"I feel like I've won the lottery," proclaims Dawn Primarolo, the new minister for children, young people and families.

Read: Dawn Primarolo, minister for children, young people and families: Born optimist takes on the children's agenda.

"...That means working with mum before she has the child..." Ms Primarolo seems to have fallen into the trap of thinking in terms of mums and children insteaad of mums and dads. Lets hope this change of minister is not a backward step from all the good work Beverley Hughes undertook to ensure dads are included in service provision.

I have not seen any mention of the word "father" or "dad" or "mother's new partner" or "marriage" so far, making the language reminiscent of that of social services child protection practitioners, serious case reviews and DSCF administrators.

Very good points David and Roy. I am very pleased that our local children's centre offers a Saturdad's session once a month. We often have 7 or so regular dads, and some grandads too. If only there were more on offer. Once again I had to miss a school sports day as there was only a week's notice. When I do go to other children centre activities with my youngest, I do get some very funny looks from the other mothers. It would be nice to see a greater emphasis on families including the roles of men.

Interesting - I've written about my experience of dads outreach here, although the blogs are going a bit mad at the moment and half seem to be inaccessible, so I may be talking to thin air as usual.

I think the big problem we have is the institutionalised hours in a non institutionalised world. That's why I am so pleased with the Saturdads initiative. Even though the ethos is on giving mum a break, it means Dad's can also get involved with playing together and joining in the local community. I must admit, our sessions are maybe a little more testostrone filled than typical, with themes being trucks, dinosaurs, space, emergency services etc. (though my fav was the session we ran on the festivals of winter last December). It has been good. And certainly, it has given me a group of other fathers to talk to that are not colleagues or clients. And my eldest loves it because we allow siblings too (he has been going to the centre since he was a baby and is upset he missed out on what his sister is up to when he is at school!).

I really wish more organisations would engage fathers, and make parenting equal. We talk about the world being mysogynistic, however when it comes to parenting, it feels like the inverse (though I felt that way when I started my career in social work, or indeed in my Feminism lessons at Uni where I was the only heterosexual guy in a class of 320.