Family Group Conferencing in Child Welfare (Netherlands)
Problems addressed
Child abuse, neglect, and/or maltreatment
Family breakdown and/or dysfunctionality
Effectiveness

No Effect

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No Effect

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Life periods served
Children (4 to 13 years)
Where the program was applied
Ambulatory - Social services centers
Country of application
Netherlands
Description

This is a program developed by the Amsterdam child welfare system to improve child safety, reduce the use of professional child welfare services and the duration of children’s involvement with these services, as well as to provide social support to parents.
Families participating in the program were referred by a child welfare agency for child maltreatment, alcohol and drug abuse, mental health problems, high conflict divorce, and child behavior problems, among other motivations. Once in the system, their participation in the program was defined by means of a sweepstake.

Impact evaluations

An experimental study showed that no statistically significant differences were found in child safety, child maltreatment, duration of social work follow-up, or parental supervision orders. There was a low level of family treatment completion, as well as increased rates of referral of children to foster care (experienced by 9% of the families in the intervention group vs. 1.3% of the families in the control group). Families reported a statistically significantly higher level of perceived social support. The total study sample included 328 families [1].

Bibliographic reference

[1] Dijkstra, S., Asscher, J. J., Deković, M., Stams, G. J. J., & Creemers, H. E. (2019). A randomized controlled trial on the effectiveness of family group conferencing in child welfare: Effectiveness, moderators, and level of FGC completion. Child Maltreatment, 24(2), 137-151.

Information source