It’s thankfully been another busy year here at DadPad, as we continue to grow both our DadPad areas and our products, as well as making real progress on developments and upgrades with our existing offer.  It’s been hard work, but also incredibly exciting – especially as we continue to receive positive comments and feedback from both dads and healthcare professionals across the country.

Here’s some of the highlights from this year…

New areas and launches…

We’ve launched six new DadPad apps this year.

At the end of January, we went live in Nottinghamshire, having been commissioned by the Perinatal Psychiatrist Service within Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

Close on the tail of Nottinghamshire were the joint launches in the Bristol area, with apps for Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) and Bath & North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire (BSW) becoming available at the start of February. We again worked with Perinatal Services – this time within the Avon & Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, for both apps – to get these apps available for local families. These two new apps include some existing DadPad coverage – Bath, Swindon and Wiltshire were some of our really early DadPad app areas – as well as new regions, and their launch meant that we now had the whole of the south-west covered, which is fantastic.

Another two new areas launched in early summer.  We launched in Humberside, Hull and East Riding in late May, after working with the Perinatal Mental Health Team at Humber Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation.   Then, on International Father’s Mental Health Day in June, was probably one of our biggest launch areas yet: the DadPad app for Cheshire and Merseyside, commissioned by the Specialist Perinatal Service at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust.

Finally, two more apps have been launched during the autumn, firstly in Stoke-on-Trent and then North Tyneside: in both cases, we were commissioned by the Councils’ Public Health Teams.

On top of this, we’re also delighted to have had the existing DadPad app licences renewed by the teams at Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, NHS Northamptonshire ICB and South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust.

This, then, brings our total number of live app areas to 28!  We’re so pleased that DadPad now covers:

• The whole of the south-west and beyond, from Lands End up to Hereford and Worcestershire, and then across and down through Warwickshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, Surrey and West Sussex; and
• The majority of the north, including Cheshire and Merseyside, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and East Riding of Yorkshire.

In 2023, we’re looking forward to:

• Getting even more DadPad app areas live and launched – we currently have a further eight apps in various stages of development, with more and more areas contacting us for information on how to get DadPad;
• Working with more existing DadPad areas to renew their app licences, so the support that they’re currently able to offer dads-to-be and new dads can continue; and
• Continuing to make in-roads across the middle of the country, growing our existing coverage in the Midlands, as well as the east, building upon the offer within Kent and parts of London.

New products on the way…

We’ve had an especially busy year developing two core new products, both of which are due to be launched in January 2023 – and we’ll share much more about them then.

For now, though, we wanted to first of all let you know that we’ve been working with a range of experts in the field of LGBTQI+ parenting – both in terms of being professionals and/or having lived experience – across the UK to draft and now finalise our Co-ParentPad.  Aimed to be a complementary resource to sit alongside our existing DadPad products – which have been purposely and specifically written to meet the needs to new male dads and dads-to-be who are having a baby with a female partner – the CPP is for LGBTQI+ non-birthing parents.  As well as covering all the topics that our expert contributors asked for, the CPP’s imagery shows a spectrum of LGBTQI+ parents, uses neutral pronoun references and inclusive language to give a non-gestational parent information on how to prepare for and help care for their partner in labour, how to care for their new baby, and what to expect in the early days of being a new family.

The CPP is currently being printed and copies will be sent to all existing DadPad app areas in January and February.

Also being launched in January is our new, updated DadPad app platform.  Having worked with the fab team at Vitamin and Vitamin Cornwall, the new platform will have lots of enhanced features that we’re really excited to share with you!

We’ll be working our way through our existing app areas during 2023 and beyond, moving their content across to the new platform.

For more information on either of these two new products, or to find out how to order your own supply of the Co-ParentPad, please do get in touch – and please also follow us on social media (we’re @dadpaduk on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook) to ensure you see all our updates.

Training, Conferences and Accolades

Finally, all at #TeamDadPad have – as always – done our utmost to attend as many training events and conferences as we possibly can, to continue to grow our knowledge and awareness and, as a consequence, further improve all that we’re able to collectively offer.

Thankfully, the greater availability of online courses and training post-Covid has meant we’re now able to attend much more training than would otherwise be viable (given that, at present, all of the team live in Cornwall!).  In 2022, this has included: training by the Men’s Health Forum, looking at ways of making health services work better for men; the Smartline celebration conference, A new vision for health and housing, which also gave Julian the chance to share our story as a Smartline-supported community business; the launch event for a new book by Early Years specialist, Maureen Hunt, looking at ways of helping children to thrive and overcome the effect of disadvantage; and a number of safeguarding training sessions.

We’ve also been able to get back out-and-about in person a bit more, with Julian and Georgie heading to London for the HETT Conference back in September, and then Julian travelled to West Sussex in November to support the West Sussex Safeguarding Children Partnership’s Safeguarding Fortnight.  Julian also headed up to Bolton earlier in the year, to take part in the Dad Matters UK 5th Birthday Conference.

DadPad has also been featured in magazines, including the Sep/Oct edition of Public Sector Focus, and the Winter 2022 Mersey Care Magazine.

Finally, we were also delighted to be awarded the Best Fatherhood Information & Guidance Platform 2022 by Global Health Pharma!

There’s bound to have been some things that we’ve missed, but we’re delighted – as we head off for a much needed few weeks’ break with our families – to have had another successful year, looking forward to more innovation, development and – above all – support for new families in 2023.