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Transcripts of episodes. 

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Apr 19, 2021

When children are really vulnerable to harm social workers have to work even harder to create partnership with families where risk is present. For infants, babies, and very young children, as well as older children who are nonverbal or require constant care as they grow up, ways need to be found to work with risk that does not necessarily involve family separations.

Family Group Conferencing is one way of holding risk with the older children and adults in a family and agreeing how that risk will be addressed. Parents and expectant parents need an opportunity to demonstrate what they can do, with the sustained relationship-based support of professionals.

In this episode, Dr Mary Mitchell, Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Edinburgh, and social workers Heather Rush and Nicky Hunter from the City of Edinburgh Council, speak about the practice of Family Group Conferencing and how it can make a difference to families.

This forms part of a child protection and welfare project titled Recognition Matters, which bring together knowledge from different pieces of research to strengthen practice and improve the experiences of families.

Transcript of episode.

Resources

Azaria's story - a film of one woman's experience of family group conferencing. 

All Recognition Matters films on YouTube.

Critchely A and Mitchell M (2020) Can knowledge exchange forge a collaborative pathway to policymaking? A case study example of the Recognition Matters project. The British Journal of Social Work. 

Mitchell M (2020) The value of recognition theory to family group conferencing and child-care and protection. The British Journal of Social Work.

Mitchell M and Ali S (2020) Adaptive family group conferencing practice: keeping families at the heart of decision making during COVID-19. Social Work 20-21 magazine.

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes.