Effects of Family Involvement Meetings on Outcomes of Child Welfare Services, Family Strength, Engagement, and Children's Safety

Background and Purpose

In recent years, child welfare agencies have tried to increase the effectiveness of their practices with a large focus on strengthening families. One of the family engagement and strength strategies is Family Group Decision Making (FGDM), which builds collaboration amongst families and service professionals during the service planning (Berzin, Cohen, Thomas & Dawson, 2008). By bringing the family, their supports, professionals and the community into the meeting, the family can communicate and discuss the services needed to help prevent the maltreatment from reoccurring (Pennell & Burford, 2000). A Mid-Atlantic state implemented a version of FGDM called Family Involvement Meetings (FIMs) to improve the family strengths and active engagement. The purpose of this study is to examine impacts of FIMs on outcomes of child welfare services and to examine if there are significant differences of experiences at the meeting among participants.

Methods

As part of statewide evaluation, FIMs feedback surveys were conducted for all triggers by the jurisdiction. At the end of each FIM the survey was distributed to all participants to measure their satisfaction with the meeting. Six jurisdictions completed a total of 733 surveys from May 2013 until March 2014. Participants included caseworkers and supervisors (n=249, 34.0%), youth and family members (n=247, 33.7%), and other professional providers (n=236, 32.2%).  The triggers which caused a meeting to occur included placement changes (n=199, 27.1%), permanency changes (n=58, 7.9%), removal or considered removal (n=202, 27.6%), Voluntary Placement Agreements (n=27, 3.7%), Youth Transition Plan (n=90, 12.3%) and other (n=157, 21.4%). Questions asked if the meeting helped family strength, children’s safety, achievement of goals, family engagement, and making a decision about child’s placement at the meeting. The ratings were on a 4 point scale: Strongly Agree, Agree, Not Agree, and Strongly Not Agree. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to analyze the differences of the measures among family members, case workers and supervisors, and other professionals.

Results

ANOVA results show that most of participants agree with family strength (3.56 ± 0.72), children’s safety (3.69 ± 0.60), achievement of family goals (3.59 ± 0.67), addressing family issues (3.57 ± 0.70), and making a group decision (3.59 ± 0.69). Results also show that child welfare workers and supervisors had more positive perceptions that the FIM meeting helped family strengthen (F=4.04, p<0.05), helped children’s safety (F=3.67, p<0.05), and that a decision about the child’ placement was made at the meeting (F=3.37, p<0.05) than other participants. These differences were statistically significant.

Conclusions and Implications

Results of this study indicate that there are positive outcomes from the family involvement meetings. Most of participants agreed contributions of the meetings are helping families and children.  The positive results of the family involvement meetings show that families as well as other participants are working together to benefit the child. Through the positive efforts of the Family Involvement Meetings, families and professionals will be able to communicate and build a service plan that will help guide the family and child to the necessary resources and supports needed to make them successful.