Community Care would like to wish everyone in the profession a very happy World Social Work Day 2025!

While we know that it’s in the nature of social workers not to blow their own trumpets, we salute each and every one of you for the critical work that you do, and hope you feel today is a day when  you – and the profession across the globe – are truly celebrated.

To mark the day, we held a free webinar on restorative and relational practice, delivered by Paul Nixon, formerly New Zealand’s chief social worker.

An expert on family group conferences (FGCs), he explored how these approaches bring families and communities into decision making about children and adults, to create lasting change.

Here’s some of the feedback from practitioners who attended the webinar:

“I enjoyed hearing about the use of FGCs in other countries and how this is used positively.”

“Lots of really excellent informed knowledge provided which I will take forward in my learning journey.”

“I liked the way Paul showed compassion for the subject matter and explained information/theories thoroughly.”

A recording of the webinar is now available for Community Care Inform subscribers on the Inform Adults and Inform Children’s sites.

“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”.

To mark World Social Work Day 2025, Community Care is offering free learning to social care practitioners on relational and restorative practice.

Consultant social worker Paul Nixon – formerly New Zealand’s chief social worker – will explore how these approaches bring families and communities into decision making about children and adults, to create lasting change, in a one-hour webinar.

Paul Nixon

Paul, who worked as a social worker and leader in England for 20 years before taking up his post in New Zealand, is an expert on family group conferences (FGCs), which empower family networks to make decisions where there are safeguarding concerns in relation to children or adults.

His presentation will combine theory, evidence, storytelling and practical tips to explore how practitioners can move power and responsibility back to families and communities, building on cultural strengths and relationships.

It will also look at how FGCs can be used innovatively, at different stages of safeguarding concerns with children, families and adults.

The free webinar takes place from 12noon – 1pm on 18 March 2025, this year’s World Social Work Day.

Book your place now.

Community Care Inform subscribers will have access to the recorded version of the webinar, plus a written transcript and additional resources mapped to the theme of this year’s World Social Work Day – strengthening intergenerational solidarity for enduring wellbeing.

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Councils and partner agencies are to be required to establish multi-agency child protection teams, under legislation to overhaul children’s social care.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would also allow for the regulation of agency work in children’s social care and the creation of a new type of placement in which a child could be deprived of liberty.

Other planned reforms include requiring authorities to offer families a family group decision making meeting before making a care or supervision order application, to enable the network around the child to discuss and make proposals regarding their welfare.

The proposals are largely those set out by the Department for Education (DfE) in a policy paper last month.

Multi-agency child protection teams

The creation of multi-agency child protection teams was a recommendation from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s 2022 report into the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson.

That review found a “systemic flaw in the quality of multi-agency working”, with “an overreliance on single agency processes with superficial joint working and joint decision making”.

On the back of this report, and that of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, the previous government selected 10 areas to test the value of multi-agency child protection teams, alongside other measures, under the families first for children pathfinder. The measure in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will be part of a national rollout of the pathfinder.

Under the bill, councils, chief officers of police and relevant NHS integrated care boards (ICB) must set up one or more multi-agency child protection teams for the relevant local authority area.

The teams’ composition and role

Each team would consist of at least one social worker and educational professional, put forward by the relevant director of children’s services, a health professional nominated by the relevant ICB and a police officer chosen by the chief of police.

The government will specify requirements for these roles, for example in relation to qualifications and experience, in regulations under the legislation. This is likely to include requirements for lead child protection practitioners, the specialist social workers who form part of the multi-agency teams being tested through the pathfinder.

The legislation states that the teams’ role would include supporting councils in carrying out their duty to investigate child protection concerns, under section 47 of the Children Act 1989, along with other duties prescribed in regulations.

However, based on the pathfinder, it is likely that the role of the multi-agency teams will be to carry out section 47 investigations and other core child protection functions.

What else is in the bill?

Other measures in the bill include:

• Enabling the government to regulate councils’ use of agency workers in children’s social care, which would cover both social worker and non-social worker roles. This would be based on rules brought into force in October 2024, which only cover social workers.
• Mandating councils to offer a ‘family group decision making’ meeting when they are seriously considering applying for a care or supervision order, to give families an opportunity to come together and make a proposal in response to concerns regarding the child’s welfare.
• Providing a statutory framework to authorise a deprivation of liberty for children who need it to keep them safe, in accommodation other than a secure children’s home, designed with the primary purpose of care and treatment.
• Enabling the government to require councils to join together regionally to carry out their functions for accommodating looked-after children. Such regional care co-operatives are currently being tested in two areas.
• Empowering Ofsted to subject parent companies to an improvement plan if any of their subsidiaries are suspected of failing to meet the required standards in two or more regulated services that they run, such as children’s homes.
• Enabling Ofsted to impose fines on companies for breaches of care standards, including for running unregistered children’s homes.
• Setting up a financial oversight regime, run by the DfE, for the largest and most significant providers of children’s social care services, which would require them to provide information to the DfE on their finances, including in relation to their sustainability.
• Giving the government the power, through regulations, to cap the profits of non-local authority providers of children’s homes or fostering agencies.
• Requiring local authorities to publish a local offer setting out their support for kinship families.
• Requiring councils to provide to eligible care leavers up to the age of 25 with support with finding and maintaining accommodation and accessing services where their welfare requires it
• Automatically including education and childcare agencies in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.
• Making provision for the specification of a single unique identifier for each child, to aid information sharing between agencies.
• Extending the role of virtual school heads to promoting the educational achievement of children in need and children in kinship care on a statutory basis.
• Requiring councils to have and maintain children not in school registers and provide support to home-educating parents.
• Empowering local authorities to require that children subject to child protection processes attend school when school is in their best interests.

Good practice in family group conferencing must not be diluted as the intervention gets rolled out across children’s social care services.

That was the warning from experts at an event this week to mark the publication of a study that found rolling out FGCs to families at the pre-proceedings stage could prevent 2,000 children going into care each year, saving over £150m a year.

FGCs are facilitated, family-led meetings of relatives, friends and professionals involved with a child at risk that are designed to produce a plan to keep the child safe within the family.

Children’s social care reforms

Alongside the research, commissioned by evidence body Foundations in June, the Department for Education has proposed revising the Working Together to Safeguard Children guidance to encourage use of FGCs from early help onwards where there is a risk of the child going into care.

And it will test the impact of using family group decision making – a more general concept than FGCs – at an early stage of a child’s involvement with social care as part of its children’s social care reform programme.

This will be through the up to 12 families first for children pathfinders, which will test the DfE’s proposed new model of family help and child protection, and the separate family network pilots taking place in seven local authorities.

Children’s minister David Johnston

New children’s minister

Addressing this week’s meeting, organised by Foundations, recently-appointed children’s minister David Johnston said FGCs were a key plank of the government’s ambition to reduce the number of children going into care.

“I think family group conferencing is so important and the evaluation confirms that,” he said. “It is reducing by significant proportion the number of people going into care. [The cost savings] are not my primary concern. My primary concern is that in preventing them going into care they will have beter outcomes as young people.”

Isabelle Trowler, the chief social worker for children and families

Following Johnston, the DfE’s chief social worker for children and families, Isabelle Trowler, said the Foundations-commissioned study was groundbreaking in so far as it used a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to test the impact of FGCs.

RCTs are considered the gold standard method for testing the impact of an intervention and involve comparing outcomes between a group receiving the intervention and an otherwise similar control group that does not.

‘Step-change in quality of social care evidence’

Referring to the study’s importance in harnessing wider government support for FGCs, Trowler said: “Nothing makes the Treasury sit up like an RCT. It gives confidence to the politician and the purse holders, but, critically, to local practice leaders.”

She added: “In the past 10 years, we have had a step-change in the quality of evidence coming into our work and that’s holding us in much better stead for decisions about funding.”

Though family group conferences, which originate among Māori communities in New Zealand, were introduced to England in the 1990s, their coverage remains patchy, said Foundations chief executive Jo Casebourne.

Charity the Family Rights Group has long promoted the use of FGCs, including through a dedicated network, and runs an accreditation scheme setting good practice standards for carrying them out.

Need to stick to FGC model

Speaking at this week’s meeting, Gloucestershire County Council’s FGC manager, Alex Ryan, advised fellow authorities to join the Family Rights Group network and stick to its standards.

“It’s not the Family Rights Group model, the Māori in New Zealand created that,” she said. “It came for a reason, because their children were being disproportionately taken into care.

“The need to stick to the model is for values-based reasons – it’s about going from being professionals are the experts to the families being the experts…This makes sure that family voice, their wisdom and experience stays at the centre of the discussion.”

Ryan particularly highlighted the importance of families having private time – without any professionals present – to develop their plan, adding: “The FGC model needs to be the FGC model because it has that private family time where they are not being pressured to do one thing or another. If we say we’re going to take them somewhere that is led by them, we cannot impose our agenda.”

Importance of private time for families

Her point was echoed by Family Rights Group chief executive Cathy Ashley, who raised concerns about the DfE’s use of the term, ‘family group decision making’, as the approach it wanted to test through its children’s social care reforms.

“The problem of using family group decision making is that you get a variety of interpretations – it doesn’t involve private time [for families] or giving families time for reflection,” she added.

Casebourne added that “too often, families are receiving a rushed FGC that does not meet Family Rights Group standards”.

In response, Trowler acknowledged the importance of FGC co-ordinators being independent, adding: “The big thing for me is what do we mean by independence and what does this mean for the family who is the subject of the conference. Whatever it is, the family needs to feel that that facilitator is neutral.”

Tim Aldridge

Meanwhile, Camden council director of children’s services Tim Aldridge said that FGCs should be seen as one element in making the whole children’s social care system more collaborative with families.

“There’s the scope for the whole system to be more collaborative and think about how it shares power with families,” he added. “We shouldn’t see family group conferences as a standalone but as part of a broader way of working with families.”

David Westlake’s July 2023 article for Community Care argued for more randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in social work research and the merits of the recently published RCT on family group conferences (FGC RCT).

As one of the academics who opposed the FGC RCT – commissioned by What Works for Children’s Social Care (now Foundations) and designed and carried out by Coram – I want to explore some of the concerns I, and others, hold about its conduct.

Academics’ opposition to the FGC RCT was not an absolute objection to the use of RCTs in social work research.

RCTs may be largely uncontroversial in some contexts and the ethical issues involved in one which, say, evaluates a training course are different to those concerning a trial that denies a family an FGC when their children are on the edge of care.

They need to be explored on a case-by-case basis.

Objections to randomly allocating families a service

Our objections to the FGC RCT centred on the point at which, and the manner in which, families were randomised into an ‘intervention group’ offered an FGC and a ‘control group’ who were not.

The randomisation occurred when families were referred to pre-proceedings under the Public Law Outline (PLO), meaning there was a good chance the local authority would subsequently apply to court to place their children outside of parental care.

The randomisation also occurred without families’ knowledge and consent.

Those in the ‘control group’ were denied the chance of choosing an FGC at this critical moment in their family’s life and were not routinely informed that other families in similar situations in their local authority were being offered an FGC.

Other viable research designs available

There were other viable research designs for the study, instead of randomisation.

These included comparing data for families before or after the FGC service was set up, and during the period when the service was running; or, comparing data between families who chose to have an FGC and those who did not.

Crucially, these alternatives would have preserved families’ ability to choose an FGC when that service was available within their local authority. It would also have meant evaluators could be transparent with families about the study’s design.

Study design ‘contrary to social work principles’

The way this RCT was undertaken conflicted with the International Federation of Social Workers’ Global Social Work Statement of Ethical Principles.

This stipulates that social workers should support the self-determination, and the participation, of those with whom they work, wherever possible.

It also conflicted with Social Work England’s professional standards, which state that social workers should:

• respect and promote the human rights, views, wishes and feelings of the people they work with, balancing rights and risks and enabling access to advice, advocacy, support and services (standard 1.2); and
• work in partnership with people to promote their well-being and achieve best outcomes, recognising them as experts in their own lives (1.3).

Some researchers may argue they are not bound by social work ethical codes.

However, it is not obvious why it should be acceptable for researchers to design a study of families receiving a social work service in a way that would be considered unethical if applied in everyday social work practice.

Doing to – not with – families

Notably, the FGC RCT study protocol stated that if a court decreed that a family in the ‘control group’ should receive an FGC, then the local authority should respect this judgment and offer one.

The study’s randomisation process could therefore be broken on the say of a judge, but not at the direct request of the family whose lives were involved. Far from ‘nothing about us without us’, this was ‘everything about you without you’.

Foundations has failed to recognise the irony in it proclaiming the FGC RCT as a ‘landmark study’, which provides validation of the value of ‘working with families’, when the study itself ‘did to’ families.

Why should such a disjuncture between the methods used to research families, and the methods advocated for practising with them be deemed acceptable? The ethical concerns I describe mean that for some of us, the study will continue to constitute a low mark, not a landmark.

Robin Sen is a lecturer in social work at the University of Edinburgh and co-editor of a recent book collection, The Future of Children’s Care, Critical Perspectives on Children’s Services Reform

Three councils have been selected to test giving responsibility for child protection cases to specialist social workers over the next two years.

Dorset, Lincolnshire and Wolverhampton will also trial merging targeted early help with child in need teams within a new family help service, as part of the Department for Education (DfE’s) proposed children’s social care reforms.

The three authorities are the first group of an expected 12 “pathfinders” testing out the families first for children model set out in the DfE’s draft strategy, Stable Homes, Built on Love, issued in February.

Based on the proposals of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, this would involve:

• Establishing family help services to provide families in need with multidisciplinary support designed to resolve the issues they face without the need for more intervention, reduce stigma and remove the bureaucracy of stepping cases up and down between targeted early help and child in need.
• Enabling practitioners other than social workers to hold child in need cases – as defined by section 17 of the Children Act 1989 – removing the prohibition on them doing so set by statutory safeguarding guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children.
• Having specialist child protection lead practitioners co-work cases with family help teams from the point a local authority initiates a child protection enquiry.

Concerns over safeguarding risks and retention

The reforms are controversial, with the British Association of Social Workers and Ofsted having raised concerns about the safeguarding risks arising from removing the requirement for social workers to hold child in need cases.

Meanwhile, both Ofsted and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services have voiced misgivings about the impact of the lead child protection practitioner role on social work retention, in the context of mounting vacancy rates in local authority children’s services.

In its response to Stable Homes, Built on Love, the ADCS said social workers had shared concerns about “the high stakes nature of such a role, particularly if a tragedy sadly occurs”.

“High end child protection work is hard to sustain over long periods of time, it is emotionally taxing and there are few guarantees it will result in practitioners staying in frontline practice,” it added.

The three pathfinder authorities are all rated good (Dorset and Wolverhampton) or outstanding (Lincolnshire) by Ofsted and all have social work vacancy rates below the national average of 20%, as of September 2022, with Dorset’s being 13.8%, Lincolnshire’s 15.6% and Wolverhampton’s 17.6%.

In relation to the number of child protection plans per 10,000 children, as of March 2022, Lincolnshire’s (25.6) was well below the national average of 42.1, Wolverhampton’s was around the England-wide figure (42.3) and Dorset’s was above it (47.7).

Family network pilots

The DfE has also selected seven councils to pilot the use of so-called family network support packages to enable wider family members to step in to prevent children entering the care system when there are risks to them at home. This was also proposed by the care review.

Brighton and Hove, Sunderland, Gateshead and Telford and Wrekin will start their family network pilots this month (July), and Staffordshire, Hartlepool and Hammersmith and Fulham will do so in spring 2024.

The news comes with a recent evaluation having found that using family group conferences (FGCs) – a form of family network decision making – reduced the risk of children going into care 12 months after families entered pre-proceedings.

Meanwhile, councils would be encouraged to refer families to FGCs from early help onwards, under proposed changes to Working Together, which are currently out to consultation.

The 12 families first for children pathfinders and seven family network pilots will receive £45m in funding overall up to March 2025, with £7.8m of this allocated to the latter.

ADCS president John Pearce said the announcement was a “positive step”, but said it was imperative for the learning from the pilots and pathfinders to be shared with the rest of the sector as quickly as possible.

“The earlier we work with, and provide support to, vulnerable children and families to help them overcome the issues they face, and to stay together safely where possible the less impact these challenges will have on their lives but also on society,” said Pearce. “While the investment announced today is welcome, we continue to need a long-term equitable funding solution for children’s services so that all children and families can thrive, wherever they live.”

DfE still looking for regions to test care co-operatives

The department is still looking for two regions to test its plan to regionalise the commissioning of care placements within so-called regional care co-operatives, which would be collectives of local authorities.

RCCs are designed to overcome the challenge of individual councils being too small – and having too few children – to be able to meaningfully shape the services providers offer and ensure that they meet need and are value for money.

The DfE has said that, by operating at much greater scale than councils, RCCs would be much better able to forecast need, and commission sufficient placements, in the right places, to meet it.

It would also be much easier to share learning, good practice and information about the cost and quality of providers between 20 RCCs, compared with 153 councils, improving the quality of commissioning.

However, the ADCS said last month that, while there were “varying degrees of interest in taking up a RCC pathfinder opportunity”, at present, “no region seems to be interested in adopting the approach as outlined by DfE”.

In a separate paper, the association voiced “significant reservations” about the proposal’s capacity to address the challenge of there being insufficient placements of the right kind and quality for children in care.

The association said creating RCCs would be “costly and time consuming” and “may result in a mass exist of providers”, such was the current fragility of the care placements market.

The DfE said the RCC pathfinders would “enable a test and learn approach to find the most effective way of implementing this reform, doing so in conjunction with local government and the children’s social care sector”.

By David Westlake, Cardiff University

Two of the largest randomised controlled trials (RCTs) ever conducted in social work have been published recently by Foundations*.

Last month, Sarah Taylor and her team from Coram reported that children whose families were referred for family group conferences (FGCs) were significantly less likely to be in care 12 months after entering pre-proceedings than those whose families were not so referred.

Earlier this year, my colleagues and I found that a scheme placing social workers in schools did not make any difference to the child protection and care outcomes we assessed, such as the likelihood of a section 47 investigation.

Policy impact of research

Whereas policymakers are not investing in social workers in schools, there is now a stronger case for rolling out FGCs for families in pre-proceedings.

If nothing else, these studies put to bed the idea that RCTs are practically, financially, or ethically impossible in children’s services.

Both these studies weathered the storm of the pandemic, stuck closely to their original plans and collected enough data to present strong conclusions. Neither cost more than one would anticipate for studies of their size, and both were well within the standard rule of thumb for evaluation costing (5-10% of the budget for the intervention).

Ethical objections to randomised controlled trial

Photo: tumsasedgars/Adobe Stock

In relation to ethics, some academics opposed the FGC project’s design, raising  objections that have been mounted throughout the history of social work RCTs.

The central critique against randomising families to receive either an FGC or a normal case conference was that proponents believed families had a right to an FGC.

Realising that right was an end in itself, and withholding it from some families through randomisation, in order to test effectiveness, was wrong.

The study has received a broadly positive reception since its findings were published, and it is now likely FGCs will be offered to more families than ever before in a wider roll-out.

That said, some commentators are still concerned about the idea of basing access to this service on the grounds of efficacy and cost-effectiveness rather than rights.

I’d like to think part of the reason for the generally positive reception is that Taylor and colleagues showed it is possible to conduct such a trial ethically. The study meant more families, not fewer, had access to an FGC as a result of the project, and many spoke to the researchers about their views and experiences.

Indeed, both these recent RCTs used qualitative methods to give a rounded picture not just of whether it was a success but also how and why. Those who participated in interviews and focus groups would not have had the same opportunity to give their views and shape our understanding of the interventions had the studies not taken place.

Of course, evidence about how effective something is should never be the only thing that determines whether or not we do it.

The inclusion of qualitative and theory-based analysis is important because some interventions – such as problem solving courts, and indeed FGCs – are as much about being procedurally fair as they are about outcomes.

Need to test outcomes

Photo: Artur/Adobe Stock

But even these approaches make claims about outcomes that we should test.

Sometimes these claims are extraordinary – such as the suggestion of effect sizes for FGCs that are several times greater than what Taylor and colleagues found.

Their RCT gives us more precision about effects that can be weighed up against any moral justifications for using that approach.

And, if – contrary to expectations – these interventions are detrimental, or detrimental to some groups, then that also needs to be part of the equation.

Earlier research on FGCs, for instance, found some (albeit limited) evidence that minoritised groups may have worse outcomes as a result of the intervention.

Even the strongest proponents of FGCs would surely accept that a large enough effect in that direction would make it unjustifiable. And without studies like the recent trial, we would be blind to it.

Rights versus outcomes ‘a false choice’

False choices between rights and outcomes create an unhelpful parody of what an RCT in social work can be.

Outcomes are complex but so are rights, especially when the rights of parents and those of children are in tension. On its own, a rights perspective is not usually enough of a basis for overhauling services.

Rather than relegating outcomes in the name of rights, we need a more balanced and well-informed appreciation of the evidence to make decisions about how to help children and families. RCTs like these can make a valuable contribution.

David Westlake is senior research fellow at the Cardiff University’s Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre (CASCADE) 

*Formerly What Works for Children’s Social Care

The Department for Education has proposed far-reaching changes to social workers’ roles under Working Together to Safeguard Children, its guidance on services for children in need of help and protection in England.

The revisions are a key plank of the DfE’s proposed reforms to children’s social care, articulated in its draft strategy, Stable Homes, Built on Love, published in February.

As statutory guidance, relevant agencies and practitioners – including local authorities and their social workers – must comply with Working Together unless exceptional circumstances arise.

Here’s a summary of the main changes for practitioners.

From social workers to lead practitioners 

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The current Working Together, which mostly dates from 2018, is a very social work-focused document, mentioning the term ‘social worker’ 63 times. The vast majority of these references are to roles and responsibilities that the DfE expects social workers, uniquely, to carry out.

By contrast, the proposed update to the guidance mentions ‘social worker’ just 23 times.

Those lost references to social workers have been replaced by the concept of the ‘lead practitioner’, mentioned just six times in the current version but 32 in its proposed replacement.

Under the proposed revisions, ‘lead practitioner’ would become the generic term for the case-holder across all areas of intervention: early help, targeted early help, child in need and child protection.

The 2018 Working Together requires both child protection and child in need cases to be held by social workers.

The revised version would only mandate this in child protection cases; child in need cases could be held by lead practitioners from a range of backgrounds.

The consultation document on the changes suggests that alternatively qualified practitioners could include family support workers, drug and alcohol practitioners, domestic
abuse workers and youth workers.

However, crucially, cases would be overseen by ‘a social work qualified practice supervisor or manager’ (see below).

Rationale for child in need reform

Care review lead Josh MacAlister

The removal of the requirement for social workers to hold child in need cases was a direct recommendation from last year’s final report of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, led by Josh MacAlister.

It was tied to its broader proposal – also accepted by the DfE – to merge targeted early help with child in need services under a new ‘family help’ function.

This was designed to capture the original intention of section 17, to “safeguard and promote the welfare” of children who are unlikely to reach or maintain “a reasonable standard of health or development” without support.

This meant it was designed for families with a broad range of needs, not just those with high need whose children tend to be classified as being in need; as such, it was appropriate for practitioners other than social workers to take the lead in some cases, particularly as they may already have developed relationships with the family.

The DfE has accepted this, saying in its Working Together document: “We want to ensure the right people, with the right knowledge, skills and relationships, provide families with support at the right time, whilst keeping children’s safety and wellbeing at the centre of decision-making, planning and the provision of services.”

The latter point is captured by the requirement that social work-qualified supervisors or managers allocate and oversee the case – again as recommended by the care review – while the DfE also stresses that local authorities may stick to the status quo and reserve child in need cases for social workers.

Early help changes

The full implementation of the family help model is a few years away. Three pathfinder areas will start testing the approach later this year, with a further nine to follow next year, so Working Together will need to be further revised at the point of full implementation across England.

The current proposals are designed to “lay the foundations for this future system”, the DfE says. Besides the change to child in need case-holding, this includes proposed revisions to the guidance in Working Together on early help, including:

• Extending the groups of children who may have a potential need for early help to include those viewing problematic and/or inappropriate online content or developing inappropriate relationships online, those missing education and those who are at risk of school exclusion.
• Stating that early help assessments take account of the needs of all members of the family as individuals and consider how their needs impact on one another.
• Specifying that such assessments should also provide the basis for any future assessments if they are needed, for example, under sections 17 or 47 of the Children Act.
• Stating that social workers may be the ‘lead practitioner’ in early help cases, contrary to the current version of the guidance, which lists GPs, family support workers, school nurses, teachers, health visitors and special educational needs co-ordinators as possible case leads.

Increasing the use of family group conferences

Photo: zinkevych/Fotolia

Drawing on the care review, Stable Homes, Built on Love seeks to increase the role of family networks in supporting children to stay with their parents, providing care where they cannot and in making decisions about what should happen earlier than is currently the case, including through family group conferences (FGCs).

Currently, Working Together makes no reference to FGCs. They are referenced in separate statutory guidance on court orders and pre-proceedings, which states that councils should involve wider family members in decision making where there are child protection concerns, including through considering referral to an FGC.

However, in line with Stable Homes, the draft revised Working Together would promote the use of FGCs from early help onwards.

“Local authorities should consider referring the family to a family group conference service if they believe there is a possibility the child may not be able to remain with their parents/carers, or in any event before a child becomes looked after, unless this would be a risk to the child,” the draft version states.

“They should be a family-led forum, where a family network has all the resources, adequate preparation, relevant information, a safe and appropriate environment, and ‘private family time’ to make a plan to respond to concerns about a child’s safety or wellbeing.”

National child protection standards

Photo: MichaelJBerlin/Adobe Stock

In relation to child protection cases, there would be no change to the status quo on case-holding under the draft revised Working Together, which states that the ‘lead practitioner’ for section 47 enquiries must be a social worker.

One change it would introduce would be a set of national multi-agency child protection standards, in response to a recommendation from last year’s Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s report into the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson.

That inquiry identified a disconnect between the seriousness of the state’s child protection responsibilities and the lack of standards on how to do it, in the context of the serious failings it found in both Arthur’s and Star’s cases. It said national standards would also give practitioners from different agencies a common framework from which to operate.

In its consultation document on revising Working Together, the DfE said these standards “set out the actions, considerations and behaviours that should lead to improved child protection practice and better outcomes for children”, and were based on “best practice evidence”.

While some are for all practitioners coming into contact with children, the majority are for those directly involved in child protection work (see below).

Have your say

The consultation on the revised Working Together runs until 6 September 2023.

You can respond by answering this online survey or emailing workingtogether2023.consultation@education.gov.uk

Over 2,000 children per year in England could avoid care through the rollout of family group conferences (FGC), research has found.

Providing all families with an FGC before they enter care proceedings could also save over £150m a year, said evidence body Foundations*, after releasing findings of a study it commissioned into the impact of conferences.

Children whose families were referred for an FGC before care proceedings began were significantly less likely to be in care twelve months after entering pre-proceedings than those whose families were not so referred, found the study.

FGCs are facilitated, family-led meetings of relatives, friends and professionals involved with a child at risk that are designed to produce a plan to keep the child safe.

Largest trial of FGCs

The 21-month evaluation, carried out by the children’s charity Coram, was the first in the UK to use a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to test the impact of FGCs, and the largest such trial in the world, covering 2,548 children from 1,471 families across 21 councils.

The study ran from September 2020 to May 2022 and was funded through the Department for Education’s supporting families: investing in practice programme, which is designed to test promising interventions in children’s social care.

RCTs are considered the gold standard method for testing the impact of an intervention and involve comparing outcomes between a group receiving the intervention and an otherwise similar control group that does not.

The study evaluated the impact of FGCs at the pre-proceedings stage, when local authorities inform families that proceedings to take their children into care will follow unless they take specific steps to address assessed risks to children.

The 21 councils – none of whom were previously offering FGCs at pre-proceedings – randomly allocated half of families to receive an FGC (the intervention group), plus their usual services, and the other half just to receive usual services.

Fewer children entering care after FGC

The primary outcome studied was the care status of children 12 months after the relevant council issued the pre-proceedings letter, for which Coram’s research team had data for 643 children in the intervention group and 584 in the control group by the end of the study.

The two groups were similar aside from the fact that mothers in the control group were significantly more likely to have had a child taken into care previously.

Among those in the intervention group, 34.7% had gone into care within 12 months of the FGC, compared to 46.6% children in the control group. After researchers adjusted for the different care histories in the two groups, they calculated that 36.6% of those in the intervention group were in care after 12 months, compared with 44.8% of the control group.

This was a statistically significant difference which meant that those in the latter category were 1.24 times as likely to be looked after than their counterparts.

Children in the FGC group were also significantly less likely to face care proceedings, with 59% doing so 12 months after the pre-proceedings letter, compared with 72% in the control group, after adjustment for baseline differences.

Those whose families received an FGC were also likely to have spent significantly less time in care than those in the control six months after the pre-proceedings letter was issued, an average of 10 fewer days after adjustment.

However, this effect was not significant 12 months after the pre-proceedings letter, and there were no significant effects in relation to any of these three outcomes after 18 months. Researchers said this was likely to be because of the relatively low available sample size.

Savings from conferences

Based on the results, Foundations estimated that 2,293 fewer children would go into care in England annually were FGCs to be rolled out nationally at the pre-proceedings stage. In 2021-22, 31,010 children started to be looked after in England.

The study calculated that the FGCs delivered through the programme cost £5,242 per child per year, a figure inflated by the inclusion of set-up costs and the impact of Covid-19, which disrupted the delivery of conferences.

Nevertheless, this was more than outweighed by the calculated saving of £6,202, from the reduction in those going into care, meaning a net saving of £960 per child per year.

The study builds on previous evaluations showing promising evidence for FGCs, including of Leeds council’s family valued programme and charity Daybreak’s service for children on the edge of care, delivered in Southwark and Wiltshire.

Call for councils to adopt FGCs at pre-proceedings

However, neither of these studies involved an RCT, which Foundations said were “more able than other designs to attribute the differences they find to the programme or service evaluated”.

“Every effort must be made to enable vulnerable children to live safely within their family network before considering care proceedings,” said Foundations chief executive Dr Jo Casebourne.

“We now have evidence that family group conferences, which empower families and children, have a higher success rate of keeping families together than going straight to care proceedings does.

DfE statutory guidance on pre-proceedings states that councils should involve wider family members in decision making where there are child protection concerns, and consider referral to an FGC unless this would be a risk to the child.

However, this too often did not happen at all or took place too late in the process, when taking the child into care was becoming the only option, found the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in its final report last year.

Casebourne, whose organisation is chaired by care review lead Josh MacAlister, added: “We encourage all local authorities throughout England to act on this high quality evidence that FGCs work to implement FGCs earlier.”

Children’s social care reform plans

However, Foundations stressed that the study only provided evidence for the use of FGCs at pre-proceedings, and recommended further evaluation of its potential impact at other – particularly earlier – stages.

The DfE plans to test the impact of family group decision making – a more general concept than FGCs – at an earlier stage of a child’s involvement with social care as part of its children’s social care reform programme.

This will primarily be through the up to 12 families first for children pathfinders, which will test its proposed new model of family help and child protection, starting later this year.

Following the Foundations report, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said it welcomed the wider use of family group decision making, with most councils already using it to some extent.

‘Mounting body of evidence’ for FGCs

However, families, communities and young people policy committee chair Helen Lincoln warned that it was “challenging doing so in the context of increasing demand and long-term funding pressures”.

Charity the Family Rights Group, which provides training and consultancy to councils on FGCs, said the Foundations report added to the “mounting body of evidence” that conferences enabled children to “live safely and thrive within their families”.

Chife executive Cathy Ashley added: “At a time when there is a record number of children in care, it is now beyond doubt that all families should be offered a family group conference before their child is taken into care. These findings confirm that government should adopt this approach nationwide rather than the limited system of pathfinders currently being pursued.”

*Foundations has been formed from the merger of What Works for Children’s Social Care and the Early Intervention Foundation