New joint birth registration rules

Interesting article below from Fatherhood Institute.

This change to the law is a great opportunity for children's centres to address the gap between numbers of fathers and numbers of mothers registered and actively engaged in services. We know that early in a child's life is a really good time for services to start building relationships with fathers.

I know of at least one authority that is looking into bringing birth registrations into the children's centres themselves. Is this something that is being considered in other areas?

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The new rules, introduced under the Welfare Reform Bill, mean that in most cases, both unmarried parents will be required to register their names on their child’s birth certificate – apart from in circumstances where it is not possible, practical or advisable to have this direct link to the father*.

Why this change is important

We have been pushing for this change, which brings the rules for unmarried parents more closely into line with those for married parents, and takes account of children’s legal right to know who their father is - a right which is enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

At the moment, 17% of unmarried fathers in the UK do not sign their child’s birth certificate: that’s 7% per cent of all fathers or 45,000 children in total each year. This is obviously a fairly small minority – but it’s an important one.

Why? Because non-registration by fathers is a predictor of low and decreasing father-involvement - which is, itself, correlated with low involvement through childhood and adolescence - and of low/non-payment of child maintenance. Non-registration by fathers is more common in disadvantaged families, for example where dads are young - so this is a key issue for services working with vulnerable groups.

How will the new rules help?

Expecting dads to sign the birth certificate has been shown to increase their likelihood of contributing to their family – both financially and in terms of day-to-day involvement. Engaging with fathers early in this way is a golden opportunity for services to “hook” them in and start supporting them to be the best dads they can be.