NORTHUMBERLAND'S family hub model has been praised for the way it caters to fathers in the county.

The family hubs were designed to replace Sure Start Children’s Centres. Instead of only providing support for families with children aged up to five however, family hubs offer support until children are aged 19, or 25 for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Northumberland County Council is one of 75 local authorities rolling out the family hub model, and one of just 15 to have “trailblazer” status, providing money to go “further and faster”.

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Currently, there are 11 purpose-built family hubs across the county as well as seven outreach points.

Speaking at Thursday’s meeting (May 16) of the council’s family and children’s services overview and scrutiny committee, service manager Marie Roberts outlined the support available to dads.

She said: “We’re really focused on engaging dads, remembering we have dads around who for whatever reason may have limited access to come and support their children. They may have work commitments, they may feel that family hubs aren’t for them, it’s more of a mum’s offer – but we’re really making sure that we have somewhere to go for dads.

“They can come and get support, we have dad’s groups and we have the Dad’s App so fathers can log into this and get support tailored around male carers. To celebrate that we did have a Dad’s Matters Summit in February which was really well attended.

“We had a whole range of different people representing different groups to talk about the importance of engaging carers who are male.”

Councillor Eve Chicken revealed that a resident of her ward had benefitted from the support offered. The Seghill councillor was full of praise for the Dad’s App in particular.

She said: “I recently came across a lot of the programmes you have for fathers because I had a resident who is a much older single father. We tend to concentrate on young parents who are doing it on their own or are in strange circumstances, but we don’t often look at fathers and we don’t often look at older parents as well.

“This new app that has been designed, the Dad’s App, is fantastic – absolutely fantastic. For him, he wanted something he could access at all hours of the day and that he didn’t necessarily have to go anywhere because of his circumstances.

“I went through it with him and the look on his face was priceless, that this was there, he could access it at two o’clock in the morning. I was really impressed with the amount of work that has gone into including fathers.”