Family Group Conferences - Children Services - Find a freedom of information request

Information regarding the use of Family Group Conferences, or similar meetings within your Children's Services and would be grateful for the following information please:

1. Are you holding Family Group Conferences, or similar meetings (if so what are they called) as a standard part of your process?

2. Do you provide this service of Family Group Conferences or similar meetings internally or use an external provider (if so which provider)?

3. How many Family Group Conferences or similar meetings do you hold on average per year?

1. It is an integral part of our procedures across the whole of Lincolnshire Children’s Services (including Early Help and Social Care) that Family Network Meetings have to be held at certain times. As a minimum at the start of a plan/involvement and then during the lifetime of the plan to review progress. These can be facilitated by the worker allocated to the child and family. Additionally, Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) do have an in-house Family Group Conference Service as some families prefer an independent facilitator.

2. The FGC Service is in house and allocated workers across Children’s Services also manage their own family network meetings.

3. LCC is not currently able to extract the number of family network meetings that are held from our case recording system, as these are child specific and recorded in different places. The Family Group Conference Services received, 758 referrals received in 2021/2022 with 541 FGC plans created.