Children's Wellbeing Bill - assistance needed

[Jsewell_FRG]

Family Rights Group needs your assistance as a matter of urgency to inform our lobbying work with the new Government about the benefits and potential impact of family group conferences within the child welfare system. It is particularly critical at present, as the Government considers what will be included within the Children’s Wellbeing Bill.

As you may know, the Foundations research (published June 2023) showed that over 2000 children per year could avoid going into care and instead safely remain with their families if family group conferences were rolled out across England. As a result of their research, Foundations recommended that a family group conference should be offered and provided for all families before care proceedings were instigated. This would enable more families to stay living together and could also save more than £150 million within 2 years. There is additional positive research internationally, including from New Zealand where the offer of a family group conference is a duty enshrined in law as part of decision making related to the care and protection of children. At present we are hearing from families, practitioners, and leaders in different local authorities across the country that there is a level of confusion about the difference between FGC and other meetings that could fit within the wide umbrella term of family group decision making. For example, as you will be aware, ‘family network meetings’ are being piloted as part of the Families First for Children Pathfinders and Family Network Plan pilots but there is no agreed definition of this term or any agreed set of principles or standards. However, a family group conference is a well evaluated model which has been offered to children and families in many countries since the early 1990s.

Attached is a briefing document that we have recently published that sets out the benefits of family group conferences and relevant data and research. We hope this will assist your influencing work at local and regional level. We will be embarking on a social media campaign imminently which will draw on this. We continue to encourage you to invite your local MP to hear about your service and I have also attached the briefing document that we sent out previously, which I hope will assist.

It would be very helpful if you could send us any current information about your FGC service which illustrates clearly the benefits that FGC has had for children and families in your local area over the last financial year.

• Any annual evaluation report including impact and outcome data
• Any cost benefit or cost avoided information related to your family group conference service
• Any anonymised practice examples that illustrate the benefits a family group conference had for a family involved with children’s services at any point, including family support, child protection, pre-proceedings or care proceedings and return home from the care system. (Please only send through practice examples that you have consent from families to share. We would not name individual local authorities without your consent, and you can also withdraw consent for our use of the practice example at any time. If you’d like further information about our media consent policy, please let me know).

Thank you for your assistance on behalf of the team at Family Rights Group. If you have any questions, please email fgcteam@frg.org.uk.

Jordene
Family Rights Group