✊ Right to Reconnect: Let Rehabilitated Fathers Be Fathers

📢 We call on the Ministry of Justice, Family Courts, and Probation Services to:

• Enforce Parental Responsibility rights for biological fathers after custody
• Uphold the Farmer Review recommendations, protecting family ties

Support lived-experience-led programmes like Fathers With Futures
 
📜 Why This Matters: Trevor’s Real Story

Trevor served time for manslaughter.
While in prison, he reconnected with a childhood friend.
When he was granted home leave, he stayed at her family's home. She became pregnant.

Their child — their future — became part of Trevor’s parole plan. Probation backed it. So did the Ministry of Justice.

• But on the very day they were meant to register the birth, he was kicked out.
• His name never made it to the birth certificate.
• He hasn’t seen his daughter since.
• When he tried to go to court for contact and Parental Responsibility, his case was dismissed without even being heard.

 
🧱 This Isn’t Just Trevor’s Story — It’s National

Too many fathers return from prison ready to change, but face:

• Court dismissals without due process
• No support for safe reconnection
• Old stereotypes that override evidence of rehabilitation
• All while the child suffers from a broken bond.

The Farmer Review (2017, 2019) made it clear:

“The state must not be complicit in severing ties between father and child.”
— Lord Farmer
“Strengthening family ties is not a peripheral issue — it is fundamental to rehabilitation.”
— Farmer Review for Men, 2019

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/landmark-review-places-family-ties-at-the-heart-of-prison-reform

Yet courts still ignore it. Fathers still vanish from birth certificates.
Children still lose the chance to know who they are.

💬 Michael Groce, Founder – Fathers With Futures
“I took flak for not being there. But even when mothers agreed, the system made me a second-class citizen.

When I got custody of my son after his mum died, that’s when I knew what had to change.

Fathers With Futures is how we build that change.

Right to Reconnect is the movement that carries it.”
 
🔖 We Demand:
✅ A fair, heard application process for Parental Responsibility
✅ Family courts and CAFCASS to follow Farmer Review standards
✅ Probation to intervene where court failure risks family breakdown
✅ Fathers With Futures adopted as a national model for safe reconnection

 
🎯 This Is Not About the Past — It’s About the Future
Every child deserves identity, stability, and love

That begins with the right to know their father, especially when he’s fought hard to return.

 
✍️ Sign the petition.
📢 Share Trevor’s story.
🛠️ Support real solutions from those who lived it.

🔗 https://chng.it/cp4zn4kXgg

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🖤 Fathers With Futures – Real Men. Real Rights.