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First and foremost, thank you!

Thank you for supporting us and welcome to Parents Beyond Breakup - the home of Dads in Distress and Mums in Distress.

Know that your support, that what you do makes a real difference to real people; most importantly helping to keep Dads and Mums alive and in their kids' lives. Is there any greater cause?

Since 1999, Parents Beyond Breakup and its predecessor Dads in Distress Support Services, has provided an essential life saving support service both over the phone and through online as well as local peer groups; helping separated parents address their sense of isolation and hopelessness. Doing so, we know, averts several hundreds suicides each year. Likely, more than one a day somewhere in Australia.

Never underestimate the importance of what you are doing.

We hope that you enjoy working with us; you develop along the way; you learn more about yourself and others, and as you learn more, you help new volunteers come onboard and assist develop them like others before, have developed you.

Welcome to our family.

Our Vision and Mission

Our vision, or the world that we would like to see, is that all children enjoy the best possible relationship with their mum and their dad. 

Our mission, or what we're doing about it, we keep separated parents alive and in their kids' lives by providing hope, support and a voice. 

That hope is about awareness, having a vision of the future and some social connection. 

That support is about growing a network of support locations, exploring other forms of support for our existing demographic, exploring support required for a harder to reach group of parents and building of a two-way referral pathway. 

And that voice is about research, accessing lived experience and helping shape third-party support services so that we do keep separated parents alive and in their kids' lives.

Our Values

Our values are critical to our continued success. They are the behaviours by which we measure ourselves and the means by which, when necessary, we resolve our differences. 

We are one big family. We are family-centric, client-focused and cognisant of children's needs. We model the PBB behaviours, demonstrating camaraderie, warmth, and we each help to develop others around us. Our ethos is to facilitate peer-to-peer connection, support and care. 

We sleep well at night. We are accountable, responsible, ethical, respectful, caring, compassionate and empathic. We believe in equality and act in an egalitarian manner. 

We have an open heart and an open mind. Our nature is determined, driven, passionate, inclusive, sensitive. We act urgently, influence and nurture with humility. We use emotional and social intelligence. 

If not us, then who? We believe in empowering, growing and inspiring leaders. We value talent, innovation and communication. We make a dent in the universe and we choose the road less travelled. 

We are rock solid. We are dependable, trustworthy experts. We value teamwork, expertise and knowledge. Playing by the rules is what makes us successful. 

We do more with less. We are pragmatic, resourceful, frugal and proactive. We see no barriers, accept all challenges and do not postpone. Think differently whilst keeping it simple.

What do we believe?

1. We operate support services in a field that overflows with strongly held and often very polarised perspectives; these divide by politics, ideology, science, emotion, history and culture. Understanding that we must avoid being dragged into these divides is key to working successfully with PBB. 

2. PBB is a national charity and we have no political or ideological views, or affiliations. This is key to our continued growth and success and it sets us apart from activist and lobbying groups, and other organisations operating in our field. 

3. We must remain guarded not to get drawn into political or ideological differences. It is rarely if ever beneficial and it nearly always carries some form of negative consequences for the organisation. 

4. Our role is to act as an independent, non judgemental support service and to be seen and recognised as a credible expert in the field of parental separation.  It is adherence to this approach that has in recent times seen our greatest successes in representing those for whom we care. Conversely, our greatest setbacks have invariably been individuals pursuing a particular political or ideological agenda that has in some way, caused others to doubt our independent expert status. 

5. Last but not least, it is critical that each team member has clarity and alignment with our vision, mission and operational priorities - these guide where we focus our very limited resources. Laser like focus is critical because not only does it mean that our resources are used to best effect towards our primary cause/goal, it also means that our resources are not otherwise wasted on activities that detract from our primary cause/goal.

PBB is a gender inclusive support provider. 

We are not neutral, which suggests the same service for all regardless of gender. 

We recognise that the support needs of mums and dads differ, and we are changing to accommodate this difference. 

Historically, we have provided a gender neutral service, meaning we operated exactly the same support (primarily groups) for mums and dads but this has not been found to work particularly well with separated mums. 

For this reason we are currently developing new support approaches for mums via Mums in Distress but until that is fully developed and ready we continue to provide the historical approach to MIDs services.

Our primary focus is on supporting separating parents. This is defined as follows:

• Biological, adopted or step parent

• Male or female, heterosexual or otherwise

• Is struggling to attain or maintain contact with children post separation

• Is likely to have no or minimal contact with their child

• Is struggling with coping and/or suicidal thoughts

• Is struggling to harmoniously co-parent with the other parent

Regardless of our origins as a male centric support provider, we support any and all that fall within the above defined parameters. Thus we support both mums and dads. However, we equally recognise that (despite likely regional differences) there are generally far more support services aimed at mothers than there are at fathers. In addition, 2016 research amongst our supported parents shows that MIDs was generally one of many support services that those mums found and were using, whereas DIDs was generally the only one that dads could find and that they were using. Hence our focus continues to be predominantly at supporting dads who appear (as far as our defined parameters go) to be in far greater numbers and in greater need. This is borne out by national suicide figures that place separating men at the top of the ‘at risk of suicide’ list by a significant margin. 

Summary:

• We support separating parents be they male or female, without discrimination

• Our focus on growth of support is generally on where it is most needed. I.e. separating males

• Our service is not (currently) aimed at those with stable harmonious majority care of their children and/or where there is no suicidal thought or other distress/trauma present.

Activism and its relevance to PBB

There are many hundreds of activist organisations on all ‘sides’ of family breakdown that primarily focus on changing the world in terms of law and gender politics. Our role as the solitary national suicide prevention support service for those most affected, is to ensure that our focus remains on individual and group support; not on activism or even on any appearance thereof. 

Our responsibility is to ensure that, as far as possible, every child gets the best possible start in life by keeping and enjoying a relationship with both their parents.  

That said, we have a position on some of the factors that impact upon suicide and lack of contact between children and their parents; this is outlined in later training modules on our Program Logic.

We have one overall charity, Parents Beyond Breakup (PBB).

Approved taglines for PBB are:

• Keeping dads and mums alive and in their kids' lives

• Keeping separating parents alive and in their kids’ lives

We have two front line support services (programs), Dads in Distress and Mums in Distress. 

Approved taglines, respectively, are:

• Keeping dads alive and in their kids’ lives

• Keeping mums alive and in their kids’ lives

Our organisation and program names, how we present and describe ourselves (i.e. elevator speech and taglines) is carefully developed for strategic reasons. These are key to our brand and should not be changed in any internal or external materials or services. 

We are a social franchise

PBB (and its subsidiary support programs) is/are a ‘social franchise’. 

Much like a commercial franchise (e.g. McDonalds) it has a name, brand, service consistency, quality standards and approach to how it delivers services and even markets itself. 

Consequently, developing new services or approaches that do not fit into our national brand and support strategy not only detract from achieving our primary cause by wasting precious resources, it can also inadvertently damage a carefully developed neutral support service and brand. Put more simply, two decades of hard work and good standing can be undone very quickly by well meaning but ill advised changes in brand, positioning or service delivery that are not in absolute alignment with or approved by the wider organisation.

PBB (Parents Beyond Breakup) is a national suicide prevention support charity. 

Each year, we prevent in excess of 350 suicides. 

We achieve this by helping separating parents to transition from intact to a non-intact family with minimal adversity and by keeping children's needs topmost in their minds. 

We deliver our support via a national helpline, online support and local community based support groups.