Case study ~ Men United

(Being connected to Sharon Roberts and her team at Vision has turned their organisation around)

Men United is an organisation that supports fathers and in its early days faced a struggle to find training that would match their needs and language. All the training they had tried to access was centred on the mothers' viewpoint. Accepting the need for and understanding the impetus for that still left them without the support they needed to offer services to fathers.

Being connected to Sharon Roberts and her team at Vision has turned their organisation around in the way it can help and it has become a model for how such an organisation can be run by groups around the country.

The first training course was to help with the outreach and support part of the group's work and saw 9 men completing a course spread over three months. As Michael Taylor from Men United admits in itself that was a triumph to keep those men together, involved and motivated.

He sets it down to the fact that when the team from Vision came in to design the training, they were prepared to go against the norm of other training, listen to the needs and concerns of the group and produce a format that worked.

Vision recognised that the group needed time to build up trust in their expertise. That trust grew and has produced results far beyond the target of the first training sessions. Together Vision and Men United have developed strategies initially for two years that have helped the group to gain confidence in its own abilities. That led to gaining Nottingham City Council's Race and Communities award and taking part in the Council's planning for a parenting strategy.

Further medium and long term planning has resulted in more training delivered by Vision, including a 12 week OCN accredited course covering motivation, education in the community and how to run a management committee. Agencies now refer men to Men United, acknowledging the skill they have built and on the model for the group has been accepted as a viable structure attracting recognition from Sure Start.

Whilst this began as a community based project, the far reaching developments that have resulted have demonstrated what can be achieved in the most apparently unfavourable circumstances. Fathers have jobs and when their voice is heard Vision believes that everyone benefits including the companies for whom they work.

Michael Taylor has nothing but praise for the Vision team. Though his tone is rueful when he praises Sharon's persistence in ensuring that Men United became successful!