Family Group Decision-Making

Family group decision-making is a generic term that includes a number of approaches in which family members are brought together to make decisions about how to care for their children and develop a plan for services. Different names used for this type of intervention include family team conferencing, family team meetings, family group conferencing, family team decision-making, family unity meetings, and team decision-making. Approaches differ in various aspects, but most consist of several phases and employ a trained facilitator or coordinator.

State and local examples

Adapting Family Group Decision Making for Native Communities [Presentation]
Fong, Faulkner, LaBrenz, & Cournoyer (2018)
Society for Social Work and Research
Describes a federally funded project to promote permanency and prevent discontinuity in adoption and guardianship within Native American communities. The project uses an adaptation of family group decision-making to encourage permanency conversations among families.

Family Group Decision-Making: Implementing the Family Group Conference [Podcast]
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children & Families, Children's Bureau (2017)
Presents information on family group decision-making, including a podcast that gives listeners an overview of how the Family Group Conference model is implemented in one State.

Family Engagement: Partnering With Families to Improve Child Welfare Outcomes

Series Title	Bulletins for Professionals
Author(s)	Child Welfare Information Gateway
Availability	View Download (PDF - 426KB) Order (Free)
Year Published	2016

Provides an overview of the foundational elements of the family engagement approach, followed by strategies and promising practices for implementing this approach at the case level, peer level, and systems level.

Partnering With Birth Parents To Promote Reunification

Series Title	Factsheets for Families
Author(s)	Child Welfare Information Gateway.
Availability	View Download (PDF - 213KB) Order (Free)
Year Published	2019

Explores how foster caregivers can partner with the birth families of the children in their care to promote reunification. The factsheet seeks to dispel common myths that both sides might hold about the other by drawing from foster and birth parent interviews and taking a lessons-learned approach.

What Is Family Group Decision Making?
University of Colorado Kempe Center
Provides guidelines, instructions, and references explaining family group decision making in child welfare.

What Social Workers Should Know About Family Group Decision-Making
Walden University (2018)
Explains family group decision-making (FDGM) as a collection of approaches that can be used to help families make decisions about the future care of their children. The website provides an overview of FDGM and its basic values, benefits for families, and more.

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