What is a Family Group Conference?
A Family Group Conference is a decision making and planning process that focuses on the welfare of the child or young person. Family Group Conferences are a helpful process which enables the formal systems (being professional systems) to work in partnership with informal systems such as the family and community systems, and in doing so recognising the knowledge and expertise of both the family and professional systems and how best they can work together.
Family Group Conferences put families in charge of the decision making; the process strengthens families and respects and affirms each family’s unique cultural experience.
Family Group Conferences operate very differently from existing decision-making meetings which tend to be dominated by professionals, tend to take away the responsibility for decision making from families and the community and can discourage the participation of the family. Family Group Conferences make sure that power and responsibility is more evenly shared between the family/community (informal) and professional/agency (formal) networks.
Each Family Group Conference is organised by an accredited Family Group Conference co-ordinator, who is independent from the social work service and other professional services.
