Introduction

Child protection social work can often be experienced as disempowering for families. One of the major problems with United Kingdom (UK) child protection forums is that families feel unable to contribute as active decision-makers (Smithson and Gibson 2017). Child protection conferences are thus argued as failing to realize social work values of partnership and collaboration, often marginalising parental voices (Lutman-White and Angouri 2022).

In responding to these challenges, FGDM and Family Group Conferences (FGC) have seen increased interest in the UK, to reduce power imbalances and provide families with a unique opportunity to be the leaders of decision-making in relation to their children’s welfare. FGDM originated in New Zealand, involving work with Māori children and families and is now widely used internationally as an intervention method for families involved in child protection (Edwards and Parkinson 2019).

FGDM is an umbrella term used to describe a range of family-led decision-making approaches. FGC is widely regarded as the ‘gold standard’ model of FGDM due to its structured process and emphasis on private family time and family-led planning (Edwards and Parkinson 2019). While the terms FGDM and FGC are sometimes used interchangeably, the pilot evaluated in this study aligns most closely with FGC, involving preparation, information sharing, private family time, and agreement of a family plan. This distinction is important in situating the study within the wider FGDM literature.

As such, FGDM as a broad approach promotes rights-based and strengths-based working, providing families with responsibility in planning and managing risks in relation to their children (Corwin et al., 2020). In the UK, FGDM has been found to have positive child protection outcomes and reduce the number of children coming into care (Taylor et al., 2023a). Within the following study, FGDM involved a staged process whereby families, usually referred by their social worker, agreed to take part. An FGDM coordinator was assigned to facilitate family participation and the family meeting. The family’s chosen network, the coordinator and the referrer attended a family meeting where information-sharing took place. Professionals then left the meeting, and the family developed plans during ‘private family time’. Professionals re-entered the meeting to review and agree the plan, which the family was then responsible for implementing. The referring professional was subsequently responsible for reviewing and monitoring the family plan alongside the family (Edwards and Parkinson 2019).

FGDM historically and internationally

In nations where there are minority indigenous or ethnic populations, FGDM has been utilized as a means of restorative practice, which takes account of complex and oppressive histories, aiming to address systemic and institutional oppression of minority families open to child welfare proceedings (Marcynyszyn et al., 2012; Drywater-Whitekiller 2014).

There have been mixed findings regarding how successfully FGDM has translated across cultures and contexts. For some, FGDM is a culturally flexible and sensitive process, attending to the needs of marginalized and ethnic minority groups, particularly in response to their overrepresentation in care systems and negative post-colonial legacies (McCrae and Fusco 2010; Ney, Stoltz and Maloney 2013; Roby et al. 2015). Others urge caution in assuming FGDM is inherently culturally appropriate for all ethnic and cultural minority groups. Such assumptions risk diluting the values and needs of specific cultural groups by blanketing multiple cultural needs as being addressable in the same way (Chand and Thoburn 2005; Godinet et al., 2010; Rauktis, Huefner and Cahalane 2011; Cohen and Gershon 2015; Tauri 2015).

There have been mixed findings about the efficacy of FGDM comparatively with social work-led forums in relation to child welfare outcomes. While some studies found that it did not achieve better child welfare outcomes or reduce re-referral rates (Dijkstra et al. 2018, 2019), others evidence that FGDM shows strong short-term outcomes. FGDM has been found to be linked to faster permanency planning, reduced care placements, and lower recidivism rates (Onrust, Romijn and De Beer 2015; Labrenz and Fong 2016; Rapaport, Poirier Baiani and Manthorpe 2019; Sen and Webb 2019; Olson 2020). It has also been found to have positive benefits for professionals and services, including improved workloads, cultural sensitivity, collaboration, and cost-effectiveness (Baffour 2006; Roby et al., 2015; Barn and Das 2016; Tew 2019; Olson 2020). In the UK, a randomized controlled trial by Taylor et al. (2023a) supports FGDM’S cost-effectiveness and reduction of care entry rates.

Despite debates within the literature regarding outcomes attributable to FGDM, its value and the notably high satisfaction rates are clear (Frost, Abram and Burgess 2014a; Ahn, Hartzel and Shaw 2018). There are key benefits to FGDM, including, but not limited to, increased participation and family involvement in the child’s life (Marcynyszyn et al., 2012; Creemers et al., 2017), a sense of empowerment for families (Bredewold and Tonkens 2021) and time-efficiency in securing permanency plans or family reunification for children (Labrenz and Fong 2016; Olson 2020).

FGDM with children and families in Scotland

In Scotland, FGDM is used more widely than with only those from racially marginalized backgrounds. The works of Mitchell (2020, 2021, 2022) show that in some local authorities across Scotland, FGDM is a well-embedded process, addressing complex issues like lack of recognition that children and young people often experience from social workers, and making space for what families consider their own outcomes. To engender an environment which adequately recognizes families in this way, relationship-based practice is essential (Critchley and Mitchell 2021). FGDM is identified as a process which facilitates and enables relationship-based practice, allowing adequate recognition of strengths and outcomes. Mackay (2003) also found FGDM to have key benefits for young offenders open to the Scottish Children’s Hearing System, encompassing a restorative, less punitive approach.

The principles underpinning FGDM/FGC also align with Scottish child welfare values. As an approach originally designed to address the institutional racism experienced by Māori families, FGCs align greatly with the ethos of prioritizing kinship and identity (Edwards and Parkinson 2019), something also reflected in Scotland’s child welfare approach (Burgess et al., 2010). Therefore, FGDM resonates within the Scottish context, particularly in relation to the strength-based focus of the Children’s Hearings System. In this sense, FGDM/FGC reflects broader Scottish commitments to relationship-based, community-oriented, and minimally interventionist approaches.

Reflective of its alignment with Scottish children and family practices, there is a growing legislative and policy framework supporting FGDM provision. The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 mandates that services provided to families whose children are ‘at risk of becoming looked after’ represent a critical component of implementing a preventative approach (Scottish Government 2016). There is a duty to address issues at an earlier stage, thereby preventing the need for more significant intervention in the child’s life, such as local authority care and formal legal orders (Scottish Government 2016). As part of these preventative requirements, FGDM is listed as a relevant service that local authorities have a duty to provide.

More recently, the provision of ‘The Promise’ provides an even stronger precedent for FGDM across Scotland. ‘The Promise’ is a Scottish Government commitment to the Independent Care Review (2020), which seeks to ensure that children and their families are at the core of decision-making, and that preventative interventions ensure they remain safe, loved, and respected with their families wherever possible. Scotland’s response to the foundations established by ‘The Promise’, is to ensure rights-based support is available, such as FGDM, to all children and their families. As such, FGDM is now reflected in The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), now also legislated in Scotland (McCall-Smith 2023).

In response to this growing legislative and policy expectation, a semi-rural Scottish local authority commissioned third sector partner, Children First, to deliver a pilot FGDM project to families open to child protection proceedings within their locality. As part of the pilot, an automatic referral pathway to FGDM was introduced for all children undergoing child protection proceedings. During the pilot, sixteen families were referred to FGDM on the basis of their child being on the child protection register. Of these sixteen families, nine completed the FGDM process. The local authority and Children First thusly commissioned an evaluation of the pilot’s implementation, to assess the challenges and opportunities entailed. This paper reports on the findings of this evaluation.

Methods

Study design and objectives

The evaluation aimed to assess the experiences of those involved in the FGDM pilot. The objectives were:

1. To explore the lived experience of families and children of child protection and FGDM, investigating to what degree they felt involved and in control.
2. To understand the experience of professionals, including social workers, child protection reviewing officers (CPROs), senior management representatives and FGDM coordinators of their involvement in the pilot.
3. To explore if and how the pilot addressed the aspirations of ‘The Promise’.

Sampling and recruitment

All nine families who completed FGDM, their allocated social worker, FGDM coordinator, and CPRO were invited to participate in the study. Family members and young people were recruited by a participation coordinator at Children First. Professionals were recruited by the university research team, via contact information provided by the participating local authority and Children First. Of the nine families and their allocated professionals invited, at least one family member or professional involved in seven of the families participated. The final sample therefore represented seven of the nine families who completed the pilot.

Using these purposive sampling methods, twenty-four participants were recruited. The final sample comprised eleven professionals: FGDM Coordinators (n = 3), Social Workers (n = 4), CPROs (n = 3), and a Service Manager (n = 1), and 13 family members: Parents (n = 8), Extended Family Members (n = 3), and Young People (n = 2).

Data collection and analysis

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the professional participants by the commissioned university’s research team. The content of the semi-structured interviews with professionals included their experience of being involved in the pilot, its impact on their day-to-day practice, and the extent to which its implementation helped to realize the aspirations of ‘The Promise’. These interviews were conducted and recorded using Microsoft Teams. Interviews were carried out with family members and young people participants by a participation coordinator at Children First, ensuring families and children were approached by someone familiar to them. The content of young people’s interviews involved age- and stage-appropriate discussion around their experience of the meeting, the extent to which they felt safe, listened to and central in the meeting, and how, if at all, things have changed for them since their meeting. The content of family member interviews included their views and experiences of both child protection procedures and of FGDM, the extent to which they felt their voices were heard, and what difference, if any, FGDM made to their experience and their child or young person’s life. Two family members opted to provide their views via written feedback, rather than being interview recorded. All remaining interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim by the research team.

Resulting transcripts were thematically analysed in line with Braun and Clarke’s (2022) six-phase approach, whereby the data were familiarized through repeated reading. Second, initial codes were generated across the datasets. Third, codes were organized into potential themes. Fourth, themes were reviewed and refined for coherence and consistency. Fifth, themes were clearly defined and named. Finally, the themes were reported, supported by relevant data extracts.

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was received from the School of Law and Social Science Ethics Committee at Robert Gordon University (reference number 212210), as well as Children First Charity. Children First utilized a trained participation coordinator, to support with the design, consent gathering and facilitation of the interviews with young people. Children were explained the purpose of the interview using age- and stage-appropriate language, their consent to take part was obtained verbally, as well as from their parents or caregivers, who also received verbal information pertaining to their children’s participation in the research. All adult participants were given participant information sheets containing information pertaining to the purpose of the evaluation, their right to withdraw or refuse to answer questions, data management and handling. Different participant information sheets were created for family members and for professionals, to reflect the different ethical context and personal consequences of their participation. All participants were asked to indicate their understanding of the participant information, confirming their consent either verbally or in written format by signing a consent form.

Findings

Our findings showed that, while there were multiple challenges identified in imbedding FGDM within the context of existing child protection procedures, there was a unanimous perception that FGDM is a worthwhile process for which there is continued need. Four key themes emerged from the study: (1) Voice and Empowerment, (2) Learning and Working Together, (3) Rights and Equality, (4) Differing Perceptions and Translating Outcomes. Through these themes, we discuss the positive way in which FGDM was experienced, particularly when compared to child protection forums, the challenges and opportunities entailed, and the way in which it highlighted the vastly different perceptions and interpretations of change and outcomes between professionals and families.

Voice and empowerment

Through FGDM, family participants experienced an increased sense of voice, with which came feelings of hope for the future and a more positive approach to the ongoing child protection processes, previously experienced as anxiety-provoking and difficult to engage in:

I don’t think we would have a plan to bring [baby] back home if it wasn’t for [FGDM coordinator]. I feel like there is a bit of hope now, but we still don’t have a date to get him back. At least I feel like people are listening to me now (Family Participant 1).

It was acknowledged by both professional and family participants that the fact that the service provider of FGDM was not a statutory professional (such as a social worker) supported with increasing families’ sense of voice. It was perceived as easier to establish trust with non-statutory professionals and maintain an open and honest dialogue than with social work professionals:

…it’s non statutory that are doing it. It’s a different kind of vibe that they get. So, you know… families might talk about stuff with family group decision-making that they absolutely wouldn’t talk about with social work (Social Worker Participant 4).

The strength-based, family-friendly use of language, particularly within the family meeting, was key to making the meeting more enjoyable in comparison to social work-led meetings. Family participants reflected on the deficit-focused language used in child protection conferences:

Usually, I just end up crying afterwards… They never say anything good about me at these meetings. At the family meeting, we could talk about what was good about our family (Family Participant 1).

FGDM also supported children to feel involved in decisions made about them. Young people valued the opportunity to be heard by their families and to be central in a decision-making forum:

I felt safe. I felt like everyone was listening and they were… everyone was starting to understand and it, it’s made life a lot more easier (Young Person Participant 1).

Children’s voices were kept central to the FGDM process through the relationships built with FGDM Coordinators, who spent time engaging with young people to build trust, boost confidence, and enhance communication skills. In addition to verbal input, non-verbal methods were used to ensure children could express their views and feel included. These efforts, combined with witnessing their families collaborate on plans for their wellbeing, were perceived to improve the emotional wellbeing of children:

I think it’s really important that [coordinator] like personalised his plan for him. … he wanted a very specific Superman kind of drawing on his plan and that kind of made him feel, I think involved, and so we could actually have something visual that he’d contributed… I think actually… that was a huge turning point for him to be in that meeting… he came dressed in a suit and everything, so… it was like clearly really important for him. It was really sweet (Social Worker Participant 2).

Positive professional relationships were perceived as key to feeling heard. While some families had strong relationships with their social workers, contributing to better FGDM engagement, others had challenging relationships. FGDM was seen as an opportunity to improve strained relationships, though this was not always successful, with some professionals finding it exacerbated divisions:

Really negative. And because I think that probably the family felt that the family group decision-making process was going to do something that it didn’t do. And it really set our relationship back, a good six months. Um, so it wasn’t positive. It felt a little bit like a them and us unfortunately (Social Worker Participant 4).

While there were unanimous perceptions that FGDM had the potential to increase sense of voice and empowerment, there were also challenges associated with the process, particularly in the context of ongoing child protection, where tensions might already be high between families and the allocated social worker. In this way, FGDM was perceived by social workers as something which functions somewhere in the distance, while their main priority lies in their statutory child protection and safeguarding responsibilities.

Learning and working together

The pilot’s implementation required a multitude of learning, for both families and professionals. One of the key learning points that was identified was the length of time it takes to engage and prepare families for FGDM. It was identified that many families, as a result of intergenerational, historic negative experiences of social work services in combination with ongoing child protection involvement, had a lack of trust in the system. This cynicism impacted family members’ initial motivation to engage in FGDM. Therefore, it took significant amounts of coordinator staff time to try and break down the attitudinal barriers that families had towards services:

…a lot of the families that we had have been in the system for a long, long time and… I perceived a sense of hopelessness or like you know, engaging with the process knowing that it’s just a tick box exercise for social work… (Coordinator Participant 2).

From family members’ perspectives, the invitation to embark on FGDM and being allocated to a new worker at times felt overwhelming, especially in the context of the numerous ongoing meetings and professionals. The overwhelm of partaking in another meeting contributed to an initial reluctance from family members towards the process:

I’m sure everyone’s situations different, but definitely for our situation… we had a lot of other workers that we had to, you know, set dates and times up for meetings, sometimes we were meeting, you know, three different workers in a day and it was kinda like off-putting and it was kinda all a bit confusing to be honest (Family Participant 4).

While family members expressed lacking motivation to embark on another meeting process, they discussed that the first FGDM meeting was key to changing this perception. In this way, all family member participants described the FGDM meeting as a process which felt safe, pleasant and which they would recommend to other families. Families expressed that the key was to have faith in the professionals supporting them and to give the process a chance:

I’d just say, they’re there to help and to ask questions if you’re not sure and just, trust in what they’re trying to do, trust in the process ‘cause it’s, it has positives to it and it can bring families together and it can build broken bridges… just listen to what they’ve got to say, because it does help (Family Participant 2).

While non-referring social workers were not interviewed as part of the evaluation, there were perceptions amongst participating social workers and FGDM coordinators that non-referring social workers may have lacked confidence in the FGDM process. It was acknowledged that in the context of the heavy workload that comes with child protection registration, as well as staffing issues that were being observed in the local authority at the time of the pilot, social workers may have had anxieties about increasing their workloads and handing control over to families:

I don’t know whether people might be anxious about, like, not feeling in control of the process as a social worker. Because I maybe feel like I’ve picked that up a little bit amongst kind of discussions with other colleagues (Social Worker Participant 2).

As such, perceptions around potential anxiety and loss of control form part of the wider conversations around power dynamics in statutory social work procedures, and FGDM as a process which aims to challenge these. It was felt by both coordinator participants and social work qualified participants that if the pilot were to become embedded in child protection practice, clear guidance and training would need to be available to staff, as well as ongoing communication and knowledge exchange:

I think it’s essential for coordinators to feel guided and supported so to continue that and yeah, get social workers to get to know more about the process and how it works (Coordinator Participant 1).

Rights and equality

There were key findings around the role of FGDM in realizing the rights and equality of children and their families. It was acknowledged by social work qualified participants, including CPRO’s and Service Management, that simply offering the opportunity for families to decide if they wanted to take part in FGDM or not, was a way of decreasing the power imbalances that exist in child protection contexts. Offering FGDM was therefore seen as a tool to support families to exercise their parental rights in a process which regularly feels like these rights are at risk. Indeed, many social workers and CPRO’s identified that the rights-based ethos of FGDM was in alignment with their own professional values:

Because ultimately everybody has a right to family, isn’t it? And that’s the focus, because even, even from a social work point of view, we’re supposed to be limited in our interventions and I’m a strong believer in that you don’t want the, you know, the state or whoever intervening in families and the decisions they’re making, it’s a really intrusive type of thing. So, I think being respectful to that and helping families find their own way to support… I’m a big proponent of that (CPRO Participant 3).

Family member participants articulated that social work intervention, particularly of a child protection nature, commonly feels authoritarian, contributing to negative experiences of working with social services. What FGDM provided was a means of removing the power imbalance that comes with child protection processes:

…not being the social worker kind of thing, kind of gives you the best chance to speak about how you’re feeling…I know it’s an authoritarian kind of thing, not wanting to go to the social worker and stuff like that. So it’s another branch where you can come in and get into the process and not feel like it’s kinda too much authoritarian kind of thing (Family Participant 11).

FGDM was also felt to contribute to realizing rights to family, supporting children’s sense of identity by allowing preservation of family connections. In this way, FGDM was felt to support key aspirations of ‘The Promise’ policy, such as every child’s right to maintain family links, particularly sibling connections (Independent Care Review 2020). However, some social worker participants felt that FGDM was not enough to realize the aspirations of ‘The Promise’, highlighting the influence of staff shortages, contextual factors, funding and resource constraints:

…we pay thousands and thousands of pounds per month to have kids accommodated out with the [Local Authority Area]. Why not have like, family… sort of residential units within the [Local Authority Area]? … So that the kids are still staying within their community, they can still go to the same school, or they can go to a school that’s maybe like, half an hour away rather than move like an hour, two hours away… And I think that needs to be addressed and until that’s going to be addressed then we’re never going to be able to fulfil the complete Promise (Social Worker Participant 3).

Differing perceptions and translating outcomes

There were significant differences in how families and professionals interpreted challenges and positive change. Families described issues like poor communication in co-parenting, while social workers framed challenges using professional language aligned with child protection registration categories, such as domestic abuse or substance misuse. Social workers often questioned the timing of FGDM referrals, driven by automatic organizational referral pathways, rather than their own professional assessments. Perceptions of risk also varied. Social workers did not always perceive adequate change, while families perceived improved communication, clearer structure for their child, and reduced family conflict:

We are all talking more, we are on the same page now instead of blaming each other. We all have agreed what he needs to do and when, and what the boundaries are. We can all pick up the phone and know what’s expected of us all. There is still a way to go though (Family Participant 5).

Despite differences in perceptions of risk reduction, it was felt that family taking the lead in the plan had the potential to make it more sustainable, due to increased likelihood of families sticking to a plan made by them, rather than imposed by social work. Despite hopes for a more sustainable long-term plan, some social workers assessed the family plans as unsustainable or unrealistic in the context of the present welfare concerns:

…it’s not a realistic plan and it was almost like they were allowed free reign with stuff that you know, me as a professional knew they were never gonna meet the expectations… (Social Worker Participant 3).

Even between non-statutory and statutory professionals, there were differences in perceptions of the impact of FGDM. While statutory professionals had explicit measures with which they were assessing whether adequate change in the child’s living circumstances had occurred, coordinators appeared more flexible and open in their interpretations of positive change:

…some of the cases that I thought were quite successful in many ways then the social workers didn’t think it was successful. They thought, well, actually, you know, nothing changed really. But I mean, in my view it was different, it’s like, no actually, you know, this change, this kid was able to express their views and get something out of this and this kid’s confidence, you know, was increased massively… (Coordinator Participant 2).

Alongside mixed perceptions about FGDM’s role in reducing risk and fostering positive change, social workers faced challenges monitoring risk and approving FGDM plans as the sole statutory professional involved. At times, FGDM became an uncomfortable forum for social workers:

…that can be really confrontational, and if you’re a single social worker doing that and you’ve got no backup around you… as a worker, you’re not just working as an individual, you’ve got a team around you… Family group decision-making, you’re on your lonesome there, and then you’ve got to bring up these issues on your own and you’ve got maybe lots of family members, as I had, firing questions, being really quite aggressive… That is really difficult (Social Worker Participant 4).

For CPRO participants, FGDM had the potential to pose ethical and practical dilemmas, such as handling sensitive information about family members that could not be disclosed due to data protection. Incorporating FGDM plans into statutory child protection agendas also proved challenging and confusing:

…something that I think needs clarified… is where the FGDM plan sits within the children’s plan… I’ve seen examples where that has clouded… situations… I actually had a case conference where the social worker had literally put the FGDM plan into the child’s plan which didn’t fit either… I mean it didn’t make for very good reading of a plan because… it didn’t fit…didn’t correspond with our well-being indicators (CPRO Participant 1).

These key differences in perceptions of change and risk highlighted the need to translate expectations and outcomes between participant groups. What some participants considered a key outcome, others perceived as simply a benefit. The pilot’s novelty and early evaluation stage also made it challenging to articulate FGDM’s impact:

…it’s still quite early. I don’t think there’s an impact across the board. Well, I don’t think I can see evidence of, of any huge, big ‘ohh my goodness, it’s just all been wonderful since we’ve had this FGDM’. I don’t think there’s that. Partly because… we’re still picking up where it’s not even been considered (CPRO Participant 1).

Despite difficulty in being able to agree or attribute outcomes to FGDM, there was consensus that the value-base of FGDM made it of considerable value:

…often the mediation process of FGDM enables families to start speaking together, where they’ve fallen out and haven’t spoken together for a long time, and that can bring the support element back that was lost for some, sometimes a silly argument, as people will say later on. So… there is a huge value in that (Service Manager Participant).

In this sense, all participants supported continuing FGDM and widening its eligibility to reach more families with varying needs. A key finding was the importance of timing, with many emphasizing the need to offer FGDM when families are best able to engage and benefit. Social workers noted that limited positive impact often stemmed from families being in crisis or facing complex issues. Professional participants advocated for offering FGDM earlier, before child protection or statutory intervention, as did family participants:

I didn’t even know it was a thing [FGDM service], I think that FGDM should be offered in school before it even reaches social work. It would have been good to have had this before it even got to this point… (Family Participant 1).

While it was acknowledged that offering FGDM at a child protection stage is itself a preventative intervention to avoid children becoming looked after or escalation to legal orders, participants felt it would be beneficial even earlier. The need for FGDM at an earlier stage was one perception which was shared unanimously by all participant groups, despite differences in perceptions of risk, outcomes, and change.

Discussion

Our findings reveal significant differences in how families and professionals interpret and express experiences. These differences in experience and evaluation between professionals and families align with prior FGDM research in child welfare contexts (Burns and Fruchtel 2014). Mitchell (2020) identified distinctions between personal and professional outcomes, both of which are vital, with FGDM offering a space for each to be heard. This highlights the gaps between the systems shaping child protection language, and thresholds and the perceptions within families’ personal worlds (Hayes and Houston 2006).

Negative historical and current experiences with social work services, and particularly child protection processes, profoundly affect families’ willingness to engage with new processes, like FGDM (Ney, Stoltz and Maloney 2013). While our study found that in some cases, FGDM was felt to exacerbate tensions in professional relationships, it has been found in to have the potential to bridge language gaps and improve relationships between families and professionals (Mitchell 2021). FGDM allows a space in which outcomes are not solely determined by professional procedures, categories and language, instead allowing room for family’s interpretations, lifeworlds, and preferred language (Hayes and Houston 2006; Mitchell 2020, 2021). As such, our study evidenced qualitative contradictions regarding FGDM’s impact on professional relationships.

Recent evidence further supports the relational and participatory benefits of FGDM. A Scottish study found that participants experienced improved relationships with professionals, greater feelings of recognition and increased confidence in engaging with services following FGC (Mitchell et al., 2018). Families value outcomes connected to trust, communication and relational change, rather than solely formal child welfare indicators. These findings are reinforced by the recent large-scale randomized controlled trial of FGCs at pre-proceedings stage in England, which demonstrated that children and families referred to FGCs were significantly less likely to progress to care proceedings than those receiving usual services (Taylor et al., 2023a). Collectively, this evidence suggests that FGDM/FGC may be understood not only as a mechanism for reducing statutory intervention, but also as a relational practice capable of strengthening collaboration, recognition, and trust between families and professionals within child protection systems.

The difficulty expressed in knowing how to measure change and impact related to FGDM was reflected in debates within the literature (De Jong and Schout 2018; Lalayants et al., 2022). While social worker participants in our study held the view that plans established from the FGDM process had the potential to be more sustainable and long-term than those imposed by social work, literature debates the longevity of outcomes achieved via FGDM in contrast to social work-led processes. Authors have highlighted that in many cases, the outcomes achieved from FGDM were short-term, rather than long-term (Weigensberg, Barth and Guo 2009; Dijkstra et al., 2019).

Despite uncertainty attributing outcomes to FGDM, family satisfaction with the process was notably high. Families valued its strength-based approach in contrast to deficit-focused child protection processes. Professionals aligned FGDM with their rights-focused professional values. Indeed, literature has shown that when social work intervention models align with and reflect core social work values, such as empowerment and strengths-focus, satisfaction rates are generally higher (Walsh and Lord 2004; Caiels, Milne and Beadle-Brown 2021). Similarly, previous authors highlight high participant satisfaction as a key indicator of FGDM’s value, despite difficulties linking it explicitly to long-term outcomes (Sundell, Vinnerljung and Ryburn 2001; Frost, Abram and Burgess 2014b). The notion that family satisfaction is one of the main benefits of FGDM was also something which had mixed responses from participants. Some social workers felt FGDM did not fundamentally change or improve the child’s circumstances, others felt that it helped to reduce risk through the inclusion and support network building it allowed. Unanimously, regardless of their personal experience of it, participants from family and professional backgrounds felt that FGDM increased the experience and satisfaction of the process of addressing child welfare concerns, compared to Child Protection Conferences.

Debate persists about whether high satisfaction alone justifies FGDM’s continued use in contexts of unclear child welfare outcomes. It has been argued that in regular social work services, impact and outcomes are measured by the actions and responses following child protection meetings rather than the meeting itself (Morris and Connolly 2012). This contrasts with FGDM, where the meeting and its high satisfaction rates often serve as a metric of success, rather than the family’s subsequent actions.

Therefore, a number of authors have argued that there are methodological flaws in how FGDM as a process has been evaluated, with the use of randomized controlled trials being questioned due to the fact that the complex practice of FGDM is difficult to control and that sample sizes of previous studies are commonly inadequate to draw truth claims and hold high risk of bias (Schout 2022). Alternative evaluation methods have thus been suggested to address the methodological deficits found to exist in FGDM impact measurement, including process evaluation with smaller groups, establishment of clear fidelity measures for the models used and utilizing multiple lines of enquiry (De Jong and Schout 2018; Edwards et al., 2020; McGinn et al., 2020).

In the present study, social workers and families alike articulated a strong value alignment with FGDM, reflective of the principles of Scotland’s ‘The Promise’. ‘The Promise’ reinforces the relevance of FGDM within the Scottish context through its emphasis on relational, family-led support. Rather than focusing primarily on managing risk and deficit, ‘The Promise’ advocates that families should be empowered and supported to make decisions which keep their children safe and thriving. This ethos closely aligns with FGDM/FGC principles, which seek to position families as active decision-makers and recognize the strengths, relationships, and resources that exist within family networks. In particular, FGDM reflects the ethos that ‘scaffolding of the system must shift from managing risks and needs to supporting families to find their own solutions’ (Independent Care Review 2020, 55).

Limitations

This qualitative, interview-based study was undertaken with those who had completed the pilot, and the results consequently are not generalizable to FGDM nationally or internationally. The study focused on families referred to FGDM on the basis of being involved in child protection proceedings. As such, the results may not reflect the experiences of families involved in FGDM who are not undergoing child protection. As a pilot evaluation, the study captures a moment in time and may not be reflective of participants final perceptions. The number of participants was limited due to recruitment challenges. There were low numbers of children and young people participants in the study as most of the children for whom family meetings were held were under five.

Conclusion and implications

Our study found FGDM to be a valuable process, with participants supporting its continuation and expansion. Offering FGDM earlier, before challenges escalate to child protection, was identified as key to fostering engagement and reducing the opportunity for negative biases to develop from families’ historic and current social work experiences. This raises important questions about safeguarding FGDM’s family-led ethos when determining the timing of its provision. As such, future research should seek to explore whether timing of FGDM within child protection contexts impacts uptake, as well as how the choice-based, rights-based nature of FGDM can be maintained whilst offering it at the right time for families. So too, resource constraints and staff shortages were significant factors influencing social workers’ capacity to refer to and support FGDM. These findings suggest that offering FGDM universally, through public advertising and self-referral, could enhance early access and reinforce its empowering ethos by allowing families to opt into the process independently.

The study also exemplifies both the complexity and profound impact of internalized beliefs and historic experiences between families and social work systems, and how these impact the realization of processes like FGDM. This raises key questions about the structure of current child protection and the limited room for strengths-based and rights-based dialogues. For example, whether traditional child protection procedures and their disempowering nature decrease the likelihood of successful FGDM uptake and completion, from both families and professionals.

Overall, our study found that relationships, their nature, and the context in which they are enacted has a profound impact on perception and experience of rights-based, family-led processes like FGDM. To ensure the genuine realization of a whole-family approach which promotes the welfare of children, there is a need to provide safe relational spaces to create new, positive experiences, translate language, and heal negative perceptions. Child protection conferences often do not provide the necessary relational dynamic and sense of safety. Further research is required to examine the current structure of child protection procedures in Scotland and the UK more broadly, how FGDM can be offered and how families are encouraged to take the lead in their decisions to take part. The study points to key areas for future evaluation, including comparative analysis of outcomes of FGDM depending on whether it is offered pre- or post-child protection stage, and piloting FGDM as a universal service.