About this course
This course will help clinicians and professionals working with parents and babies in the perinatal period to include fathers in their work. It will cover why supporting fathers in this period is important - for them, their partners and their babies, the barriers to engaging fathers in services and the barriers that fathers experience in accessing services, and what we as professionals can do to be father-inclusive in our practice.

We will use learnings from Mind the Dad, an online service set up for fathers with children under the age of 2 at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families. This service provides a combination of psychoeducational and therapeutic services, including 1:1, dyadic and group work. Participants will be taken through how to engage fathers, what works well in assessments and what we have learnt from providing services to fathers experiencing mental health difficulties and/or difficulties in the parent-infant relationship.
This course will be of particular interest for professionals working in Community and Specialist Perinatal Mental Health teams, who are working towards the NHS Long Term Plan of involving and supporting the partners of mothers accessing specialist perinatal mental health services.
- Who is this course suitable for?
This course is suitable for clinicians (counsellors, doctors, nurses, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers), mental health and health professionals (midwives, health visitors, IAPT practitioners, mental health practitioners), researchers and students.
It is particularly relevant for community and specialist perinatal mental health teams.
- Aims of course
- Raising awareness about the importance of paternal mental health in the perinatal period, for the father, the partner and the baby.
- Providing guidance to professionals in the perinatal field on how to work with fathers effectively and accessibly.
- Training perinatal mental health services to engage and support fathers, to meet the objectives of NHS Long Term Plan.
- System requirements for online training
The online platform Zoom will be used to deliver this training. Prior to booking on, please ensure you meet the system requirements so you're able to join this training.
Before the training, please test your equipment is working by going to Zoom.us/test and follow the instructions.
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