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Are you a parent, kinship carer relative or friend of a child who is involved with, or who needs the help of, children’s services in England? We can help you understand processes and options when social workers or courts are making decisions about your child’s welfare.

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“Family group decision making – what is it?”

Family group decision making (FGDM) is an umbrella term for different methods for engaging families in decisions about their children.

It is a term you may have heard more recently due to its inclusion in proposed new legislation.

Family group decision making and the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

The Bill, when passed by Parliament, will introduce a new mandate on local authorities to offer family group decision making. It will give families the opportunity to come up with solutions for their children’s welfare, to safely avert children entering the care system. Family Rights Group strongly welcomes this.

Currently, the support that family and friends can offer is not consistently explored prior to a child entering the care system. It means there are children in the care system who do not need to be. They could be safely at home with their parents or raised by relatives and friends in kinship care, instead of with strangers.

This Bill could deliver a step change in how the state works with, rather than does to, children and their families.

What does good family group decision making look like?

Family group conferences (FGCs) are the gold standard of FGDM. Why? Because with FGCs families are themselves the lead decision makers when addressing concerns about their children’s welfare.

Title: A continuum of family engagement Image: Four coloured blocks. For full text see description under the image.

A continuum of family engagement – text description

• Child welfare agents as sole decision makers without family.
• Families are present when decisions are made.
• Families have a voice but decisions rest with child welfare agency.
• Family are part of the decision-making team where consensus decisions are sought.
• Families lead decision making process.

Figure 1 used with kind permission from Associate Professor and Director, National Centre on Family Group Decision Making at Kempe Centre Aurora, Colorado, United States.

Why are family group conferences the best approach?

Families have unique knowledge about themselves and a common interest in their children’s future. But bringing families together when the stakes are so high is complex and needs a carefully thought out, tried and tested approach.

An independent coordinator acts as a trusted person, a bridge between the family members themselves and between the family and the state. Convening a group of family members needs careful preparation to hear the different perspectives and allow all to come to the family group conference ready to make a plan. Integral to a family group conference is private family time, when families can meet in private and have open and potentially tough conversations about the way forward in a way that is agreed and owned by all.

Family group conferences have been introduced in over 30 countries worldwide and subject to extensive research. The evidence shows that they work to safely and effectively avert children from the care system and remain in their family network, are cost effective and appreciated by family members whether paternal, maternal, young or old.

A landmark opportunity

Family group decision making must be done right, so the process is truly child-centred, family-led, and safe. This matters because the quality of the process impacts the strength of the outcome, for the child, the family and society.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is a landmark opportunity for reforming the child welfare system. With record numbers of children in care the need for reform is urgent. Families in crisis are not being helped early enough. The child welfare system has become reactive and focused on investigation rather than prevention. Children in care often experience separation from their family, friends and community, leaving them isolated. Kinship care families are commonly overlooked and under-supported.

FGDM – an alphabet soup of approaches

The term ‘family group decision making’ encompasses a range of approaches aimed at bringing wider family to the table when decisions need to be made.

Family group conferences are one form of FGDM. To add to the potential confusion, in Scotland the family group conference approach is named ‘Family Group Decision Making’.

FGDM can also include family team meetings, family network meetings, family unity meetings, family team conferencing, team decision making, and emergency family meetings which are all variations on professionally led one off meetings that don’t usually follow a clear practice protocol. They tend to be convened by social workers or other practitioners without identifying and engagement of family networks and consequently often fail to involve wider family members or children as is intended.

We fear that unless the Bill is amended, there’s a very real implementation risk – one we are already seeing play out in overwhelmed children’s services departments – that the features which make family group conferences a success could be watered down and the benefits lost. Without strengthening the provisions, we fear in practice it will not deliver the Bill’s ambition, to ensure fair and effective opportunity across England for children and families to get the support they need to stay safely together.

So why settle for Bronze when you can have the Gold standard?

By Sean Haresnape

A photo of Sean Haresnape, Practice Lead for Family Group Conference and Lifelong LinksSean, a qualified social worker, has worked for the Family Rights Group for almost 20 years and led the development of family group conference (FGC) practice and related project work.

He manages the National FGC Network involving services across the UK. More recently he has been the practice lead for the development of Lifelong Links which is now operational in 42 local authority settings. The approach aims to build a lasting support network for and with children in the care system.

Sean led Family Rights Group’s development of a national accreditation framework for family group conference services in collaboration with the National FGC Network.

February 2025

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