A Family Group Conference (FGC) is a family-led decision making approach used in children’s social care. FGCs are widely used in England and there is a growing evidence base for their effectiveness, particularly at the pre-proceeding stage in the UK. Despite this, there is currently no routinely collected data on the extent to which FGCs are offered and taken up by families. Local authorities do not have a standardised system or approach for capturing FGC data and there are various systems and methods for collecting data across children’s services.
Without a method for collecting data on the use of FGCs, it is not possible to know at a national level which families are being offered FGCs, which families accept, and what their outcomes are.
To help address this gap, Foundations commissioned Coram, in partnership with Family Rights Group (FRG), Daybreak, and Data to Insight (D2I), to conduct a project exploring what data on FGCs is currently being collected and what methods are being used to store this data. The report also recommends several options for how this data could be routinely collecting across England to provide a national picture of FGC service provision.
The project had two key aims:
The project took a mixed-methods, multi-disciplinary approach. This included:
In total, 58 professionals were engaged, including FGC service managers, business and administration support, heads of services, data analysts, and FGC coordinators. Interviews were also held with FGC providers, national stakeholders and academics. Consultation workshops were held with local authorities to test the emerging findings and co-develop recommendations and options for a national data collection.
The project found that local authorities recorded a range of data on FGCs including:
Data was recorded using a range of different methods, including children’s services case management systems (CMS) and local authority internal recording systems and spreadsheets. Almost all FGC services also used spreadsheets to record some form of FGC data. There was substantial variation in the quality of FGC data and in data quality assurance processes.
Overall, local authorities were supportive of the introduction of a national standardised, routine data collection on FGCs. Many felt that it could promote FGCs within their local authority as well as nationally and generally wanted it for benchmarking purposes.
Based on these findings, the report outlines three possible options for establishing a routine, national standardised data collection:
The report also provides the key features and processes required to effectively establish a national FGC data collection. These include:
The report recommends adopting a phased approach to data collection. The phased approach would begin with Option 1, which involves co-designing a survey with the sector and then collecting aggregated local authority-level data. This would then be used to support the implementation of Option 2 and 3, which are more complex, resource-intensive data collection methods. Foundations will be discussing these options with the Department for Education.
You can view the project linked to this publication here:
