Gale Burford - Family Group Conferencing: New Directions in Community-Centered Child and Family Practice

Gale Burford and Joe Hudson editors

First published 2000 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge
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Copyright 2000 by Taylor & Francis.

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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 00-038041

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Family group conferencing : new directions in community-centered child and family practice / editors, Gale Burford and Joe Hudson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-202-36121-7 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 0-202-36122-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Family social work. 2. Social work with children. 3. Child welfare. 4. Family counseling. 5. FamilyDecision making. 6. Social networks. I. Burford, Gale. II. Hudson, Joe.

HV697.f3635 2000
362.82dc21

00-038041

ISBN 13: 978-0-202-36122-2 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-202-36121-5 (hbk)

Contemporary North American child welfare exists in a global context. Concerns about the prevention of child maltreatment, permanency planning, risk assessment in child protection, and family support in its numerous forms, increasingly define what has become a common agenda for policymakers, senior administrators, researchers, and practitioners in most industrialized countries. The recent exponential growth of technology means that service innovations once considered local now find their way rather rapidly into what has become an international discourse on innovative practice. Thus, patch programs of geographically based integrative services from the United Kingdom are imported to the United States at the same time as family preservation strategies are exported to a wide range of venues from western Europe to Australia. No doubt each of these transplants will be altered by their new host cultures sufficiently to allow for their rediscovery after a decent interval has passed.

Whether the resultant services will be simply old wine in new bottles, or improvements on the original innovation, remains to be seen. Critical perspectives are much needed both to set the cultural/historical context for looking at new and promising ideas in services, as well as to appreciate the incremental enhancements they have acquired. Key questions for planners and practitioners include:

These and related questions are particularly germane for the subject of this present volume, Family Group Conferencing. Since its origins in the Maori culture in New Zealand, Family Group Conferencing in one form or another has attracted widespread attention in North America, western Europe, and Australia both as a front end (preventive) service, and also as a culturally sensitive intervention for children, youth, and families already deeply enmeshed in the service system. Among its features of interest are its blending of lay and professional helping, its focus on family empowerment, its cultural relevance, and its creative use of the group process. Contributors to the Burford and Hudson volume offer a rich menu of topics that, taken together, illuminate the landscape where Family Group Conferencing originated in addition to providing a snapshot of its potential applications. A careful reading of Burford and Hudson will yield in ample measure a perspective on what could perhaps be called the most intriguing child welfare innovation to arise in the last quarter century. As seasoned researchers and program developers they have chosen their contributors wisely, and the resultant volume is perhaps the most comprehensive statement on Family Group Conferencing to appear in the international literature of social work and child welfare. It will serve as a valuable sourcebook for practitioners, planners, and students of child welfare. The authors offer a rich and diverse array of critical perspectives that will aid immensely in understanding the potential strengths and limitations of this intriguing innovation. The authors strive to balance in their various selections aspects of policy, practice, and research perspectives. All who work with, plan services for, or conduct research on services for children and families will find something of substance in this volume. It is particularly timely for the U.S. context where critics from differing philosophical perspectives are increasing their calls for a total overhaul of the child welfare system. This richly detailed and provocative volume by Burford and Hudson and their colleagues provides both a stimulus and a catalyst to this debate.