The Boys and Girls Welfare Society’s Family Group Meetings Service: An evaluation for Cheshire Children’s Fund

Abstract

The Children’s Fund is a national initiative established as part of the Government’s wider strategy to promote multi-agency working in preventative services for children and young people at risk of social exclusion. Cheshire Children’s Fund is the local response to the national initiative, and supports a county-wide programme of preventative work with children. One service, commissioned in respect of the theme of supporting families, is the Family Group Meetings Service, co-ordinated and managed by the Boys and Girls Welfare Society in collaboration with Cheshire County Council. This Service is based on a model of family group conferencing that differs quite markedly from traditional approaches to the management of child welfare problems in that families play an active and pivotal role in deciding the most appropriate way to meet their child’s needs. Internationally and nationally, there is evidence to suggest that this can be an effective model of provision. However, locally, the Service has experienced difficulties in establishing and maintaining a caseload of appropriate referrals that were effectively taken through the family group meeting process. The aim of the evaluation was to explore why this was the case by studying the implementation of the new Service in relation to the process of referral and mechanism of delivery.