What is Family Meetings?

It is families being in charge of their own lives. Family Meetings are meetings where families and their relatives make plans for the well being of their children. Family Meetings may be helpful if your family is involved with (DCFS) or Court. With the help of the Family Meetings Coordinator, your family meets with relatives, friends and other support people in a Family Meeting (FGDM) to create a plan that is in the best interest of their children. Family Meetings is a tool used within a “systems of care” that empowers families to invest in their own strength and energy to create a workable plan rather than professionals setting up a plan and the family not being able to make it work. The Family Meetings process inherently fosters cooperation, collaboration, and communication between professionals and families. Family Meetings is primarily being used by child welfare agencies when children have been substantiated as maltreated. This practice, while not as yet commonplace, is also being used in juvenile justice and TANF cases.

In addition, Family Meetings is being studied because it fits closely with some of the current philosophical changes within child welfare practice in Kansas. These philosophical trends include increasing the use of kinship care, capitalizing on family strengths, and creating a partnership and participatory decision-making process between the family and professional. As child welfare agencies' commitment to delivering culturally competent and family-centered services increases, it is not surprising that the Child Welfare Bureau has awarded these systems of care grants to 9 states including Kansas.

A unique aspect of the Family Meetings process is the structured time during the information sharing stage for a facilitated discussion of family strengths and concerns. The differentiating element of Family Meetings is the provision of private family time whereby only family consider the information presented, deliberate, and make decisions that are then presented back to the professionals and other Conference attendees for discussion and approval.

With more children, disproportionately minority, living in out-of-home care for longer periods of time, and in multiple settings, it is logical that the child welfare field would be ready to review practices that may prove to positively impact children and families.

WHAT WILL I BE ASKED TO DO?

Meet with the Family Conferencing Coordinator.

Make a list of relatives and supportive friends to invite.

Help to select a convenient time and location for all.

Come to the conference, share your views, and openly listen to others.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN AT THE FAMILY MEETING?

A relatively new approach in child welfare, family meetings or family group decision making (FGDM) seeks to give family members, rather than professionals, a leading voice in determining how best to ensure a child's safety and protection from future maltreatment. A recent special volume of Protecting Children provides findings from more than 20 research and evaluation studies showing, in general, Family Meetings has a positive impact on families, children, and communities.

Some of the outcomes include:

• Children whose families participate in FGDM spend less time awaiting permanency.
• Children participating in FGDM have more stable placements compared to those going through traditional child welfare processes.
• FGDM increases the involvement of fathers and paternal relatives.
• Families often report greater communication and unity as a result of FGDM.
• Families and professionals are highly satisfied with the process.

Family Meetings Process

So, how does the Family Meetings process work? The Family Meetings model has four main phases, with varying subcomponents based on the complexity of each case:

• Referral to hold Family Meeting
• Preparation and planning for Family Meeting
• The Family Meeting
• Subsequent events and planning after the Family Meeting
• Typically, the social worker that investigates and assesses a case of child abuse and neglect refers the case to a coordinator who decides whether to hold a Family Meeting. The coordinator should be a person who can remain impartial and who does not have connections to the case.
• The preparation and planning stage of the process is generally, and unfortunately, overshadowed by the next phase, the FGDM meeting. According to the literature and process evaluation reports, adequate preparation and planning can be the difference between the success and failure of the Family Meeting. It is the commonly overlooked cornerstone that, if neglected, will detrimentally impact the results of the Family Meetings process. While professionals must balance convening a Family Meeting quickly with ensuring broad family representation and their solid understanding of the process, the preparation time, if available, may help the remaining stages to progress more smoothly. Moreover, he Family Meetings coordinator has numerous premeeting activities for which he or she must have adequate time and flexibility to complete. (20-40 hours estimated per family meeting). To increase the meeting's success, the coordinator should thoroughly prepare him or herself and work with the families, professionals, and other meeting participants in preparing for the meeting. Some of these critical activities are detailed and described below:
• Ensure safety for the child or adolescent. The primary concern is to ensure that the child is in a safe environment, either through maintaining the child in the home or placing the child in out-of-home care, including kinship care.
• Define what a family is. Agencies must strive to define families broadly to include kinship networks. Family Meetings rely heavily on the extended family to protect and care for their children.
• Invite family members and other participants. In deciding who to invite to the meeting, the coordinator should work with the family and the child to identify individuals who can protect the child, care for the child, supervise the implementation of meeting plans, support the family in caring for the child, maintain contact with the child and family members, and have a personal relationship and connection with the child. Those involved include parents, kin, children, tribal elders, and individuals whom the family considers to be supportive (e.g., neighbors, clergy).
• Involve offenders. It is believed that family members who may have directly contributed to the problem can be constructively involved in determining and implementing solutions and, therefore, decisions to exclude them should not be made hastily.
• Clearly define and communicate participants' roles. Before the meeting occurs, it is important that the coordinator explicitly describes the Family Meetings process to all participants so they fully understand their role before, during, and after the meeting, as well as understand the Family Meetings process itself. While face-to-face contact is the preferred method to share expectations with prospective meeting participants, it is difficult to accomplish, again because of workload demands.
• Manage unresolved family issues. As with all families, families convened for the Family Meetings process will undoubtedly have unresolved family issues that, if discussed, could derail the meeting. Coordinators must inform family members before and during the meeting opening that issues unrelated to protecting the child will not be discussed.
• Coordinate logistics. The Coordinator is responsible for organizing all meeting logistics including the date, time, place, supplies, refreshments, seating arrangements, interpreters, travel arrangements for participants, child care, and extra security, if necessary. The length of time and the complexity of detail in coordinating the Family Meetings process should not be underestimated.
• This section will describe the actual Family Meetings phases. It is important for the reader to note that the many nuances, philosophical underpinnings, and key implementation issues are not included in this brief discussion.

Family Meetings Stages:

Stage 1: Introduction.  Beginning in ways that are culturally and traditionally relevant to the family, the coordinator welcomes all participants, reiterates the Family Meetings process and purpose, and reaches agreement about the meeting's goal and each participant's role.

Stage 2: Information-sharing stage. The social worker that conducted the child abuse and neglect investigation straightforwardly and respectfully presents the facts of the case to all of the participants. Other professionals involved in the case then share related information. Family members should be given the opportunity to question the professionals about the case. Professionals are not to state their opinions or give recommendations to the families during this stage. If opinion sharing occurs, it is an obvious departure from the Family Meetings model that permits the family to formulate their own plan during the next stage, the family private time.

Stage 3: Family private time. Strict adherence to the Family Meetings model means that both professionals and other nonfamily support persons are asked not to participate in the family meeting, leaving only family members (as defined by the family) to discuss the case in private. If professionals attend the family deliberations, evidence suggest that there is a tendency for the discussion to be inhibited with families not revealing their secrets, for family members to feel disempowered, and for professionals to assume their traditional role of decision making and facilitating. The family has two important questions to answer: 1) was the child abused or neglected? and if so, 2) what needs to occur to ensure the child is cared for and protected from future harm?

Stage 4: The decision. Once a family reaches a decision about how to care for and protect the child, the social worker, coordinator, and other support people return to the meeting at which point the family presents and explains their plan. If there is disagreement with the family’s plan, alternatives are discussed and a final decision is reached. Dissenting views are presented to the Family Court for a final determination.

• The development of the plan is difficult, but the implementation of the family decision is just as challenging. Writing and distributing the plan, delivering services, and reviewing and monitoring the decisions are the activities that occur after the official family meeting. Finally, if the family or the professionals think it's necessary, a follow-up Family meeting may be scheduled for case review.

One of the issues communities implementing Family Meetings in the United States face is providing and organizing the services families identify in their plan. A Family Centered Systems of Care approach is needed to address this concern. Concerted efforts will need to be made to identify and link families with community resources. The principle is that family involvement in developing the case plan and identifying needed assistance directly correlates to their willingness to support and accept the services provided.

In addition to the assumption that families will more likely implement a plan they developed, another presumption is that families will monitor the plans more thoroughly than social workers. Monitoring is such a critical method of ensuring child safety and well-being. It must be a strong component of any Family Meeting processes, for it remains child welfare's authority to protect children from maltreatment.

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