Developing Shared Knowledge: Family Group Conferencing as a Means of Negotiating Power in the Child Welfare System

Abstract

Families engaged with the Anglo-American child welfare system frequently feel as though their own experiences, perspectives and needs are given less credence than those of child protection workers. While this is attributable to a range of factors, a central issue revolves around how and what information is obtained, interpreted and shared by those in the child welfare system as information sharing can be utilised by service providers as a means of controlling and having power over families. The manner and language in which information is transmitted between the child welfare workers and the child's relatives often creates barriers to communication and frequently leaves family members feeling that their knowledge is disqualified. Family Group Conferencing — which invites the family circle into the decision-making processes regarding their child — offers a potential alternative and effective means for negotiating the complexities of power in this context as it facilitates a process that allows a holistic, culturally connected, explicit, clear presentation of the professionals' information that creates space for families' knowledges and inhibits the use of information in an oppressive way.