How lived experience is shaping this toolkit for dads

We’ve now got an exciting ‘news’ functionality on TLDR so we are launching it with a look back at how one of our current projects got started, and we hope to continue to document the journey.

Early in 2025 Emily was contacted by Ceri Parker-Carruthers, Family Clinic Manager at Dads House, a charity that ‘aims to make sure children remain the priority after divorce, separation or bereavement’. Some years before, Ceri and her colleagues at educational charity Leducate had commissioned Emily to design some materials to accompany their classes delivered to secondary school age young people (you can see these here on TLDR). This time however, Ceri had a rather different mission: to produce an Emotional wellbeing toolkit for the clients of Dads House.

Emily was working on a number of projects already with Dr Rachel Warner from the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, and they were both keen to take this project on together too.

About the charity

Dads House (DH) was set up in 2008 by William McGranaghan (Billy) to help single dads with the practicalities of raising their children alone. He was recognised in the New Year Honours List this January and was made an MBE for his services to vulnerable families, food bank provision and to the community in Greater London. The aim of the clinic is to make sure children remain the priority after divorce, separation or bereavement.

DH run a Family Law Clinic which is open every Wednesday and Friday to advise on the Family Courts. It’s a bookings-only service and takes place in person. They also run Dads Table – emotionally supporting dads, lunch clubs and a food bank five days a week, and various clubs and groups for families.

The Law Clinic is staffed by Billy and Ceri but mainly volunteer-run by a tight-knit group of lawyers, headed by Legal Director Simon Bruce and helps between three and six clients each clinic. They have an ongoing collaboration with Coram Chambers, but lawyers from other firms and chambers also volunteer regularly (Branch Austin McCormick LLP, Monckton Chambers, Laurus Law, Hanne & Co, Farrer & Co). They provide written advice, casework, representation, form filling and initial advice, as well as emotional support through their emotional support coach and mediation advice.

DH have been recognised in many ways; winning the Pro Bono and Social Responsibility Initiative of the Year 2024 at the Bar Pro Bono Awards, the Family Law Interaction Award at the LexisNexis Family Law Awards, the Charity of the Year Award at the Pro Bono & Social Responsibility Awards, and the Family Law Awards 2025 Cornwell Award for Outstanding Contribution to Family Law.

DH Family Law Clinic continues to grow and offer cutting edge family law advice. Please bear in mind that no legally aided or private funded law firm can provide expert legal advice, emotional support and mediation advice under one roof. This is unique. If you’d like to read an interview with Ceri and learn more about the charity, we have a fascinating piece on Lawbore.

Setting the scene

We were pleased to be given the chance to work in the field of family law. Dads House clients are often going through the toughest times of their lives; facing hardships around divorce or separation and child arrangements, finances too. In addition to the legal assistance they sorely need, they are often also seeking emotional support and practical help with parenting from the clinic also.

The number of parents forced to represent themselves in the family courts surged after LASPO 2012 removed legal aid from private family law cases. Thousands of mums and dads must navigate complex court processes alone when the stakes are so high (such as child arrangements). Family Court statistics (July-Sep 2025) show the number of cases where neither applicant nor respondent had representation at 47%. The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory highlighted that in at least 80% of cases, one party is unrepresented. It is easy to see why a charity such as DH is so crucial.

Initial steps

In March 2025 we first met the amazing people who run and volunteer at Dads House, to talk about their idea of producing an Emotional wellbeing toolkit for supporting people experiencing child access arrangements through the courts. After the first meeting, we took on the work of designing their content into a toolkit.

The content was provided to us in a Word document which was dominated by text, but with some images interspersed. The toolkit was set out into sections and spanned 45 pages, it contained a mix of materials; guidance, learning points, practical strategies, thinking points and spaces to reflect and plan. There was also an additional section (15 pages) covering the more practical legal parts of the journey to court and beyond. There were a number of important requirements to keep in mind; inclusive design, production constraints, the realities of use in the environment (e.g. paper may be preferable to online in court) and we need of course to be considerate of the need for future proofing. Dads House are a charity who do not have the funds to plough into multiple revisions.

Post-meeting we spent a morning in Rachel’s loft room spreading out the content and regrouping elements where needed. This helped us think through whether a static toolkit was actually the best option or whether having content available in separate documents would be more helpful.

We then returned to Dads House in August to observe a Family Law Clinic, where we were able to hear first-hand some of the difficulties dads were facing as they navigated the court process. Seeing the clinic in action and hearing the very different places in the process the dads were, very much brought home to us the need for this resource. It also reinforced the need for us to explore this further via a workshop, and Ceri kindly put out the call for dads to participate.

Workshop at Dads House

On Friday 31 October we visited Dads House to meet a group of Dads, hear about their experiences, and ask for their feedback on the first draft of the toolkit.

Six dads were at Dads House in person, two dads were online. Also joining the workshop were Melernie Meheux (a senior child and adolescent educational psychologist) & DH volunteer, and Kerry Devine (trainee solicitor & DH volunteer) who wrote (and continue to write) the toolkit, Jo Petschek (a Life and Relationship Coach), Simon Bruce, Andrew Baker, Ceri who is managing the toolkit project, and Billy – founder of Dads House.

In our hour-long workshop Dads talked to us about what they have found works for them, in terms of maintaining emotional wellbeing, and what is currently missing from their experience. We talked about their impressions of the draft toolkit (and its illustration style), and when, how, and where they might use it. (Shall we explore this part further in the next post?)

Each of the Dads’ ideas, from their lived experiences, will help shape the toolkit. They are in essence, co-designers, along with the legal representatives and ‘emotional experts’ who are providing their expertise that is molding the toolkit.

Our next steps are to review the valuable ideas that each dad provided, implement their ideas into the next draft of the toolkit, and then develop a prototype for Dads to try using in their everyday lives. More on this soon…