New South Wales fathers group

admin · New South Wales fathers group

-----Original Message-----
From: OConnor [mailto:bjoc52a@bigpond.net.au]
Sent: 31 January 2007 08:48
Subject: RE: Just for fathers

The Down Syndrome NSW website has just been relaunched after (and
during!) a major revision, and we too have included a page for fathers, after a very successful workshop for Dads only at our Families' Weekend in 2005, and speaking with the D.A.D.S. group that Linda Hall referred to in Vancouver. The page is not yet finished, but there are some links to recent press articles by dads that I discovered through this list, and I''ll get sme more photos up soon. We didn't know how the Dads Workshop would be received, but it was the hit of the weekend.

Home page: www.dsansw.org.au
Dads' page: [url]http://www.dsansw.org.au/index.php?pg=42 [/url]

I attended a workshop with Richard Fletcher who runs the Engaging Fathers program http://www.newcastle.edu.au/centre/fac/efp/index.html
at the University of Newcastle (NSW, not UK)about a year ago, and he pointed out that most of what is offered to "parents", is actually assumed to be for mothers, by those proding it, and the parents receiving it. He asked all of the agencies present (a wide spectrum of social services, not all to do with disability) to think about the foyers of our premises - were there images of fathers? What were they? Often posters about domestic violence etc, not at all welcoming to fathers. We didn't have those images, but we didn't have anything acknowledgeing the existence of fathers on our walls either. Now we have a selection of fabulous photos of dads and kids with DS from our calendar archives, and dads who call in do notice.

Jill
(Sydney)

AHMOO_HAJANI

thanks