U Too Dads

Watch the CSJ short film shown in London (including a couple of extracts from the Dads Matter Too DVD)

We won!!

Jackie's beaten me to it! U-Too Dads have done it again - so congratulations to everyone who has made this possible - particularly to those of you who insisted on making Dads Matter Too, to all eleven of you who took part, and to Jackie who filmed us and put it together so well.

The Awards evening was even more nerve wracking than we anticipated because we were the very last group to be announced as Award winners. Marcus gave a short, but memorable, speech outlining the impact that he feels that U-Too has had on his life. A considerable number of people came up to him afterwards to say how moved they had been by what he said.


1 Are we going to get an Award? 2 Tamsin Greig hands it over ... 3 Marcus telling 'em like it is

4 Mike trying to do the same ... 5 Later with Simon and Tamsin ... 6 Max is proud of his dad

Steven and Chris, the latest U-Too dad-to-be, in Swindon, and Chris in Calne with the trophy

Well Done!!

Well done! Fantastic news from the CSJ awards:

'This year’s award attracted nearly 400 nominations from across the country, with 13 projects shortlisted by a panel of independent judges.

The seven winners, announced on the night were: Nelson Trust, Working Rite, Blue Sky, Chance UK, Young Disciples, U Too, and SOS Gangs Project at the St Giles Trust.'

http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/default.asp?pageRef=37

and photos at:

http://www.johncairnsphotography.co.uk/CSJ_Awards_09/large-46.html

blog visitors

Thought it's time for an update on the blog's visitors...
according to google analytics, which I registered the blog with a couple of months after it was started, and which is quite a strict 'countng' system:
1 122 different individual people have visited the blog. The average time spent on the blog is 2:39 mins. and the average is 2.02 page views - not bad considering there's upto 20 posts on each page. People from 53 differnt countries have come onto the blog!
The longest active visit recorded was someone in Jan08 who spent over 32 minutes on the blog. Just this month alone (June 09) 138 individual people have visited the blog, looking at 306 pages, and spending over 2 minutes on average.

How everyone looks now

1 2 3
1 Mark and the long-suffering Nickolas
2 Lisa and Den with a very happy Max
3 Chris with a less-than-cheerful McKenzie
4 5 6
4 Brett and April with Kailum and Harvey
5 Pat (after a hard day's work!) with Tash and Harvey
6 Congratulations to Josh and Terri on the arrival of Alexia
7 8 9
7 Dan, Zuzu and Henley-Jai
8 Tash and Lee with Leo sleeping off his feed
9 Anthony and Chelsey with Leila
101112
10 Marcus and Charlotte with Harley
11 Ben and Georgia with Joshua James
12 Aurora and Will with Connor, another new arrival
13
13 At home with Stuart, Leia and Jess
I thought it's about time we posted some up-to-date photos of everyone so you can see how gorgeous you all are. So here are the ones I've taken so far. One or two more still to come

Young Mums To Be

Although this blog is focussed on U-Too's work with young dads-to-be, this work would not have started without the foundation of our work with young mums-to-be. The quality of this has always been of a very high standard and this is reflected in a recent External Verifier's report on behalf of the NCFE:

"... learners ... continue to praise and value the support they receive from U-Too and the opportunities now open to them. U-Too has, over the years, developed very effective teaching and additional assessment resources and demonstrated their commitment to their continuing professional development and best practice."

So this an opportunity to acknowledge the work of Carolyn and Gail over the last six years, as well as that of our current team of tutors, Alison, Jayne, Lesley, Sue and Zoe.

Centre for Social Justice filming

Our CSJ contact, Juliette, arranged for a cameraman to visit us again so Murray, and his sidekick, Toby, came to Wiltshire on Tuesday. The idea was to put together a 'story' about U-Too that will be shown at the Awards Ceremony on 1st July. So here's Murray at Bridge House in Trowbridge making life interesting for members of the Young Mums To Be course, Rebekah, Roxanne and Lynda, together with tutor Jayne.


When that ordeal was over Murray and Toby went over to the Rachel Fowler Centre in Melksham so that they could film Will and Aurora, who were interviewed by Juliette. This was a bit special because both Aurora and Juliette are 'expecting', Aurora next week and Juliette in 5 weeks' time, so they had plenty to talk about.



Having finished filming on Tuesday, Murray and Toby were back again yesterday to film Den and Lisa at their place in Swindon. This proved a bit of a challenge as Max had decided views about his willingness to be an actor. All this effort was for a 90 second (very) short and I'd like to thank all the interviewees and Jayne for their patience in dealing with Murray's needs.

Primary Care '09

I was asked to speak to a scarily large number of people, mainly midwives, at this conference at the NEC yesterday. I asked Jackie to put together a short DVD using clips from Dads Matter Too. So the audience of 800 (!!) saw Chris, Karl, Brett, Marcus and Lisa talking about the experiences they'd had at the hands of the maternity services. As this was mainly about how they felt excluded, this was challenging material for the audience, but several people came up to me afterwards to say how much they'd appreciated the presentation.

Centre for Social Justice

Juliette left three invitations for us to attend the Awards evening in London on 1st July. The CSJ expect the boss to attend, so that's Carolyn; a worker, that's me; and a dad. Which is a bit of a problem. How to decide who should go? But having talked it over with Den, Mark, Brett, Steven, Chris and Chris, everyone agreed that Marcus should have first option because he was unable to attend the Prince's Trust Celebrate Success evening back in November. He's had to check that he can get time off work and told me yesterday that he can. So that's the team that will be going.

It would be fantastic if we turned out to be one of the Award winners as we would use the money to rewrite the young dads-to-be course with the help of an accrediting body like ASDAN. This would mean that organisations using it might have a better chance of drawing down funds to run it. But looking at the other shortlisted groups on the CSJ website, we're up against strong opposition so we must be realistic about our chances of winning. Being on the shortlist itself is a great achievement.

Fatherhood Institute

A major case study of U-Too has been written up and can be found at

http://www.fatherhoodinstitute.org/index.php?id=13&cID=910

More good news

U-Too is on a short list of 13 organisations out of 335 that applied for an award from the Centre for Social Justice. This feels like a major achievement and we can all feel really proud. Juliette Ash from the CSJ came to Swindon last week to check us out. She met several of the young mums-to-be who had just completed their YMTB course in Swindon, together with Lesley Hogg, their tutor. Brett and April came into the Link Centre office, together with Harvey and Kailum, and then Mike took Juliette off to see Den, Lisa and Max over at Pembroke Park. The young parents talked about their experience of U-Too's courses and were photographed and filmed by John, who came with Juliette. Three of us have been invited the Awards ceremony in London on 1st July, when the 6 winners of the 2009 Awards will be announced. Details of the other short-listed organisations can be found at:

http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/default.asp?pageRef=296

London Conference

The conference took place at the Voluntary Sector Resource Centre in Holloway, London last Wednesday. Its title was Supporting Young Fathers: more promising practice and over 80 people attended. I gave a quick run through about U-Too and its development and then we ran a couple of workshops. We split ourselves into three sets of presenters: Lee and Pat, Mark and Lisa, and myself. We split the workshop participants into three, and each spent 20 minutes with each group during the hour-long workshop. One of the participants has since emailed me and asked me to "Please pass on my regards to the team, they were excellent in providing an insight into the life of a young father and how they have/are benefiting from the work that you do."

Lee was supposed to represent young fathers-to-be but Tash gave birth to Leo three weeks early!

Jeremy Davies from the Fatherhood Institute was at the conference and introduced the FI's resource pack, Invisible Fathers: Working with young dads. Not only does it contain our DVD but also lots of photos of U-Too dads with their children. We're a bit chuffed. He has given us a complimentary copy but I'm hoping to persuade him to let us have enough copies to give to each of the dads whose photos appear in the pack.

Two new arrivals

Congratulations to Anthony and Chelsey on the birth of Leila and to Paddy and Tash on the birth of Harley. Both mothers and babies are doing well, and both fathers look pretty good to!

More from the Arts

There's more in the arts about Dads Matter Too this month.

Jackie was interviewed as a case study for ENYAN's e-newsletter and website this month.
So of course Dads Matter Too was one of the 'interesting projects' to talk about!

ENYAN is the 'English National Youth Arts Network' and the site has lots of useful info on youth arts projects, events & advice. You have to login to access the site - but it's free to use.

https://www.enyan.co.uk/article/show/7054

London Conference

Because there's been a good take-up of places at the conference, the TSA has asked us to run a workshop as well as give a presentation. Mark has agreed to join the team so there'll now be 5 of us travelling up to London a fortnight tomorrow. Just got to find a place to stay!