
In 1989, the Labour Government in New Zealand transformed the way decisions were made about children and young people who were victims of abuse and neglect. Today, New Zealand has one of the lowest rates of children in care and more children living safely within their family. UK Labour’s landmark Children’s Wellbeing Bill has similar transformative ambitions to address England’s children’s social care crisis. But to do it right, they shouldn’t stray far from New Zealand’s recipe.
No family is without its challenges. If something should happen affecting our own children, younger sibling, grandchild or a even best mate’s child – such as escalating mental ill-health or addiction – most of us would want to be in driving seat, or at least involved, in finding a solution.
Yet the support that family and friends can offer is not consistently explored prior to a child entering the care system. Families in crisis are not being helped early enough. It means there are children in the care system who did not need to be.
There are record numbers of children in the care system in England, almost 84,000. Those children are often separated from their siblings, have to change school, or move far away from family and friends, leaving them isolated. They enter a care system which is delivering poor outcomes for far too many. All at a significant and growing human cost but also a financial cost straining local authority finances.
The age profile of children in the care system is changing too, with a growing number of older children in care. Our child protection system is largely designed to address safeguarding concerns from within the family. Yet many young people are facing serious risks from outside the home, including being victims of child sexual exploitation and on-line harms, or involvement in country lines.
The key to New Zealand’s success was enabling family to become partners in decision-making. An innovation called the family group conference became the primary means of making decisions about children. Think less fringe meetings and lanyards, and more those close to a child getting round a table to develop their own solutions to support the child’s welfare and satisfy the social worker’s concerns. That might be how they can help the parent out so they can remain the primary carer. Or to identify relatives who can step in as kinship carers. A simple but radical rebalancing of power, creating space for families to come up with creative and personal answers to the challenges they are living day in, day out.
Family group conferences are now used in over 30 countries around the world. That includes the UK where they are the most prevalent family group decision making model. They have been used to address concerns within and outside the home, including child exploitation. A major trial by Foundations found that over 2000 children per year could safely avoid going into care if family group conferences are rolled out across England.
Enter the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, has told Parliament, the Government’s first priority is to keep children with their family wherever it is safe to do so. The Bill will mandate all local authorities to offer family group decision making, so families with children at risk of going into care will be supported to build a plan that works for them. We congratulate the Government on its ambition.
However, we sound a note of caution. The Bill loosely defines family group decision making, leaving local authorities with wide room for interpretation. There’s a very real implementation risk – one we are already seeing play out in overwhelmed children’s services departments – that the key ingredients to success are watered down and the benefits lost when faced with on the ground pressures. Yet the quality of the process matters. For instance, a hastily arranged meeting with the relatives most known to the local authority, led by the preferences of the social worker, is unlikely to give families the trust or the confidence to come up with their own plan in their own way. Indeed, research shows that it leads to the exclusion of wider support including from paternal family members or friends.
Family group conferences require preparation time to ensure all those people who matter to the child and the family are in the room, and for safety planning. A skilled coordinator facilitates the process, and because they are independent from decision-making they can be a trusted mediator between family and state. Meanwhile, private time allows the family to have open, robust conversations to come up with a plan in their own way. Before the local authority confirms their satisfaction with the proposal and supports the family’s plan moving forward.
Tori is a single mum whose daughter’s mental health difficulty, alongside her own, led to a children’s services referral:
“By the time I was contacted by the family group conference coordinator, Louise, I had lost my dignity, hope, and was extremely reluctant and resistant…her persistence and non-judgemental approach slowly began to soften my barriers and helped me put the most recent events into perspective…Everything implemented from the family group conference is still in place. I never lost parental responsibility or even close.”
Kevin is a young father raising his son:
“I often felt like the ghost in the room when children’s services were involved with my family. When my family were able to be together in one room during the family group conference, it was so much easier to see who could help with what… some of my family offered to provide temporary housing to my son and I.”
This is a potentially game changing moment. Let’s make sure we get it right so Labour’s Children’s Wellbeing and School Bill is transformational for children, families and society.
If you enjoyed this piece, click here to read another blog post about children’s social care initiatives.
Cathy Ashley is the Chief Executive and Jordan Hall is the Head of Public Affairs at the Family Rights Group.
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