Working with Men : Progress Report 2000 : What we do

Working With Men's consultancy and research work has increased dramatically over the last three years. Below is a short resume of our major projects, both those completed within the last year and those currently in progress.

Research and Development Projects Recently Finished

Boys and Literacy
We continued our partnership with The Equality Learning Centre (with a grant from The National Year of Reading) on boys and reading.

Interviewing 52 four to fourteen-year-olds and 20 fathers, we concluded that:

• Gender plays an important part in boys' reading choices;
• as boys get older, they read less fiction but often increase their levels of non-fiction reading replacing books with magazines, computers and video materials;
• boys who develop difficulties reading in their early school years, too often cover up these problems with behaviour they know will distract teachers from the literacy problems;
• fathers' reading habits, and their role in their sons' reading (and school activities) can have a substantial impact on boys' ability to read, their level of interest and their reading choices.

See Reading for the Future: boys' & fathers views on reading. pp52, price £5.10.

The Fatherhood Project
The third and last stage of this project has now been finished. Curriculum materials to be used with young men and women have been developed and tested, and published in the form of a game, posters and pack to be used in schools and informal education services (see resources).

Young Men's Attitudes to Work
Funded by Joseph Rowntree Foundation, this project examined young men's experience of and attitudes to work and especially 'women's work'.

Conclusions included that:

• most of the young men said that they were poorly prepared at school for the workplace;
• careers advice, family involvement and even work experience was of limited value;
• they themselves had been reluctant to accept any advice given; all of the young men made a distinction between 'crap jobs' and 'career jobs' as occupying two different labour markets, and viewed 'crap jobs' as temporary and as primarily a source of money;
• the majority of young men made very few distinctions between jobs for men and women;
• while their views of domestic roles and responsibilities were marginally more traditional, this was still much less than expected; young men, while being very reluctant to listen to fathers, teachers and other adults, were able to listen to and accept criticism and advice from brothers and others they perceived as having experienced similar difficulties and indecisiveness;
• while most of the young men believed that the workplace was becoming less gendered, perceptions of masculinity impacted on their views of the male role, career decision-making, attitudes towards school and teachers, their help seeking behaviour and their career choices.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have published the report, and supported us to disseminate the findings to careers services and schools.

See Young Men, the Job Market and Gendered Work, pp40, price £11.60.

Research and Development Projects in Progress

Coram Parents Centre (CPC)
We have been working with CPC to involve more fathers in the Parents Centre. We have carried out a series of consultation meetings (with groups of fathers), written and presented a development strategy and are currently developing some of the proposed initiatives.

DIY Dads
We have recently secured a grant from the Home Office to develop a community approach to working with fathers in the Lewisham and Southwark area of South London. The first year will include the development of a strategy; setting up partnerships with schools and other services and raising public awareness of fathers. This is a three year project.

Suicide and Young Men
We have been commissioned by the Men's Health Forum (monies received from Pfizer Ltd) to write a briefing paper; lobby Government and write guidance notes for Public Health Departments on this important issue.

Signpost
We have been commissioned by Signpost Youth Advice, Information & Counselling Services in Wythenshawe, Manchester to carry out initial 'boyswork' training and evaluate their National Youth Agency funded project 'Working with Wythenshawe Young Men' project. This is a three year project which will start towards the end of the year.

Young Black Men's Advocacy Project
This project was internally funded to assess the feasibility of an advocacy project for young African-Caribbean men. We have carried out a series of discussions with over 100, 16-24 year-old young black men, within voluntary projects and schools.

The expected outcomes of this project include:

• to provide forums where young black men can articulate their experiences, needs and aspirations
• to increase our knowledge base about the issues and needs of young black men;
• to identify issues that can be taken up by and with young black men;
• to provide enough information to determine whether an advocacy project could address, target, reach and involve young black men. This project is expected to be finished in early 2000.

Young Men's Development Project Northern Ireland.
We have worked with Youth Action NI for a number of years (our publication 'Young Men Talking' came out of a previous partnership), and we continue to be external evaluators to their three year, young men's development project. We have recently completed an interim report, where the project worker has continued to develop pieces of work with boys from a number of Belfast Communities.

The second year has seen the development of work looking at health, violence, cross-community work and identity. The final evaluation will be carried out in the Summer of 2000.

Youth Clubs UK
We completed a second year of work acting as consultants to Youth Clubs UK's "Young Men Talking" initiative. This second year started with the launch of a video resource, based on interviews with participating project workers, aimed at workers new to boyswork.

The second phase saw four of the original projects continue developing a variety of initiatives focusing on young men's communication skills. A final dissemination phase will be completed in the autumn of 1999 aiming to create support networks for those interested in developing boyswork with an emphasis on communication.

A new project focusing in more depth on mental health issues is currently being negotiated.