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"You don't really talk at home like we did there, at the meeting...we are quite a close family but because it's a drug habit, you tiptoe round it...but when we were there, it was only about that, so you have to talk about it. So you didn't feel like you had to hold anything back, you could just talk freely."

For this 15 year old, living once again with her mother after two years in foster care, the family group conference had proved a turning point in kicking her crack habit. She was rejoining the access course she had abandoned some months ago and was preparing to go on a residential drug treatment programme. Four months later she was back home, still needing support but apparently off drugs.

We interviewed Kelly and her mum as part of an evaluation of the pilot project on family group conferences run jointly by Hull social services and a local Barnardo's project. Such conferences are being introduced across local authorities in the UK as a means of engaging the extended family and sometimes friends and neighbours with children's and young people's problems. Although they have broadly similar goals, they vary somewhat in how they are set up and managed. This project, for example, specifically excluded children where there were child protection concerns.

Kelly and her mother were upbeat about the experience and its effect on their lives. The family live in a run-down district of Hull and were hardened from years of contact with social services and other agencies. So what was the success of this particular family mediation process down to?

It was important for Kelly and her mother that the process was separate from the statutory one. The convenor was independent of social services and was down to earth. The preparation time had helped set the scene, and the conference had given the family the chance to see what they themselves could come up with. What made it different? "Being given the choice. I had the decision whether or not I wanted to [go on a rehab scheme] and all the family decided whether it was a good idea and whether it was good for me. I think it was me that made the decisions really. I've never been able to do that before. I've just had social workers making decisions for me, without even consulting me, so that was brilliant because you got to decide for yourself."

We looked at the first 20 families for whom group conferences were held, seeking the views of family members, convenors and the referring social workers through questionnaires and interviews. We also had 15 completed questionnaires from children and interviewed a further nine of the children and young people involved. Their views were very interesting, since other evaluations of group conferences do not usually include children's perspectives.

Projects seem to vary in the extent to which children are included in the conference. In Hull, every effort was made to involve them, although sometimes the families themselves did not wish them to be present - something the children concerned complained about in their responses.

The children's questionnaires suggested a mostly favourable view. They appreciated the practical efforts to make them feel welcome. Food and drink were the items most frequently mentioned, followed by seeing members of their family and the chance for the family to talk: "I liked the food and drink. Everybody was polite. It was nice the family got together," was a typical response. Dislikes were relatively few, ranging from "not being able to go in the parents' room", from a child whose family had excluded the children, to "mum and dad disagreeing".

All but one of the nine children and young people we interviewed (ranging from age six to 16) found the conference a good, or partly good, experience. They felt well prepared for what would happen and understood why it was being held: "To talk about supervised contact with my mum, and to find out where I could go if dad goes into hospital again," was the response of one 11 year old. The younger children hoped for treats: "A chocolate bar, some jelly, swimming, ice-skating."

Most were positive about the experience of being in the conference: "Good, positiveÉ I was very safe, comfortable. Plus I'd got the family as well." The absence of professionals was often commented on: "Weird, different. Because the social workers and all that lot aren't there." One child said: "A bit embarrassing, but good."


For some, such as an evidently troubled boy in his early teens, the conference had proved a mixed experience. "I didn't like it. I just didn't like everyone being together." Asked if there was anything he had liked, he replied: "I didn't know my nana and grandad cared that much - I just didn't know." His mother interjects that they have told him before, and he adds: "But it was hearing it, hearing them saying it."

Only one, a 14-year-old, now pregnant and living with friends, found the conference a bad experience. She felt abandoned when the convenor and her social worker went out. "Even though they are my aunties and uncles and I do know them, you haven't seen them for ages and they are just throwing all these questions at you. It was just 'her mum isn't her mother, is she?' and 'her mum this and her mum that' and 'why did I do it?' I was in bits after that."

We asked whether anything had changed as a result of the conference, either for them or for their family. Of the seven who answered, two, including the 14-year-old quoted above, thought nothing had changed. Five felt things had got better. Kelly highlighted an issue that to us, and other researchers,¹ appears central - the importance of further support from social services after the meeting: "It is not that we were sat there, we talked about it and after that jack-all got done, because I bet in some cases that does happen. But in my case it was good - the people they gave us were brilliant. They made us feel comfortableÉ we could speak how we spoke. It just depends who you get and whether your social worker can be bothered."

So enthusiastic was Kelly about the meeting that she has been trying to get a conference set up for her boyfriend.

The children's views, which on the whole were positive, were echoed by family members and social workers. Inevitably, not all was rosy. It is unrealistic to expect families where problems have often been entrenched for years to resolve these in one short meeting. Some of the children, of whom the 14-year-old quoted was an extreme example, felt unsupported, out of control and even abandoned in the meeting, feelings that in some instances were shared by the family members.

As researchers, we made some recommendations which included introducing greater flexibility into managing the conference process, and ensuring that the children had an advocate as the norm rather than the exception. However, the project, which has now been slightly restructured and is nearing the end of its second year, is an example of a local innovation that is managing to empower and address the needs of families, children and young people.

Margaret Bell and Kate Wilson are senior lecturers at the department of social policy and social work, University of York.

References

¹ C Lupton and P Nixon, Empowering Practice? A Critical Appraisal of the Family Group Conference Approach, Policy Press, 1999

Background reading

K Wilson and M Bell, Evaluating Family Group Conferences; a Report on the Hull and Barnardo's 348 Family Group Conference Project, University of York, 2001