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Introduction

This is the report of a review of research and practice in Family Group Conferencing or Family Group Decision-Making ³. The review was undertaken between April and September 2006 by the Social Work Research Centre at the University of Stirling and comprised two distinct, but complementary parts: a literature review and interviews with key stakeholders in the field. While the scope of the literature review was international, interviews were confined to service providers, academics and a few key others working within the UK.

As outlined in the literature review, over the last two decades, FGC has developed widely from its origins in New Zealand across many continents and countries. Within Scotland, Children 1 ^st have taken the lead in introducing the approach over the last eight years. Fourteen local authorities currently provide an FGC service in collaboration with Children 1 ^st, while one authority, Edinburgh, has set up an in-house service. Interest in the potential of this approach was fuelled by the 21 ^st Century Review of Social Work. The report from this review, Changing Lives, emphasised the need for social work services to work more effectively in partnership with service users, extended families and communities, recommending that social work services 'must build individual, family and community capacity to meet their own needs' ⁴. This aim is consistent with the rationale and values which underpin FGC, suggesting that this approach should be developed. Yet in the course of the social work review, quite different views had been expressed about the potential of FGC, how it might best fit with other services and the strength of evidence for its effectiveness. The purpose of the study reported here was to review the evidence and some current practice developments.

Though the study was commissioned to contribute to the implementation of Changing Lives, it is potentially relevant to a wide range of current policy initiatives. In common with Changing Lives, Getting it Right for Every Child ( GIRFEC) aims to achieve quite a fundamental change in services for children. The underlying principle of GIRFEC is that services should be centred on the child or young person. The service they receive should be based on common principles, but also tailored to address each child's specific needs and difficulties s/he is experiencing or causing others. Comprehensive inter-agency assessment combined with adequate planning which involves the child and relevant others are both key components of GIRFEC. A major focus of GIRFEC is therefore on improving professional practice and collaboration, and to achieve this a range of proposals will be implemented. These include: the introduction of new practice tools, e.g. single shared assessment; reducing barriers to multi-agency working; and adjusting the role of the children's hearing system to focus on situations where there is evidence of significant needs and that compulsion is required.

The same principles apply across the spectrum of services for children, young people and their families. Relevant initiatives for specific groups of children or young people would include:

• Children and young people in need of protection ( It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright, 2002; Hidden Harm, 2004, 2006)
• Children and young people affected by domestic violence ( National Strategy to Address Domestic Abuse, 2000; National Strategy to Prevent Domestic Abuse, 2003)
• Children and young people accommodated away from home ( Extraordinary Lives, 2006; National Fostering and Kinship Care Strategy,2006 ; We can and must do better, 2007)
• Children and Young People's Mental Health and Well-being ( National Programme for Improving Mental Health and Well-being, 2004; Reducing Suicide and Deliberate Self-Harm, 2002)
• Children and young people involved in offending (Scotland's Action Programme to Reduce Youth Crime, 2002; Anti-social behaviour legislation and the introduction of Parenting Orders, 2004; Report of the Youth Justice Improvement Group, 2006)
• Children and young people who present behaviour difficulties in school or are excluded. Better Behaviour -Better Learning, Report of the Discipline Task Group, June 2001; Report on Behaviour in Scottish Schools, Anne Wilkin; Helen Moor; Jenny Muirfield; Kay Kinder and Fiona Johnson, National Foundation for Educational Research, 2006)

None of these initiatives specifically mention Family Group Conferencing, nor do they accord a specific role to the extended family. Yet, as this review will report, FGC schemes have been successfully developed in each of the situations to which these documents apply. Experience across the UK indicates that there can be benefits both from drawing on the resources of the extended family and from operating in a way which enables those involved to negotiate their own solution to a problem, rather than imposing external remedies. Taking this into account, FGC is potentially relevant to a range of agencies and services including social work, education, health and police.

Partnership with parents is embedded in each of these initiatives, but few offer practical guidelines on how to translate this into practice. In addition, a reading of the policy documents outlined above indicates that, though the language of partnership is used, the relationship with parents is often couched in terms of the latter needing support, direction or correction. The latter applies particularly in newer initiatives such as the Anti-social Behaviour legislation and GIRFEC. One challenge of current policy and practice is therefore to view parents as partners in finding a solution, but also part of the problem. Advocates of FGC argue that, properly applied, the FGC model can help achieve an ethical balance between these two points of view.

The recently published research on Kinship Care (Aldgate and McIntosh, 2006) highlights that extended families already do care for many children and for some this arrangement works well. The research also shows that local authorities do not find it easy to support these arrangements within existing structures, partly because they involve constituting family members and relating to them in new ways. The kinship care research recommends that new ways of viewing and supporting kinship care should be developed, so that families' capacities to care for their children can be maximised.

Correspondingly, the mainstream introduction of FGCs would result in new ways of involving family members in assessment and care planning which in turn might be expected to result in demands for a shift in the kinds of services available to support them. It is beyond the scope of this review to speculate on what these services might be, but they would presumably contribute to statutory services moving towards enhancing family and community capacity, as envisaged in Changing Lives.

Key Research Questions

The aims of the research were as follows:

• to review evidence of the effectiveness of the FGC approach for groups of children with different needs;
• to gather views about the use and experience broadly speaking of FGC in children's services in Scotland and the UK.

Key questions to be addressed by the research included:

• What are the origins and basis for the FGC approach?
• What are the values and characteristics of the FGC approach?
• How do approaches to FGC differ and what are the advantages and disadvantages of different models (e.g. professional versus lay involvement)?
• Broadly speaking, how is the approach being used and developed in a range of children's services in Scotland and in the UK?
• Is there evidence from the literature that FGC is cost effective?
• What are stakeholders' views about cost effectiveness?
• What do stakeholders think about the use of FGC in children's services?
• What do stakeholders think about the future scope of FGC in children's services in Scotland?
• What are the key skills, knowledge and values required to deliver an FGC service?
• Is there a need for more research to assess the impact of FGC?

In asking that these questions be considered, the research brief acknowledged that FGC was potentially relevant to a number of key aspirations outlined in the Changing Lives report. These included:

These different, but interrelated considerations shaped the approach to the study and how its findings are being reported.

Format of this Report

The report begins with the literature review, forming part one of the report. Part two draws on the interviews with key stakeholders. In Part 3, key conclusions are drawn in light of findings from both sources.

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