Study
Dijkstra and colleagues (2018) conducted a randomized controlled trial in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, to determine the effectiveness of Family Group Conferencing (FGC). Families were determined to be eligible for the study if they were referred to a child welfare agency between January and December of 2014. Families that participated had been referred to a child welfare agency for a range of reasons, including child maltreatment, alcohol and drug abuse, mental health problems, high-conflict divorce, and childhood behavior issues.
A total of 346 families were randomly assigned to either 1) the treatment group where they received FGC, or 2) the control group where they received care as usual. Eighteen families were excluded following the random assignment because they did not belong to the target group determined by the child welfare agency, or because FGC was not offered. The final sample consisted of 328 families, with 229 families in the FGC group and 99 families in the control group. There were 529 children in the study sample with a mean age of 10 years. Approximately half of the families (53.4 percent) were from a non-Western background, and 46.6 percent were from a Western background. A majority of the participating families (75.9 percent) were broken or newly formed, and 24.1 percent were intact. A majority of the parents (77.4 percent) also had a low level of education, meaning they had completed only lower levels of secondary education. The remaining 22.6 percent were considered more highly educated. Nearly half of the participating families (48.8 percent) were referred to the child welfare agency due to a parent-related issue. The other reasons for referral were child-specific issues (24.1 percent) or family-related issues (27.1 percent). There were no statistically significant differences between groups in any of the background characteristics.
All families involved received Intensive Family Case Management (IFCM), the standard procedure for families involved in the child welfare agency. IFCM was a supervision and case management method designed for engaging and motivating high-risk youth and families with a wide range of problems. Families assigned to the control group only received IFCM, and families assigned to the treatment group received both IFCM and FGC. Family and child welfare worker reports were collected at five different periods: immediately after referral (T1), and 1 month (T2), 3 months (T3), 6 months (T4), and 12 months (T5) following the formation of a care plan.
During these assessments, the study authors measured outcomes that included child safety, risk of child maltreatment, out-of-home placement, supervision orders, duration of child welfare involvement, parental empowerment, and social support. Child safety was measured as part of a child welfare worker’s regular risk assessment, scored on a 10-point scale. This outcome was measured at all timepoints. Risk of child maltreatment was measured by the child welfare worker completing the risk assessment scale of the Actuarial Risk Assessment Instrument Youth Protection. This scale consisted of 23 items rated on a 2-point scale. This outcome was also measured at all timepoints. Out-of-home placements and supervision orders were extracted from case files and were measured at T1 and T5. Duration of child welfare involvement was taken from case files and measured in number of days. Parental empowerment was measured by a subscale of the Family Empowerment Scale (FES), which consists of rating 12 items on a 5-point Likert scale. This measure was completed by the parents to assess their perception of empowerment in parenting situations; it took place at T1, T3, T4, and T5. Social support was measured by both the number of support sources and perceived social support. The number of different social support sources was assessed by the Parental Support Questionnaire, on which the parents indicated all the sources they felt supported by, from a list of 15 resources. Perceived social support was measured by the Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (ISEL–short form), which consisted of rating 12 items on a 4-point Likert scale. This outcome was measured at T1, T4, and T5.
The authors conducted separate repeated measures of analyses of variance (ANOVAs) to examine differences among the groups at each timepoint and the effectiveness of FGC in terms of the various outcomes. ANOVAs were conducted for outcome measures such as duration of child welfare involvement, social support, and parental empowerment. Logistic regression analyses were performed to examine child maltreatment at each timepoint, as well as new out-of-home placements and supervision orders. The study authors conducted subgroup analyses to determine which families were most likely to benefit from FGC.
