“Substantial work” is needed to improve the recording and reporting of data on family group conferences (FGCs,) ahead of an expected increase in their use on the back of government legislation.

That was among the conclusions of a study commissioned by Department for Education-funded evidence body Foundations into council approaches to collecting and analysing data on FGCs.

It comes with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill set to introduce a duty for councils to offer families a family group decision making (FGDM) meeting – an umbrella term for FGC-style provision – when they are considering issuing care proceedings.

On the back of the research, published this week, Foundations has commissioned charities Coram and the Family Rights Group (FRG) to collect data from councils, on a voluntary basis, on access to, and take up of, FGCs, as part of wider research.

Impact of FGCs on preventing children going into care

In a children’s services context, FGCs are family-led meetings, organised by a practitioner (the FGC co-ordinator), giving extended families the opportunity to make plans for children where there are concerns about their safety and wellbeing. They are generally in-house council services, though some authorities outsource the function.

Previous Foundations-commissioned research, published in 2023, found children whose families were referred to an FGC at the pre-proceedings stage were significantly less likely to be in care 12 months later than those whose families were not so referred.

The finding is one of the key factors behind the government’s planned duty, which is likely to lead to a significant increase in the use of FGCs.

‘Very little information’ on how councils record FGC data

The 2023 study found that, though the vast majority of English councils offered FGCs at the pre-proceedings stage, there was “very little information on what or how local authorities recorded or reported on [them]” and no routinely collected data on the extent to which they were offered and taken up.

As a result, it was not possible to know who was receiving the service and what their outcomes were.

The latest study, produced by Coram, the FRG, FGC provider Daybreak and sector data organisation Data 2 Insight, was designed to understand what data councils collected on FGCs, particularly  at pre-proceedings, the enablers and barriers to them collecting and reporting on data and how a national data collection may be developed.

It involved in-depth site visits to three councils, interviews with staff from 10 other authorities, two parent-carer discussions and analysis of previous work on FGC data collection.

‘Substantial work’ needed on improving data

The study concluded that “substantial work” was needed to improve both the recording and reporting of FGC data by councils.

Councils recorded a range of data, including on referrals, the planning of FGCs, conference meetings, including attendance, FGC plans and reviews and feedback from families and professionals at closure, including views on outcomes.

In some areas, almost all FGC information was recorded on the children’s social care case management system (CMS), often in a specific microsite, while in others, only limited information was stored on CMS, meaning they used spreadsheets “extensively”.

There were advantages and disadvantages to each approach, the study said. While services that predominantly used spreadsheets were able to create and adapt these easily to capture all the information they required, “data entry was manual and therefore required significant capacity”, the report said.

But while services that relied more on CMS required less manual data entry, it was difficult for them to customise FGC data collection, meaning they did not record all of the information they wanted. Also, CMS were much more difficult to adapt and change than spreadsheets, with FGC services sometimes waiting years for changes.

Variation in data quality

There was “substantial variation in the quality of FGC data and in data quality assurance processes”, the report said.

Some services were “quite limited” in what they did to quality assure their data, while others did regular audits of FGC data on their CMS to check for errors or inconsistencies.

Challenges for councils included recording FGC data for each child within a family where they each had separate records on the CMS, and situations when the child was not known to children’s social care and so was not on the CMS. The latter situation tended to result in data being saved outside the case management system.

Data reporting was largely focused on workflow and outputs, such as the number and origins of referrals, the proportion of referrals that resulted in an FGC, the number of FGC meetings and plans completed and details of who attended.

Limited analysis of equity of provision

While services often looked at why families did not take up an FGC, most did not carry out detailed analysis of the factors influencing refusal, such as the characteristics of the family and the point at which a conference were offered.

No council studied looked at equity of access or provision of an FGC, for example, based on the legal status of the child or family demographics compared to the wider population, mainly because of the lack of population-wide data.

“As a result, services were limited in their ability to look at access, especially in terms of equity, diversity, and inclusion,” the research report said.

There was also “limited data” reported on the content of FGC plans, other than to report that the plan had been agreed, sent to families and uploaded onto the CMS.

Lack of reporting on outcomes

While some services reported on satisfaction children’s families’ and professionals’ satisfaction with FGCs, this was stymied by low response rates to feedback, while there was a lack of reporting  on outcomes or impact because of difficulties measuring these.

And though some services looked at measures such as the legal status or living arrangements of the child six or 12 months after an FGC, most acknowledged that it was difficult to attribute these outcomes to an FGC given the many other factors that could have contributed.

FGC service representatives interviewed generally wanted a national data collection to provide benchmarking information, including to measure the impact they were having on social care outcomes for children and any potential cost savings.

However, they raised concerns about how this would work, including because of the differences in FGC services between areas and the difficulties in measuring outcomes.

Creating a national data collection

The study recommended a phased approach to creating a national data collection, which should be co-designed with the sector, account for variations between services and minimise burdens on local authorities.

It said this should start with a voluntary survey of councils to collect aggregated data, without details about individual children or families, which could pave the way for a national data collection of child-level information.

This is being taken forward by Foundations, as part of research it has commissioned from Coram and FRG on how FGCs are offered to families in England and the factors influencing their decision to accept or reject the offer.

National survey of local authorities

Coram and FRG are carrying out a voluntary survey of councils, which covers:

• What an FGC looks like in their area, the process is for making referrals, the number of children that were subject to an FGC referral in 2023-24 and information about them.
• The process around how FGCs are offered to parent/carers, the number of FGCs consented to in 2023-24, the number children in these cases and information about these children.
• The number of FGCs that took place in 2023-24, the number of children involved and information about the children, along with the the number of FGCs that did not take place in 2023-24 and reasons for this.

Data is being collected via an excel template, which can be obtained by emailing Impactandevaluation@coram.org.uk.

The deadline for the data collection is Friday 4 April 2025 and returns should be emailed to Impactandevaluation@coram.org.uk.

Data collection ‘critical’ for ensuring success of policy

Foundations chief executive Jo Casebourne said the collection would “build a clearer picture of what is happening with FGCs across the country and support local authorities to ensure that they are not only accessible but also make a real difference for families and children”.

FRG chief executive Cathy Ashley stressed that the new research was “critical for ensuring the new national family group decision making offer and future policy changes will have real, lasting impact”.

The Department for Education (DfE) is to quiz councils on the balance of social workers and alternatively qualified practitioners in family help teams, which authorities are expected to roll out over the next year.

The requirement to provide this information is likely to be included in conditions set by the DfE for councils’ use of the £270m children’s social care prevention grant in 2025-26.

A core purpose of the grant is the rollout of family help, which involves merging existing targeted early help and child in need services into multidisciplinary teams including social workers, family support staff and practitioners from disciplines such as substance misuse or domestic abuse.

Under the approach, any of these professionals could take on the role of “lead practitioner” in working with families who need targeted early help or whose children have been deemed to be in need.

Removal of social work requirement for child in need assessments

While councils had previously been required, under Working Together to Safeguard Children, to allocate child in need assessments to social workers, this requirement was removed by 2023 revisions to the statutory guidance.

Under the current policy, staff, including those outside of the local authority, will be able to take on the role, now termed ‘lead practitioner’, under the oversight of a social work qualified manager or practice supervisor.

The approach of allocating assessments and cases to any of a range of practitioners is being trialled by the 10 families first for children pathfinder areas. These local areas are testing elements of the previous Conservative government’s children’s social care reforms that are being continued by its Labour successor.

Besides family help, the pathfinder includes creating multi-agency child protection teams and involving family networks in decisions about children’s care when families are struggling, including by providing financial support packages to help keep children safe at home.

Duties to set up multi-agency teams and offer family meetings

These reforms are being partly implemented through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will require councils, police and health partners to set up the multi-agency teams and oblige local authorities to offer parents a family group decision making (FGDM) meeting when considering issuing care proceedings in relation to their children.

They will also be put into effect nationally through the children’s social care prevention grant, in relation to which the government issued draft guidance this week.

This said the grant was ring-fenced for “the implementation of family help and child protection reforms” and the implementation of the FGDM duty.

Supporting families ‘to overcome challenges early’

Funding should be used “across the full breadth of preventative services, including early help, family help, family networks and child protection,” said the draft guidance. “These should support families to overcome challenges at the earliest opportunity, prevent escalation and effectively intervene with high-risk problems.”

Councils should use the funding in tandem with the £253m allocated in 2025-26 to the Supporting Families programme – under which a key worker is allocated to support families with multiple needs – in investing in family help and other preventive support. Though this money has been rolled into a broader children and families grant, worth £414m, only the Supporting Families money should be used as part of the family help rollout.

The government said some of the children’s social care prevention grant – potentially about 30% – should be used on the design and transformation of services, rather than their delivery. As part of this, councils must appoint a named lead responsible for running the programme, along with a senior practice lead, whose role would include practice and cultural change.

Short- and medium-term objectives

The draft guidance said councils should, through the use of the grant, see progress against a set of short- and medium-term objectives.

It said the short-term goals were:

• Professionals and agencies understanding their new roles and responsibilities and how to work together effectively.
• Improved staff knowledge of, and confidence in providing, effective support for children and families.
• Families having an improved understanding of the services and support available to them.
• Families feeling more involved in the design of services.

The medium-term objectives listed were:

• Improved experiences for children and families, including improved relationships and trust with services, families receiving the right support at the right time and wider family networks being involved earlier.
• Services better meeting the needs of children and families.
• Improved decision making and case management.
• Improved information and data sharing between professionals and agencies.

Reporting requirements

The draft guidance said councils would need to report regularly to the DfE to provide assurance they were meeting the objectives. This would include the quarterly collection of data, including:

• Detail on the family help workforce, for example, the number of social work-qualified and alternatively qualified workers and the number of local authority and non-local authority employed practitioners.
• Information on the children benefiting from family help and child protection services, for example, the numbers receiving family help.
• The number of FGDM meetings offered prior to or at the letter before proceedings to parents or those with parental responsibility and the number of meetings facilitated after the offer is made.

In setting out the local government finance settlement this week, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said councils should use the draft guidance to support their financial planning for 2025-26. Final guidance is likely to be issued shortly.