Welcoming national guidance on Family Group Decision Making practice

At Daybreak, we welcome the release of the Department for Education’s Family Group Decision Making Best Practice Support and Resources guidance developed by Mutual Ventures. As a charity that has delivered Family Group Conferences and other Family Group Decision Making approaches for over 25 years, we recognise the significance for families and the wider children’s services system in establishing a nationwide set of expectations on this topic.

Debbie Burns, CEO: “We are proud to have contributed as lead practitioners in shaping this guidance. It reflects our vision for a “world where families and communities work together to make decisions and solve problems affecting their lives”. It is important that families and communities have access to best practice, wherever they live, and this guidance provides clarity on what services should be offering to ensure that families have greater access to true family-led decision-making processes”

The Guidance can be accessed online, via the Family First Partnership Programme Guide, or via the Knowledge Hub. Please note that you may need to create an account to access the Knowledge Hub. Once you have access, search ‘Family First Partnership’ and send a connection request.

The Government’s inclusion of Family Group Decision Making in the Children’s Wellbeing & Schools Bill and the Family First Partnership Programme reforms signaled a positive shift towards family-led decision making across the whole system, not just at crisis points. This guidance positively challenges services to consider how families can be meaningfully involved in planning, and elevates the significance on the role of family and community networks, the inclusion of the voice of the child, and on a family’s ability to make their own decisions about their own lives. It also asks services to consider how prepared they are culturally, especially in how the wider workforce uses restorative language, applies systemic thinking, and takes a trauma‑informed, relationship‑based approach when working with families.

We are especially pleased to see families being offered greater choice in how and when they engage with Family Group Decision Making, including earlier or repeated offers, and access across all levels of support. We know that family circumstances change over time; this inclusion of flexibility will mean that people can develop confidence in their problem‑solving skills, long-term.

As partners to the process to develop this guidance, we want to celebrate the collaborative approach taken. We are particularly delighted to see the voices of families and children with lived experience of Family Group Decision Making embedded in the guidance. It reflects the values of the model itself; to listen and incorporate the voices of everyone. The inclusion of both new and previously developed practical tools and resources is also welcome. This enables Local Authorities and services the space for innovation, whilst building on existing evidence and best practice.

Overall, the guidance offers clarity on what Family Group Decision Making is and what it is not. Local Authorities and services can be clear on what they are expected to implement and offer; and the required skillsets of their workforce in delivering it.

Despite this, we do see some areas that may provide challenges.

The suggestion that facilitators could hold professionals to account for their elements to a family plan may compromise neutrality. This is a crucial value in the practitioner’s role and of the model. This needs careful exploration by services to ensure that impartiality remains a priority throughout, especially when utilising in-house teams or expanding existing roles.

Local Authorities will also need to identify sustainable ways to adhere to the guidance within their existing budgets and structures. Their chosen workforce and operational model will place great influence on the feasibility of this. Caution should especially be taken over enabling independent facilitation and securing a family’s right to request alternative facilitators.

Best practice Family Group Decision Making relies on well-trained practitioners. Investment in training must be long-term and go beyond any initial roll-out grant period. Key skills such as child voice participation, restorative language and open questioning, safeguarding within the Family Group Decision Making context, maintaining neutrality and working confidently with safe-uncertainty are all key skill areas that need consideration, beyond training for the facilitation of any model or process.

For families, this offers greater opportunity for support at any level, including Family Help. Families must be aware of this opportunity. It should be well signposted and offered with transparency. Families should feel free to request it and be able to access it when they do. It should not be gatekept behind protocol or process. This expectation, as part of the Families First Partnership, is strongly aligned to the values of empowering families to make decisions for themselves; and as such, this ease of access should exist from the start of a family’s engagement with a service.

Professionals beyond Children’s Services, such as those in education and the VCSE sector, also play an important role in supporting this. They often have closer and more trusted relationships with families and therefore should be aware that Family Group Decision Making is now an option for families much earlier.

At Daybreak, we believe families should not have to wait for a crisis to benefit from Family Group Decision Making. As such, we welcome these reforms and the supporting guidance – but strive to offer greater accessibility. That is why we established our flagship early-intervention project in Portsmouth, providing Family Group Decision Making before any social services involvement. We aim to expand these services, alongside exploring how we can support and offer Family Group Decision Making for adults, too. We remain committed to broadening accessibility to Family Group Decision Making and welcome the opportunity to partner or innovate to enable this.

To help services and practitioners explore the new practice guidance, we are planning a series of activities over the coming months:

• Updated Family Group Decision Making Considerations Pack to reflect the new Guidance. Request your copy today.

• Introductory webinars exploring the Guidance, and what it means for services, from April. Book your space today.

• Tailored exploration for our contract partners led by our Director of Services and our Programme Manager team. Those involved will shortly be invited to specific sessions on this.

• Deep-dive exploration, supported by a series of lunch-and-learns, from summer onwards. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on LinkedIn to hear more.

• Our expanding Training programme is being mapped to the Guidance, offering confidence that our courses align with best practice. Explore our courses today.

To stay informed, please join our mailing list or follow us on LinkedIn.

The Guidance can be accessed online, via the Family First Partnership Programme Guide, or via the Knowledge Hub. Please note that you may need to create an account to access the Knowledge Hub. Once you have access, search ‘Family First Partnership’ and send a connection request.