Promoting family decision making in child care practice: An overview of the use of family group conferences in child protection, youth justice, schools and with young carers

The development of Family Group Conferences in the UK has been characterised by a high level of cooperation and working together. While still in its infancy, the growth in this style of work has produced some excellent collaborations between professionals, family and community groups and statutory and voluntary organisations and researchers. From these 'partnerships' some lessons, themes and ideas are emerging in policy, practice and research (see Morris and Tunnard, 1996). The growing collective knowledge brought to bear on Family Group Conferences (FGCs), is of course far greater than any individual perspective (much like a FGC), and the ideas presented in this paper owe much to those different perspectives, all of which have contributed to the growing body of knowledge about this approach. In this paper I shall draw from the experience of families, child care professionals and researchers, mostly in Hampshire where there are a number of FGC projects developing, that offer some ideas that could be added to the big picture.