It is a process led by family members to make a plan to care for a child, young person or other vulnerable family member who is at risk. Professionals explain their concerns and what has to change. The family then makes the plan. It is often described as family led decision making, and it works because it draws on the whole extended family and their networks rather than only the people already on a file.

The facilitator works that out with your family. Family is defined broadly. It can include honorary aunties and uncles, close family friends, a grandparent, a cousin attending as a support person for a young person. Occasionally someone is not invited, either because a child safety authority requires it or because other family members have asked for it.

Family Group Conferencing is intended as a voluntary process. Whether it is offered to you, and what happens if you decline, depends on the program and the state you are in. The best person to ask is whoever made the referral, or the facilitator once one has been appointed.

An independent facilitator runs it. They organise the conference and manage the day, and they do not make decisions about your children.

It is far preferable that the facilitator is not employed by the department considering removing a child. A conflict of interest does not have to be real to do damage. If a family believes the person running the conference answers to the agency that could take their children, they hold back, and the process loses the thing that makes it work.

They are the points the referring agency says cannot be moved, such as a particular person a child cannot live with. A plan that crosses one of them will not be accepted, so they are explained to everyone before the day rather than sprung halfway through.

A good facilitator will push the agency to keep that list short and to state each one plainly. If everything is a bottom line, there is nothing left for the family to decide.

They are the practical questions the family needs to answer in its plan. Things like "Where will Tommy and Nikki live?", "Who will get them to school?", "What happens if the arrangement breaks down?" The facilitator works these out in preparation so that private family time has a clear job to do.

Usually, yes, and that is the point. Children and young people are normally participants, often with a support person of their own choosing, which might be an older cousin, an aunty, a youth worker or a favourite teacher.

How they take part is largely their decision. The facilitator meets them beforehand so they can choose whether to speak for themselves, have someone speak for them, or send in a letter, a recording or a drawing instead. They often choose the food as well. Whether attending is right for a particular child is worked out case by case during preparation.

The professionals leave the room and the family makes its plan on its own. Support people and advocates may remain where safety or a child's voice requires it, but their job is to support, not to make decisions.

The facilitator may come in and out, but they do not run the discussion and they do not write the plan for you. The whole purpose is to hand the decision making to the family rather than lead it.

A shared meal sits deliberately between the information sharing and the family's private planning time. It is part of the process, not a break in it, and it is often where the most repair happens between workers and family. What is eaten is discussed with the family beforehand, because food carries culture, and often it is the young person at the centre who chooses.

The plan is checked against the safety concerns and the bottom lines. Depending on how involved child protection or another authority is, they may hold a power of veto. The intention, though, is that they support the plan wherever they possibly can. If part of it does not meet a safety concern, the family is normally given the chance to work on that part rather than have the whole plan replaced.

Confidentiality is covered in preparation and usually confirmed in a written agreement at the start of the day, so everyone knows what can and cannot be repeated outside the room. The rules vary by program and by state, so ask your facilitator to spell out exactly what applies to your conference.

The conference day itself commonly runs across most of a day. Information sharing usually takes around an hour, then the meal, then private family time for as long as the family needs, then presenting and agreeing the plan. Preparation before the day takes considerably longer than the conference itself, often several weeks.

The plan is written up, ideally by hand on the day so your family keeps the original, with a photo sent out so everyone has a copy straight away. A formal document usually follows within about five days. A plan contact person is named to keep things moving, and a review is scheduled to check what has actually happened against what was agreed.

No. In mediation, a neutral practitioner stays in the room and helps the parties negotiate with each other. In a Family Group Conference, the facilitator deliberately leaves the room so that the family can plan without professionals present. The facilitator's skill goes into preparation and into holding the structure of the day, not into running the negotiation.

That is where most of it happens in Australia, but the model is not specific to it. The same approach is used in disability support and elder care, wherever concerns have been raised and an authority is at risk of taking the decisions out of a family's hands. It also has real potential in Family Dispute Resolution for large or complex families, though cost has kept it underused there.

Our members are listed in the Find an FGC Facilitator directory. In the child protection context you would usually be referred to a facilitator by your caseworker rather than engaging one yourself.

There is no single licensing route in Australia. In practice you need training in the methodology, evidence that you have it, and a way of demonstrating that you practise to a standard with independent complaint handling behind you.

Our Family Group Conference Facilitator Training runs across eleven online modules and three half day live workshops, around forty hours in total, and leads to a Certificate of Completion.

No. Unlike mediators under AMDRAS, or Family Dispute Resolution Practitioners under the Attorney-General's Department, there is still no government or industry standard for Family Group Conference facilitators.

Mi membership fills part of that gap. Our standards draw on the AMDRAS practice and ethical standards adapted for FGC work, and members have access to independent complaint handling, a certificate of membership, professional indemnity insurance referral, peer supervision and professional development.

No. The training is intended for people who already have some experience of working with families, which includes community services workers, child protection practitioners, social workers and dispute resolution professionals. Mediation accreditation is useful background but it is not a prerequisite.

Preparation, patience and the ability to hold a room without taking it over. Most of a facilitator's work happens before the conference day: assessing the referral, mapping who the family really is, negotiating with the referring agency about its bottom lines, and preparing every participant including the children.

Every state and territory now uses some form of family led decision making, but the names, the funding models and the way facilitators are engaged all differ, and they change regularly. The current picture state by state is covered in our process explainer and kept up to date inside the training.

Many of our members do, either wholly independently or alongside employed work. That is why our membership focuses on both sides of it: the professional practice, which is the work itself, and building a professional practice, which is getting the work.

The full course fee is $1,400, or $1,320 for Mi Members, with payment plans available over two or three instalments. Full details and current workshop dates are on the training page.

Yes. We can run a private workshop for your organisation rather than sending people to a public round. We need a minimum of ten participants. Contact us for a quote.