P.S. Dads Rock: Championing, inspiring and supporting dads
Dads Rock was started in 2012 by two dads in Edinburgh who wanted more things to do with their kids. It began as a playgroup on the weekends but over the years, it grew, developing into a charity which now offers antenatal workshops, a variety of different groups and activities, young dads support work in Edinburgh and Glasgow and a new, one to one, online peer support programme for dads across Scotland within the perinatal period.
Supporting dads through pregnancy, birth and beyond
Dads can easily be forgotten or marginalized in pregnancy, birth and the early days of being a parent. Care generally tends to focus on the mother and baby and dads often don’t realise themselves that they may need support, let alone know what support is available or how to access it.
Dads Rock believes that social change is badly needed to recognise and understand that dads also need support.
Health professionals during pregnancy and after birth are very focused on Mum and Baby and rightly so, however, this often leads to Dads falling to the sideline and being forgotten about.
Because of this many Dads who would really benefit from support early on are missed and only reach services in a time of crisis. I think if services like Midwives and Health Visitors had more of a focus on Dads, that early intervention could be really important for them in realising that support is out there!
Reaching dads therefore can be a huge issue and it’s perhaps of no surprise that approx. 60% of Dads Rock Facebook followers are mums, and extremely valuable in helping dads access services. Dads Rock are working with their local health professionals to try to create a pathway, but much more needs to be done to recognise the mental health issues facing dads and ensure early support is available to all.
One to one peer support
In response to lack of support available during the pandemic, and the subsequent decline in dads’ mental health, Dads Rock started a project called ‘Dads Talk’ – a 1hr weekly session for dads to sign in and have a chat with other dads going through similar things.
This was the start of their new peer support programme and from there, they looked to get funding to create something more structured, with wider reach. In March 2022 they launched ‘P.S. Dads Rock’ which offers individualized one to one support from volunteers. The decision was taken to run this service via Zoom to allow them to offer support to dads regardless of geographical location.
Greg Borthwick from Dads Rock explains why support for dads should be different:
The issues facing dads are very different from what mums are facing. We’re all parents, we all have the same hopes and fears for our children but in a lot of cases mums and dads do have very different experiences of parenting.
Quite often though dads have to return to work very quickly, and don’t have that same time with their child to form connections or learn their child’s different cues and signals so struggle with that. I think that’s a huge thing for Dads, especially during the perinatal period, struggling with balancing work and family.
I think often if Mum is struggling Dads feel like they need to be supportive and are often very directly told that their main job is to support Mum! While that can be true, it often leads to Dads not being honest about their own struggles and mental health, not wanting to add any extra stress on to Mum!
Having a safe space with another dad to go and open up about those issues, without having to put the brunt of that onto Mum as well is quite important for Dads.
Greg Borthwick, Dads Rock
You can find out more about how Dads Rock help dads transition to parenthood via www.dadsrock.org.uk/family-stories