type of thing, you do, you leave.

Not being an Aboriginal man

While it was not discussed to the same extent as being male, some of the workers discussed the challenge of not being Aboriginal. As one women suggested “it’s ideal if you’re Black and hairy”.

Gina: Not only the man thing, but is also Aboriginal culture and hopefully you’re doing the right thing, so I think it’s those two challenges together and that’s why it’s just so difficult.

Part of the challenge was in knowing the best way to respond to Aboriginal culture. At times there was a problem being outside the culture and receiving conflicting advice from different people.

Jennifer: And I was very much told [by a female Aboriginal worker], “That’s men’s business. No. Don’t go there.” Ok. But then, when I was talking with Bourkie about it, he said, “No. Go and talk to them.”

One way in which Jennifer attempted to address this issue way by the use of Aboriginal trainees, but the loss of culture was still a challenge.

Jennifer: We found those challenges; we had Indigenous trainees with one of our playgroups at one stage and the aim of those trainees was to bring the Aboriginal perspective to the playgroup and cultural activities. What we found was many of those kids [the trainees] didn’t even have a good sense of their own culture and identity – How can you impart that information and knowledge?

Lack of time

A major constraint was the lack of time to build ongoing relationships. A male participant who worked with a variety of other services, found that funding agreements requiring a certain number of clients meant that he didn’t have the time to build and maintain relationships with quite marginalised fathers. Others spoke about the time required to become accepted, particularly when they were not part of the Aboriginal community.

Bruce: And time, it takes a long time. My work over in WA for example, it took 18 months nearly, to actually start talking to blokes. So we’d only just started conversations – or men were only just starting to look for me for conversations.

Jennifer: Is it that time factor – you’ve got to allow that time. I know even when I set up the Aboriginal playgroup that we have, which is still running four years later, but that first six months, – I’m glad I felt really comfortable in myself because you’d ask, you’d get a one-word answer and it wasn’t until a good six months into it you might start to get some real interactions happening with people. But it just takes time. And fair enough, people are guarded.

Sue: Basically the new experience I’ve had and I’ve worked in the field now since ’93 and I don’t believe there is a great deal of difference; maybe a little bit more hesitancy to engage, because they’re not sure of how they’re going to be treated.

From

Hammond, C., & Stuart, G. (2010). Kia Kia: Engaging Aboriginal Fathers Final Report. Newcastle: Family Action Centre, University of Newcastle.

References

Beatty, D., & Doran, A. (2007). Evaluation report: Hey, Dad! Program for Indigenous dads, uncles and pops. Sydney: UnitingCare Burnside and Centacare. Available from www.aifs.gov.au/afrc/docs/heydadeval.pdf.

FaHCSIA (2009). Introduction to working with men and family relationship guide. Canberra: Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.Available from http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/SA/FAMILIES/PUBS/Pages/default.aspx.

Newell, S., Franks, A., Lloyd, D., Telgord, G., & Binge, C. (2006). Koori fathering program: Pilot phase evaluation report. Lismore: Health Promotion Unit, North Coast Area Health Service.

Stuart, G., & Hammond, C. (2006). Brothers Inside: Reflections on fathering workshops with Indigenous prisoners. Newcastle: Family Action Centre, University of Newcastle. Available from http://www.newcastle.edu.au/Resources/ Research%20Centres/Family%20Action%20Centre/reports/Brothers_Inside_report.pdf.