Dadly Does It: supporting positive fatherhood to improve child and family well-being

Salford-based social enterprise Unlimited Potential (external website) is challenging the way services work with families, placing fatherhood at the heart of children’s well-being. With support from the Foundational Economy Innovation Fund, it is now working to embed this approach across Greater Manchester and reshape support systems for lasting change.

In areas where families face greater social and economic pressures, children and young people can face some of the toughest starts in life. Despite the efforts of professionals across health, education and social care, many still struggle to grow up happy, healthy and secure.

Unlimited Potential, a Salford-based social enterprise, believes that’s partly because services don’t fully recognise or involve one of the most important influences in a child’s life: their dad.

“Most dads love their children and want the best for them, but fathers are often seen as a risk or simply left out of the conversations, decisions and support that shape their children’s lives,” says Chief Executive, Chris Dabbs.

A decade of work with fathers

The organisation’s Dadly Does It initiative has been operating across Greater Manchester for more than ten years. Based at the Salford Innovation Forum, Chris and his team work with fathers, their families and professionals in children’s services to explore new ways of promoting positive fatherhood.

Many of the men it supports face a complex mix of challenges, including poverty, low educational attainment, childhood trauma, unemployment and contact with the criminal justice system. These issues can contribute to poor mental health, isolation and a lack of confidence in their role as parents.

Dadly Does It helps fathers to reconnect with their role and purpose as parents. It supports fathers to work together, share experiences and build confidence – an approach described as ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ working. The project brings dads into group settings and informal peer networks, where they can talk openly, reflect on their experiences, and explore what positive fatherhood looks like in real life. By building trust and creating a safe environment, the initiative helps men develop new perspectives, coping strategies and confidence in their parenting.

“Wanting to be a good dad is a strong motivator for men to change,” explains Chris. “But the way children’s and family services are currently set up often fails to recognise the positive role that dads can play. Our work aims to show what’s possible when they do.”

One father who took part in the project said: “They put me in direct contact with other fathers who had been through their own struggles, some of which were similar to mine. I found that actually talking about and sharing lived experiences helped me to bring some clarity to my life. When you are at rock bottom it’s hard to see any hope. But talking to someone who has also been at rock bottom can help change your perspective. This can benefit you more than talking to a professional, where there is not that type of connection or understanding.”

Impact on individuals and families

Participants describe increased confidence and self-esteem, enabling them to grow as fathers and as men, becoming better role models for their children. This leads to more positive engagement with their children, which in turn further increases their confidence in their parenting ability and skills. This increased confidence often opens up new opportunities in volunteering, education and employment.

The support also has a ripple effect. As fathers regain a sense of purpose, the benefits are felt not just by them but across the whole family. Mothers and ex-partners say parenting responsibilities are more equally shared, giving them more time to relax or develop their own lives and interests. Children not only spend more time with their fathers, but also experience better quality relationships, leading to greater trust, improved behaviour and stronger family dynamics.

The initiative also works to embed positive fatherhood into the wider system, promoting a team-based approach to parenting and encouraging frontline staff, such as health visitors, social workers and early years practitioners, to work with both parents equally, rather than defaulting to mothers as the primary caregiver.

Innovation funding to scale learning

Support from the Foundational Economy Innovation Fund has enabled Unlimited Potential to spread its learning and influence how services work with fathers, helping other professionals and local systems adopt the Dadly Does It approach.

The organisation received £50,000 from the Foundational Economy Innovation Fund, including £38,088 to develop a new e-learning course on Working with Dads. Designed for professionals who work with children, young people and families, the course explores how dads can be a positive asset in their children’s lives, and helps build understanding of how to effectively engage fathers as part of family support.

This funding allowed Unlimited Potential to package its insights and methods into a scalable format, supporting wider uptake of the approach across Greater Manchester. An additional £9,648 from an external source was also secured to enhance the offer.

Work is underway to align the course with broader regional programmes such as GoodLives GM (external website), which supports community-led innovation across the foundational economy.

Looking ahead

Unlimited Potential aims to expand the reach of Dadly Does It across the city-region and beyond, its priorities including:

• Promoting balanced working with both parents as a team around the child
• Embedding positive fatherhood in staff learning and development
• Supporting dads to work together through peer networks
• Reshaping services so they are equally accessible and appropriate for both mothers and fathers

“Fundamentally, this is a project about getting the best outcomes for children,” adds Chris. “The health, well-being and life opportunities for kids living in low-wealth, low-income neighbourhoods are much worse than those of children in wealthier communities. The biggest untapped resource we have to counteract this is fathers. And, essentially, they come for free.”

By demonstrating the positive impact of engaged fatherhood and providing tools that help professionals support it, Dadly Does It is making life better for children and families, and helping to ease future pressure on services.

Visit the Dadly Does It website (external website) for more information.