About Both Parents Matter Cymru

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BPM is a Child’s Rights charity working under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The community we work with in our core business consists of non-resident parents and grandparents seeking to maintain a constructive and beneficial relationship with their children/grandchildren after parental separation. Parents who have recently separated, both resident and non-resident, face enormous practical and emotional problems. Our focus is on helping prevent these difficulties adversely affecting the children’s best interests, which generally means facilitating an ongoing meaningful relationship between both parents, and all grandparents, and the children. Non-resident parents need particular support because of the nature of their position. These are mostly, but not invariably, fathers. .

However, a parent is not best placed to play a positive role in their children’s lives if they are themselves in acute psychological distress. Non-resident parents face particular difficulties due to a dearth of provision. Non-resident parents are predominantly fathers – and men, it is generally assumed, do not require assistance. Our daily experience in BPM tells a very different story. After separation, fathers in particular often face a total collapse in social contact. 

Our core service provides two distinct types of support: assistance with practicalities and emotional support. In respect of the former, we emphasise the need for our service users to devise a clear plan and constructive proposals to put forward to the other parent, avoiding destructive confrontation. We also provide assistance in completing paperwork, which can be daunting for the uninitiated. This includes applications for Legal Aid, where appropriate. It also includes access to pro bono solicitors for an initial consultation.   

Our service users are typically experiencing severe social isolation at a time when they require support most. The other aspect of our service is therefore emotional support. As from summer 2019 we have been asking all our service users to complete standard psychology questionnaires to measure mental wellbeing and social/emotional loneliness. (We use the same measures as advised by the Welsh government). The results emphatically confirm what is readily apparently in our typical service user. 41% are severely lonely, compared to 5% in the general population. In terms of mental wellbeing, our service users clearly form a distinct statistical population from the general public, with a huge elevation in the poorest levels of wellbeing. 

BPM has carried out a number of surveys. In 2015, 2016 and 2017 we carried out the Welsh Dads’ Surveys, the latter with 419 respondents. Only 1-in-6 respondents said that they felt that the role of the father was valued equally with that of the mother, whilst 2/3rds of all respondents believed that their role wasn’t recognised or valued equally. Almost 80% of respondents identified that Government and Local Authorities needed to do more to engage them as parents. Many respondents reported feeling excluded and marginalised associated with separation difficulties. Society sends fathers a mixed message: demanding their greater involvement in child rearing, whilst denying them the means to achieve it. 

The other part of our service is to act as a specialist service provider to male victims of domestic abuse, which we carry out under a distinct name “Aegis”. This became a natural extension of our core business as nearly two-thirds of our service users are victims of domestic abuse. This service has been provided via weekly male DV drop-in centres in Neath and Swansea, started in the first half of 2019. However we also take male DV clients from our core business (monthly support meetings, helpline, and referrals). This has been funded in 2019/20 by NPT county council and the Big Lottery Awards For All, and we have recently won another Awards For All grant to continue the service in 2020/21.