West Berkshire – Family Group Conferences
IYPP PROJECT
1. Context of the Project
1.1 Service Context
West Berkshire Children’s Service is a statutory agency that provides and commissions services, for vulnerable children, young people and their parents and carers, as the children and families branch of the Social Services Department.
A key service principle is “participation of children and families in all aspects of the work. Family-based decision-making is the expected mechanism for all service/support packages: only in situations where this is demonstrated not to be in the best interests of the child will professional decision-making dominate.” (West Berkshire Service Principles)
Family Group Conferences (FGCs) were established in West Berkshire in April 2001 under the auspices of the Area Child Protection Committee. The focus of the work prior to this project was primarily about child welfare and protection issues, taking referrals from Children’s Services and with only the occasional referral from the Youth Offending Team (YOT).
Aims and Objectives
Aim:
To improve outcomes for children who are at risk of school exclusion, truancy, bullying or behaviour problems at school, or at risk of youth offending by mobilising their family, friendship network and community in making decisions about the help and support they need.
Key objectives:
- To adapt existing FGC service to a true inter-agency model of FGC provision cutting across organisational boundaries
- To develop common outcomes measures, shared referral criteria and standards for FGC practice across agencies including a ‘one stop shop’ for referrals
- To develop strong partnerships between stakeholders (families, communities and agencies) and shared use of resources
- To explore and evaluate ways in which FGCs can be applied in education and youth justice setting, providing a community based service to support parents and help children
This project sought to acknowledge that problems facing children, parents and communities are interconnected. Furthermore these difficulties overlap across agency responsibilities.
The introduction of FGCs into the additional areas of education and youth justice provided an opportunity to test how one unified model can be used to engage families and professionals, in a shared agenda for children.
Therefore this project sought to expand the use of the FGC service beyond the parameters of the Social Services Department’s child protection work to test its effectiveness in two additional and interconnected domains:
a) Using FGCs in Education to:
- Reduce school truancy
- Address problems of bullying and conflict in school
- Manage and address behaviour problems in school that lead to risk of school exclusion
b) Using FGCs in Youth Justice to:
- Divert children from civil and criminal proceedings
- Encourage young people and their families to take responsibility for and make decisions about offending behaviour and to prevent re-offending
- Develop support for the young people in the community
- Ensure that victims’ perspectives are fully heard and valued
These agencies using FGCs for the first time would add to the already established Social Services Department referrals. Many of the families referred by the Social Services Department were already being served by both YOT and/or Education.
1.2 Underpinning Ethos
Family Group Conferences are underpinned by a clear set of practice principles namely:
- Children, parents and extended families are fully involved in all decisions affecting them
- Utilisation of family and community knowledge, skills and strengths
- Partnerships between children, parents, extended family groups and professionals to achieve better outcomes for children
- Children, parents and their families have more say over what they need and how help is provided
- Young people and their families take responsibility for resolving the problems in a flexible and creative way with professionals
- Working in a respectful and culturally responsive way with families
These common principles inform not only the way in which the work is carried out, but also how the project has been introduced and implemented. Therefore policy and practice development and decision making forums were characterised by:
- Participation
- Partnerships
- Mutual respect
- Group decision-making
- Shared power and collective responsibility
- Empowerment
- Cultural sensitivity
Overarching Parenting Strategy
West Berkshire's current service principles reflect the department's renewed focus upon working with families in a way that builds on their strengths. Asking families to work together means that service providers also need to work in partnership to plan and provide preventative services that meet the needs of children and their families. FGCs in a multi disciplinary context are one way of achieving this.