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Do you think investigations into institutional child abuse are handled fairly? Are former staff in children's homes accused of crimes they did not commit?

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Last week's Have your say discussion was about the role of fathers. We asked should fathers be given more say in decisions made about their families when social services are involved? Are fathers treated as second class citizens?

These are the responses we received:

"It was interesting to read your article ( click here to read the article from 4 April edition of Community Care) in relation to the role of fathers and how they are engaged by social services, as a professional I would agree that social services are slow to realise the positive impact that fathers can have in the lives of their children. Often they are involved in a superficial way or completely ignored, this I feel is reflected in the lack of services that are specifically aimed at men in relation to their role as fathers, and would agree that the current provision that is provided in family centres is aimed primarily at mothers.

This I feel, however, is not just an attitude that is held by qualified staff, my own experience of supervising a student recently suggests that research, such as that referred to in your article, is not being passed on in the colleges thereby perpetuating the myth that fathers are not important or valued when it comes to the care of children.

It is also clear that the legal system does discriminate in favour of mothers when it comes to issues of contact and residence, more significantly for the social work profession however, is the fact that the court will often base its decision on the recommendation of social workers who complete welfare reports."

John McCosker

"Families need fathers at www.fnf.org.uk is a good organisation for getting advice on child contact."

Adrian Scott

"Yes, fathers are treated as second class citizens, in most areas of decision-making.

Ideally of course both parents will be together throughout a child's development. If that's not possible, then the parents will co-operate fully with each other, sharing access and responsibility, including decision making, to the maximum effect, for the benefit of themselves, and the children.

It appears that because the mother carried the baby within her body, that subjugates the father to 2nd place. In today's society, fathers are just as capable to take care of children, and love them, as is a mother. Wake up England! Just because a mother carried the baby doesn't make her a better parent.

In married relationships, when there is a battle over custody during divorce, the mother most often gets custody, and then proceeds to use the children as a weapon. she does this by disrupting access (by simply making other arrangements for the children, such as enrolling them into clubs, by taking them away on trips, or worst of all, moving home far away). When this happens, not much is done about it. I think when the mother is disruptive in that way, custody should be transferred to the father.

In unmarried relationships, the father comes second. Simply put, if the mother decides not to co-operate with any arrangements made as far as access for the father to the children is concerned, there's not much done about it.

I think when the mother is disruptive in that way, custody should be transferred to the father. The law needs to be evened out massively.

Daughters are routinely placed with mothers. Sons are routinely placed with mothers (but occasionally with the father). There is no evidence to suggest that a daughter who is placed with her father is penalised in any way - developmentally or psychologically. There is an old saying, "A daughter needs a mothers influence." Ideally, yes, but as far as it being 'necessary', no. The sex of the parent should not be an issue at all.

As a side issue, men in general are already prejudiced by societies ingrained belief that they are the only persons who sexually abuse children. Ok, so they are the majority abusers, but the fact is that current 'knowledge' strongly suggest that perhaps 25 to 30 per cent of abusers are women (but they are not often reported by the abused, etc, etc). But society is not informed of that. So parents in general warn their children to beware of 'strange men', but not 'strange women'. They actually encourage their child to run to a woman if they are worried.

Rather they would better protect their children by discussing with them 'strange behaviour' by men AND women.

It's about time schools, and other organisations, brought parents and children up to date."

David (single, no children - yet)

Youth worker and child protection awareness trainer

"Fathers are definitely ignored more than mothers. Foster fathers are also often excluded from discussion about foster children by a largely female SSD workforce. Even SSD paperwork frequently omits to advise that there is a male

foster carer referring only to the female carer. Children benefit from having appropriate male role models. Irresponsible fathers exist, and ignoring responsible ones fails to help adjust the importance men have in child care."

Anonymous

"I think fathers should be included in decisions made about their children. I believe that often they are not engaged by social workers because of the difficulties of out-of-hours visiting. Consulting fathers is often a problem because of the perceived vulnerability of female workers working with male parents where the male parent may have a history of violence. This problem could be met by providing office premises out of working hours where chaperonage or support could be offered by other staff. This is not an option in most areas."

Lydia Savage

"Yes, fathers should have more say. Agencies don't appear to be very good at collaborating with families, especially with dads. Just because dads appear difficult to engage doesn't mean that dads aren't interested - it's more likely that they're more likely to be on the receiving end of a whole lot of gender insensitive intervention.

They just need to be asked (like mums and kids) about what they want from us."

David Steare

"Yes, fathers are ignored as carers a lot of the time resulting in children being removed when they should not be."

Anonymous

"Yes, but only if they are willing to be involved with their family and take responsibility and make informed decisions. Absent fathers should not be involved in decisions made about their families only to pass judgements on ex-partners and their children and extended families."

Anonymous

"Yes, I think that fathers are often treated as second class citizens and disregarded especially if they do not have parental responsibility. If a father is regularly involved in the care/life of his child then even if he does not have responsibility he should be involved in all aspects of social services work with the family and his views sought and listened to.

If educated articulate families such as that are blissfully unaware of responsibility why is it expected that the vulnerable needy clients that we work with would have any idea of the concept of responsibility, and the consequences of not having/acquiring it.,

Too often males are excluded and not made part of the process of our intervention with their children. Unfortunately sometimes even if the father does have responsibility then he is still not fully included in the processes as much as he has the right to be.

I am afraid that in the majority of the cases social workers appear to have a 'blind spot' where fathers are concerned and only work with the mothers and their families.

Obviously if the father has no contact with the child then consideration has to be given to involving him in the process, but I do think that enquiries should be made with him as to why he has no contact. If social services are involved they are maybe contemplating removing the child from the mother, then the father or his family could well want to be assessed as carers or to be involved. Too often the father and his family are not just 'written off' because he does not have responsibility, and is not actively involved. He has the right to be told and to make an informed decision as to whether he does now want to be involved. Obviously it all depends on the circumstances, each case has to be considered, but too often no consideration is even given by the social worker involved.

As you can see it is an area I feel quite strongly about. Men are often criticised for their lack of involvement in the care of their children. Is that because they have been effectively excluded?

Thanks for the opportunity to have my say."

Lyn Newberry