In 2023, Jane Dunne was named the children’s services team leader of the year for her work with the Coventry and Warwickshire family drug and alcohol court service (FDAC).

This was not her first award since becoming manager of the then Coventry FDAC in 2016, with the team winning the public sector children’s team prize at the 2018 Children & Young People Now awards.

In 2021, the service’s success led to its expansion to cover Warwickshire.

Speaking to Community Care, Jane discussed why she believes FDACs are a better alternative to standard care proceedings, her approach to leading a multidisciplinary team and the risks to FDAC teams from constraints on public spending.

How did you become involved with the FDAC service?

Jane Dunne with the rest of her FDAC team / Photo by Jane Dunne

The service started in October 2015, and I joined in March 2016. I’d always been interested in the interaction between substance misuse and volatile relationships, and how that impacts on an individual’s mental health.

Then a secondment came up for six months to manage the Coventry FDAC service, because we only had temporary funding at that point.

I haven’t looked back. I remember thinking, “My goodness, I only had this for six months and now I’m here eight years later”.

One of the things that stood out to me was that it was a multidisciplinary team. We had a clinical lead, two substance misuse workers, a parenting officer, a children and family worker and three social workers, including a domestic abuse practitioner.

Everybody had their own expertise, but when I joined they were working in silo. I wanted to have a sense of identity as a team and to centre that around improving outcomes for children.

We did a lot of team development and broadened our knowledge and skills. We’ve all learned so much these last few years.

What makes an FDAC a better alternative to standard care proceedings?

In normal proceedings, when a case comes to the court, various assessments are ordered. But the results usually come in closer to the end of proceedings.

So if the hair and blood tests come in and they’re high in alcohol levels, then there is nowhere for the parents to go to demonstrate change because that’s their evidence. And they are expected somewhat to do everything on their own.

FDAC provides that level of scaffolding at a time when they need it. We offer an initial assessment with the experts – and we’ve got all the experts, so they don’t have to join long waiting lists.

The work is trauma-informed, it’s relationship-based. So everybody in the team tries, from the minute you meet the parent, to make them feel as comfortable as possible and build a rapport to support them.

We’re a consistent team. We see [the parent] two or three times a week. A children’s social worker might see them once a week for a parenting assessment in usual proceedings.

At the beginning of the trial, we do a peth test for alcohol consumption and an overview hair strand test of all six drugs [cocaine, cannabis, amphetamine, methamphetamine, opiates, benzodiazepines] because we know that parents are often frugal with what’s going on for them. They might say [they’ve taken] a little bit of cocaine and then when you get the hair and blood tests back it might be crack cocaine.

And then throughout the trial, we will do alcohol breath meter, oral swab and urine tests every time we see them. It helps parents reflect that they might have had a difficult week, because we don’t expect them to be progressing straight away. We want to discuss the triggers, thoughts and feelings around that and what we can put in place.

Alongside that, we’re looking at their parenting and their child’s needs, we’re running support groups and doing specific interventions. We try to understand what’s happening underneath and get to the root of the problem, to create long-lasting change.

We also build long-lasting relationships with them. A male parent who’s had his daughter in his care for four years now pops in for a cup of coffee every now and then. We talk about lifelong links for children but, if a parent has opened up to a group of professionals about their difficulties and were supported on their journey, it’s powerful to continue that relationship.

If they’re in a crisis in the future, they’ll need somebody to reach out to and some people don’t have anybody.

We are also looking at a permanent plan for the children. Reunification is what we are working towards, but where that is not possible, we look towards care with family or the possibility of reunification in the future.

FDAC has more reunification than in usual proceedings, although it takes a little more time to get there.

What happens within your service if reunification is not possible?

Even if children aren’t reunified, there is an opportunity for parents to still work on their recovery and their parenting.

If a child is put up for adoption, no matter how painful that is, if the parent can understand that they’re not in a position to care for their child, they will often say, “I consent to my child being adopted because I know I can’t meet their needs. It’s not because I don’t love them.”

And they get a lot of support with that within FDAC – it helps change the language of the negative stigma around not being there for your children. We also offer some post support, and, later on, people can still call us for advice.

For example, a young woman we worked with last year contacted me recently and said, “I’m in a new relationship, I’m pregnant, and I need to demonstrate that I’m sober”. So we were able to give her some advice.

What is your approach to managing a multidisciplinary team?

Jane Dunne during a visit to Westminster / Photo by Jane Dunne

I think it’s about shared values, and understanding our limitations and knowledge.

I was terrified of managing the substance misuse worker because of my limited knowledge. I thought I knew quite a lot about drugs and alcohol, but when I came here, I [realised], “Oh my gosh, I know nothing”. It prompted me to study more and get a diploma in substance misuse and addiction.

I’m learning as much from [workers I manage] as they’re learning from me. I wouldn’t say it’s been an easy process – but it’s about furthering your understanding. For example, I developed my learning around cognitive behavioural therapy and trained in motivational interviewing.

I wanted the whole team to take that approach, so we provided training for them. We did a course on foetal alcohol syndrome and foetal alcohol disorder together because, although you’ve got that discipline, you need to layer up your knowledge and skills base – whether you are the children and family worker, the team manager or the clinical lead.

They also know they are safe to come to me; I’ve got their backs. I think most of my team are comfortable reaching out if they’re struggling.

As a manager, if I need to do casework because we’re struggling, then I’ll do that. But I’ll also do the supervision, the advocacy in the court, the strategic stuff.

I don’t see my role as just being one thing. It’s whatever it takes to keep the service going so that families have the best experience and that people feel safe to work.

Does the limited number of FDAC teams put pressure on you?

We have 13 FDAC teams now – we recently lost Kent and Cardiff – and there is an awful lot of pressure around funding and continuing the service.

We’ve been in a very fortunate position, where Coventry could see the benefit of this model and the cost avoidance. Although it might be expensive to set up and deliver, there is an acute saving in the long run.

But local authorities are under a lot of pressure. Many of my FDAC colleagues up and down the country have really struggled, hence the closures.

The judiciary really appreciates this model. They’d like to see it in every court, so it’s not just a postcode lottery and that’s fantastic. But it’s not funded.

Currently, funding comes from different sources. Our current expanded team was setup through a Department for Education grant and is currently funded by Coventry and Warwickshire local authorities.

We are fortunate to have the domestic abuse social worker role funded by the West Midlands Police & Crime Commissioner, but overall the funding is reviewed every two years for the team.

Other teams may have health or public health funding too; it depends on how it was set up.

So what I’d like to see is core funding, so that managers can focus on the service delivery and not worry about whether our service will last another six months or two years. That’s the fragility and reality of it.

What are your goals moving forward?

My goal is to secure the funding for this service moving forward and improve on the offer that we give parents within proceedings and post-proceedings. Because at the end of the proceedings, when children are reunified, parents need support. It’s a time that might test your recovery and your parenting.

The best way for that is through having robust support around them, but also peer support. So that’s families and parents that have been through FDAC problem-solving together, having a community where they can support each other.

My hope would be to have that as part of the programme because many other sites do, but we’ve never had the funding. We manage a graduates’ group, but this is on frugal basis.

What has been a highlight of running this service?

The “graduates”. I think it’s such an achievement when parents come through proceedings and successfully reunite with their children.

We do a little graduation ceremony. We invite them back and they get a certificate and a card from us and the FDAC judge to say, “Well done”. We often buy or make cakes and we have a little celebration.

One parent, who I knew as a child when I was a social worker and was quite a challenging man and had a whole life of criminality, said in his graduation ceremony, “Wow, this is an achievement. I’ve always sat in court. I’ve never been invited to a court.”

For him, it was huge.

Children whose parents are referred to family drug and alcohol courts (FDACs) are more likely to be reunified with their families than those involved in standard care proceedings, research has found.

Parents involved in FDACs are also more likely to have stopped using drugs or alcohol by the end of their cases than those in standard proceedings.

But study limitations mean these positive effects cannot be attributed entirely to FDACs, so further research is needed to evaluate whether the courts cause improved outcomes, said evidence body Foundations (formerly What Works for Children’s Social Care).

It commissioned National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) to carry out the study, as part of the Department for Education’s (DfE) Supporting Families: Investing in Practice programme, which is designed to identify effective interventions for keeping families together.

Promising evidence for FDACs

The research was designed to build on promising existing evidence about the impact of FDACs, an alternative to standard care proceedings in substance misuse cases, geared towards keeping children with their families, where possible.

Under the model, multidisciplinary teams work with parents to help them tackle their alcohol or drug misuse, including through key worker support, individual or group therapy and referral to other services.

At the same time, specially trained judges undertake fortnightly sessions with parents – in the absence of lawyers – to oversee progress and foster positive working relationships between families, the judiciary and FDAC practitioners.

Since first being piloted in London from 2008-12, the number of FDAC teams has grown to 15, covering 36 local authority areas in England and Wales.

Randomised controlled trial model rejected

This study was originally designed to be a randomised controlled trial (RCT), which would have involved families being randomly assigned to an intervention group receiving an FDAC and a control group who did not, with the two groups having similar characteristics overall.

However, while this would have helped identify whether FDACs caused improved outcomes, an RCT was rejected on the grounds of legal obstacles, such as families in the control group appealing the outcome of the case or the assignment process.

Instead, researchers chose a model – known as a quasi-experimental design (QED) – in which families referred to FDACs in 13 areas were compared with families involved in standard care proceedings, where parental substance misuse was the key issue, in nine local authorities.

All but one of the latter councils were covered by FDAC sites and researchers sought to ensure that families in the two groups had broadly similar characteristics, in the data they analysed.

Better outcomes from FDACs

On the two key outcomes analysed, the study found that:

• Over half of children with a primary carer in FDAC care proceedings (52%) were reunified with this carer at the end of proceedings; the figure for children in the comparison group was one in eight (12.5%).
• A third of FDAC parents had stopped misusing drugs or alcohol by the end of the case (33.6%) compared with 8.1% of parents in the comparison group.

Interviews with 40 practitioners and parents involved with FDACs also highlighted three key perceived benefits with them compared with standard care proceedings:

• They were a more supportive process for parents, allowing them to demonstrate their ability to meet their child’s needs, rather than feeling punitive.
• They led to better outcomes including reductions in substance use, higher rates of reunification, increased insight and parenting skills and lower rates of contested cases.
• They achieved long-term cost savings despite the upfront investment required to provide intensive support and supervision to parents.

Study caveats

However, the study report warned that the positive results needed to be treated with caution because there was a high risk that the differences in outcomes were being driven by differences between the FDAC families and those in the comparison group.

Researchers lacked data on key characteristics that may have influenced outcomes – such as parents’ mental health diagnoses, the severity of their substance use and their motivations to stop misuse.

And, in their final analysis, the study team had to exclude a number of families in order to match the FDAC and control group samples as far as possible, which the report said “limited the generalisability of [the findings]”.

Foundations chief executive Jo Casebourne said this meant “unable to draw firm conclusions about the impact of FDAC based on this study” and that a “more robust comparison” was required, involving either a randomised controlled trial or a quasi-experimental design with better data.

Findings ‘a testament to practitioners’ hard work’

Despite the caveats, the research was welcomed by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) and the Centre for Justice Innovation, which provides national leadership and support for FDACs.

Its director, Phil Bowen, said the findings were “a testament to the hard work and diligence of the judges and professionals” within FDACs across England and Wales.

“These positive findings build on a strong evidence base, reinforcing the message that if we expand the number of FDACs across the country, we will improve the life chances of hundreds of children and parents across our country.”

ADCS president John Pearce said FDACs were an example of the value of problem-solving approaches in helping keep children with their families, where this was in their best interests.

However, he said that “the piecemeal nature of new funding has meant the benefits have been limited to a small number of local authorities”.

“ADCS would welcome a shift in approach so that all local authorities were resourced to explore new ways of working and where there is evidence of what works, all were resourced to implement such models,” Pearce added.

“As the manager of the UK’s first Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) I’m used to navigating challenges. The latest in a long line is developing the model in line with the Family Justice Reforms.
People constantly ask how FDAC will fit into a 26 week time limit and the Public Law Outline (PLO). We think we can meet this challenge head on as we have always tested new ideas in creative ways.
However, our aim, wherever possible, is to help families stay together and give them “a fair go”. Cases are heard by the same district judge throughout, so parents can build a relationship with “their” judge. Working with the court is a specialist, multi-disciplinary team. We have volunteer mentors who have overcome their own substance misuse, some through help from FDAC.
If parents agree to join FDAC, the team does an initial assessment within a couple of weeks of proceedings starting. In collaboration with all parties, we develop an intervention plan which the team will co-ordinate and which the court sanctions. Expectations of parents are made explicit and the work is broken down into clear steps. Progress is monitored regularly, by the team, and by the judge at fortnightly hearings without lawyers.

The intervention plan tests whether parents can overcome their substance misuse problems and meet their children’s needs. Parents get the maximum help to overcome their problems and keep their children, provided they can do that in a timeframe compatible with their children’s needs. They must abstain from street drugs and alcohol, begin to address difficulties driving their substance misuse, strengthen relationships with their child, and create a child-centred lifestyle. Work with older children helps reverse the damage done.

Is this do-able in 26 weeks? In my view six months of a child’s life should be enough time to determine the possibility of return home. If this isn’t possible by then, a final order can be made. But if parents are making good progress, and showing capacity to meet their child’s needs, extending the case beyond 26 weeks seems both fair and necessary.

We welcome the decision by the Department for Education to fund an exploration of how FDAC can rise to this challenge. Positive, too, are some recent comments from the President of the Family Division of the High Court:

“We must see how best the PLO can accommodate the FDAC model (I put it this way, rather than the other way round). We must always remember that the PLO is a means of achieving justice and the best outcomes for children and, wherever possible, their families. It is not, and must never be allowed to become, a straightjacket, least of all if rigorous adherence to an inflexible timetable risks putting justice in jeopardy…” (View 7, October).”

Sophie Kershaw will be running a workshop on working with care proceedings timeframes at Community Care Live on 14 November in London.