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1 Core concepts
A number of core concepts tied to the fidelity of FGC are threaded through the chapters: 1) family and social network building; 2) coordinator independence; 3) private family time as a liberating decision-making mechanism; 4) resourcing; and 5) children’s participation.
Family and social network building: At the heart of FGCs is the widening circle of people to become part of solution-building. The authors remind us that FGCs flourish when families define their own network – who is important to them – like extended family, community members, friends and other supporters. Without such a constellation, the intended process is short-changed and unaligned with its principles. It appears as if FGC practitioners and advocates, as well as those responsible for resourcing FGC services, strive to embed this core concept into FGC practice, across populations and communities served.
Coordinator independence: The book’s authors underscore the importance of the FGC coordinators having a unique role, independent of the case, which provides them with dedicated time to identify and position families to lead decision-making. Given the struggle to fund and support FGC coordinators in other parts of the world, programme implementers can gain insight into possible ways to bolster this position in a statutory agency or community-based organisation.
Family leadership through private family time: Private family time is often considered the most radical part of the FGC, whereby families assume leadership for decision-making outside the presence of service providers. What I particularly appreciated in the book was the way the authors characterised and normalised private family time as essential, aligning it with empowerment and family strengthening theories. They dismissed its ‘radical’ classification and suggested that it fundamentally shifts power and creates the opportunity for family leadership. In Chapter 9, author Iyabo Ayodele Fatimilehin notes, ‘[t]he systems are powerfully coercive and aim to seize control of the decision-making processes within the family system’ (145); private family time limits that possibility of coercion.
Resourcing: In a number of chapters the reader is reminded that plans that emerge from FGCs are not standard, cookie-cutter case plans. Families are creative, resilient and strong and use their knowledge and expertise to craft plans that meet their needs. While there are some studies that show that FGCs result in overall cost savings, a number of authors highlight the need for agencies and communities to be sufficiently flexible in formal and informal services to meet the emergent needs. Coordinators are well positioned to address service access barrier issues.
Children’s participation: Various chapter authors remind the reader that, unlike in other parts of the world, particularly the United States, where child welfare systems erect barriers to children’s participation in FGCs, FGC coordinators have a critical role in preparing children and young people for FGCs. The centrality of children’s wishes and feelings and the notions of advocacy are embedded throughout the book – seriously acknowledging children’s status as citizens in their own right and having agency over decisions that impact their lives.
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2 FGC theory
Far too often, FGCs can be perceived by both system implementers and service users alike as a technical tool or mechanism. While the goal is to create a process that positions family groups as decision-making leaders about matters in their own lives, often the theoretical underpinnings get lost in the practice shuffle. Chapter 2, the Theoretical Context for FGCs, grounds the reader in a host of theories, which can be used to guide FGC practice. The ‘family strengths’ awakening, which began in the 1990s, referring to the recognition that the family groups coming to the attention of child welfare systems have strengths and are not simply pathological objects for intervention, is highlighted. The author points to the work of Rapp, Saleebey and Sullivan (2008) that provide six standards for evaluating a strengths-based approach: 1) goal orientation; 2) strengths assessment; 3) resources from the environment; 4) explicit methods used to identify personal and environmental strengths for goal attainment; 5) the relationship is hope-inducing; and 6) meaningful choice whereby (in the case of FGC) the coordinator’s role is to increase and explain choices, encouraging people to make their own decisions. Given that the actualisation of strengths-based practice has too frequently been relegated to practitioners listing the family strengths they perceive, this is an important reminder of a framework that can guide the FGC coordinators’ quest to embody this theory into practice.
The chapter author notes other candidate theories, including empowerment theory, tying FGC to democracy building, in which relationships are better balanced between the family and the state. It also categorises FGCs as an anti-oppressive and anti-discriminatory approach to social work practice. The ecosystem theory is also highlighted as a means of balancing power. Finally, a sociological theory is referenced, focusing on families having agency and FGC building social capital for at the core of FGCs is leveraging the supportive relationships among individuals and family group members and harnessing a sense of collective responsibility. -
3 Research
The chapter authors agree that FGC is, quoting Professor Peter Marsh, one of the most studied social innovations in human services. While I agree with this conclusion, the authors’ literature review is, both individually and collectively, incomplete in that many of the authors have relied on the same studies as evidence of the outcomes associated with FGC. While the purpose of this book was not to conduct an in-depth research review, a more well-rounded, encompassing analysis of the research – across continents and methodologies – would support the readers in understanding the full depth and breadth of FGC impacts at the individual, family, community and system levels. Since the publication, there have been a number of systematic reviews of family group decision-making and other family meeting models. Readers of those reviews should approach them with caution, as they privilege certain types of research (quantitative, randomised control trial) over other methodologies that tend to paint a fuller, more humanistic understanding of FGC impacts. In addition, when digesting family meeting research, particularly from the United States, it is important for readers to understand the family meeting practice model, including the degree of fidelity attained and the core components of each model. The names of the models are deceivingly similar, but the embodiment of FGC values in the mechanisms of those ‘family’ meetings is standardly absent.
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4 Implementation and applications
Numerous authors highlight Doolan’s typology on the three levels of FGC implementation worldwide: 1) a legal mandate where law enshrines the FGC as a requirement; 2) a procedural mandate, where FGC is adopted as policy; and 3) a best practice mandate, often driven by professionals who believe in the FGC model and start a service. Doolan’s framework is helpful in understanding the implementation context, which influences the implementation drivers and supports and sustainability efforts. In the United States, there are a plethora of family meeting models, FGCs being only one of them and likely the least prevalent. As such, a number of the book’s authors equate a policy mandate for various types of family meetings with FGCs, misrepresenting the context for FGC implementation in the United States.
While the earliest chapters set a rich context about FGC practice and are an essential foundation for subsequent chapters, I believe the most unique contributions to the FGC literature exist in the chapters that detail the use of FGCs with specific populations and varying circumstances. According to the current literature, in most countries, FGCs have remained confined to decision-making in child welfare and youth justice systems. Other than the Netherlands, which has positioned FGCs as a foundational decision-making construct regardless of the individual or community concern, and New Zealand, which enshrined the FGC into law in 1989, this book spotlights the innovative application of this approach in the United Kingdom across many populations and groups (domestic violence, marginalised communities, harmful sexual behaviours, youth justice and adult social care). The book editors also note that while not included in this book, the application of FGC to other social issues such as forced marriage, prisons, gangs and homeless are additionally innovative ways in which the model is affecting family and community decision-making.
For practitioners, policymakers and leaders looking to innovate their service delivery structure to include a restorative, solution-building approach that enhances safety and mutual accountability, Part 2 – Family Group Conferences in Practice – is a critical read. Through the provision of rationales, practical examples, local implementation efforts, practice adaptations and evaluative findings, others interested in FGC can gain cutting-edge perspectives from the respective authors of these chapters. Themes of safety enhancements, empowerment, accountability and harm reduction run throughout the chapters and remind readers of the transformational power of FGCs in relation to children, families, communities and agencies.
The unanswered question, even when legal and policy constructs support the FGC as a decision-making mechanism, is, why does the FGC model remain so marginalised? Why, after 25 years of implementation in various sectors and local authorities, with accreditation standards in some countries like the UK and a massive volume of mostly positive and promising results, is the FGC relegated to the sidelines, offered to a slim percentage of service users? As my colleague from Case Western Reserve University, Dr. David Crampton, so eloquently stated in an October 2020 international conference – ‘the (child welfare) system bites back’; it has allowances for the acceptable or tolerable degree of family empowerment before it retracts transformative mechanisms and sticks with the status quo. For FGC enthusiasts and other system agitators, this question looms large. When that code is cracked it should form the subject of the next book on FGCs. References Rapp, C.A., Saleebey, W.P. & Sullivan W.P. (2005). The futures of strengths-based social work. Advances in Social Work: Special Issue on the Futures of Social Work, 6(1), 79-90.
Deanna Edwards and Kate Parkinson (eds.), Family group conferences in social work: involving families in social care decision making. Bristol: Policy Press, 2018, 282 pp., ISBN: 978-14473-3580-1.
Family group conferences in social work: involving families in social care and decision making is an edited book by Deanna Edwards and Kate Parkinson that describes the history, implementation and evolution of family group conferences (FGCs) with a focus on the United Kingdom and some nods to other parts of the world. The earliest chapters set the context and describe the FGC model, followed by a description of the model and some candidate theories. The remaining chapters examine the implementation of FGCs in juvenile justice, domestic violence, social adult care and with marginalised populations and in cases of harmful sexualised behaviours. The power of FGCs is accentuated by real-life examples embedded throughout the chapters.