Family Group Conference

A Family Group Conference (FGC) is a mediated formal meeting between family members and other officials such as social workers and police in regards to the care and protection or criminal offending of a child or adolescent. FGCs originated in New Zealand, and were originally used to allow social work practice to work with and not against Māori values and culture. The Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989 made them a central part of practice and services where serious decisions about children are to be made.

The Family Group Conference is where the whole whānau (family & extended family members) can help make decisions about the best way to support the family and take care of their child. It is a formal meeting in which the family and whanau of the child and professional practitioners closely work together to make a decision that best meet the needs of the child. The process has four main stages, which includes a meeting where professionals inform the family of the concerns they have, followed by private family time, where the family alone develop a plan that addresses the concerns that have been raised. The plan is then presented to the professionals who should support it if the concerns have been addressed and it does not put the child at risk. The meetings are facilitated and co-ordinated by people independent of casework decisions in the agency working with the family

FGCs are used in care and protection cases. They have also been described as the ‘lynch-pin’ of the New Zealand youth justice system.

A family group conference (FGC) is a structured decision-making meeting made up of ‘family’ members. ‘Family’ is determined broadly, to include the children, parents, extended family and even significant friends and neighbours to the family who may not actually be blood-related. This group of people are given ‘private’ time to reach a plan to facilitate the safe care and protection of a child or children in need. The professional is involved in information giving at the beginning of the process and in the assessment of the plan following a decision. All professionals are excluded from the private time, which is attended by family members only. Family Group Conferences are used to make plans for children in a number of different contexts: Child Welfare, Youth Offending, Education Welfare, Domestic Violence, Children as Young Carers, Foster Breakdown, adoption etc. There would appear to be no particular area of work where this process is unsuitable. Some areas such as Child Protection and Youth Offending have used the process extensively, whilst others such as Education Welfare, Adoption and Adult services are still at the exploration stage.

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Wikipedia