When children are deemed to be at risk of significant harm due to abuse or neglect, the state intervenes to protect them and support their families. This responsibility lies with Local Authority Children’s Services who will usually hold an Initial Child Protection Conference (ICPC) when referral and subsequent enquiries under Section 47 of the Children’s Act (1989) find that a child is at risk of harm.
At the ICPC, social workers and professionals from partner agencies share their concerns with parents/carers and take the lead on developing a plan to keep the child safe. However, evidence suggests parents/carers and children find the ICPC, and the communication and meetings before and after it, to be both shaming and exclusionary (Mason et al., 2017).
The Safeguarding Family Group Conference (SFGC) pathway is an alternative, family-centred approach to decision making that could change the way that families and professionals work together to keep children safe and reduce the need for children to enter care. However, the research evidence is mixed, and it is unclear how effective SFGCs are as an alternative resource for engaging families in services and decision making.
There is a need for more contextual research investigating the use of SFGCs as an alternative to traditional child protection pathways, and this study seeks to address this gap.
