News
FIRA Policy Team Shares Knowledge
Friday Aug 22, 2008
Recent work by FIRA’s Policy Reference Group exemplified FIRA’s commitment to disseminate its knowledge to the policymakers, teachers and human service professionals who can use it to improve policies and programs — where the “rubber hits the road,” so to speak.
Donna Lero, Lynda Ashbourne and Denise Whitehead, co-authored FIRA’s Inventory of Policies and Policy Areas Affecting Father Involvement, which was Canada’s first comprehensive analysis of government, workplace, social and family policies and programs through the lens of father involvement. The Inventory is a compilation of articles which analyze policies and policy/program gaps affecting and related to father involvement in 16 different areas: everything from paternity determination and income support to taxation, community support and child care. It also reports on issues affecting FIRA’s seven research clusters: fathers of children with special needs, gay fathers, immigrant fathers, indigenous fathers, new fathers, separated and divorced fathers and young fathers.
Earlier this year the Policy Reference Group took steps to ensure that their findings made their way to the people who can use them to effect societal change.
In March they disseminated hard copies of the Policy Inventory along with a cover letter highlighting relevant findings and executive summary as follows:
• All Canadian Post Secondary institutions teaching social policy/family-related policy courses received copies of the entire report. Already the team has had feedback from some institutions saying that the Inventory will be a useful teaching tool.
• All Canadian School Boards, Hospital and Public Health Units, were sent selected sections of the policy inventory which were most relevant to their work. For example, hospitals and health units received the sections about new fathers and fathers of children with special needs.
Donna Lero and Lynda Ashbourne also chaired two roundtables with federal and provincial officials where they presented their findings and facilitated discussion of policy influences on father involvement. The federal roundtable, held in Ottawa, included representatives from Statistics Canada, the Department of Justice, Human Resources and Social Development Canada, Citizenship and Immigration, Health Canada, the Canadian Policy Research Network and , the Vanier Institute of the Family.
The provincial roundtable, held in Toronto, included representatives from the Ontario Ministries of Community and Social Services, Health Promotion and Child &Youth Services.
At the roundtables Lero and Ashbourne presented key findings from the policy inventory, and also offered specific ideas and facilitated discussion about the merits of explicitly considering father involvement in the ongoing policy and program work of federal and provincial officials. “What is exciting about this, from a knowledge mobilization perspective, is that it puts academic research or the results of our deliberations and discussions directly in the hands of the people who teach and develop policy, and who work at the actual interface of policy and human-services,” says Ashbourne. “We also received valuable feedback about the kinds of information policymakers need to incorporate fathers more explicitly into social policy and the best ways to present that information. This will inform our future knowledge dissemination efforts.”
The full report, Inventory of Policies and Policy Areas Affecting Father Involvement, can be accessed via the FIRA home page.
To access our menu of individual sections of the Inventory in our About Father Involvement section click here.
