Our Services
At Relative Strength we pride ourselves on delivering high quality, bespoke, independent services to our clients, children, young people and their families. We are passionate about upholding the rights of the child, and delivering the best possible services to those we engage with.
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Our practitioners are carefully selected, and are level 3 trained in Family Group Conference coordination, Advocacy, and Mediation. We work to the national standards for FGC practice, the Advocacy Charter 2014, and the Family Mediation Councils standards for practice 2022.
All employees are also enhanced DBS cleared, and this is reviewed every 2 years.
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Details of the services we provide are listed below.
If you wish to speak to us about our services, please complete the contact form situated on our home page.
You can use our online booking form to book a consultation with us, or if you wish to refer a case to us, please complete our online referral form.
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Introduction to Family Group Conferences
A family group conference is a family-led decision-making meeting, where children, their family, and friendship networks come together to make a plan to improve the circumstances for the child. The process is convened by an independent coordinator who helps the family explore their situation, issues and options for resolution, in readiness for their family group conference. Children are encouraged to be involved in their family group conference, often with support from an advocate. It is a voluntary process and families cannot be forced to be involved. The family group conference process is about families making choices, and the first one being whether or not to engage.
The development of family group conferences
The development of the Family Group Conference model was developed as a result of the Daybreak (Puao-Te-Ata-Tu) report which was conducted in 1988 in response to the large number of Maori children being removed from their families, and placed into Local authority institutions, which did not accommodate their culture or customer.
The family group conference model is now widely used within the UK, as well as numerous other countries around the world.
Family group conferences can be used in various situations where a plan and decision needs to be made about a vulnerable child or adult. They are now widely used in the UK in all areas of child welfare including:
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Early help services.
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Safeguarding work including domestic abuse.
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Court proceedings.
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Looked after children and planning for leaving care.
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Education issues around attendance.
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Anti-social behaviour and youth justice including restorative justice.
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Safeguarding work with adults including elder abuse.
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Adults with learning disabilities
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Adults with mental health difficulties
Relative Strength in addition to the above, are looking to also explore the use of family group conferences for:
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The release of young offenders and adult prisoners from custodial sentences, looking at options for support and continued rehabilitation.
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The discharge of adults from hospital, with care packages consisting of family support available.
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Addressing homelessness, especially with young adults who were in the care of the local authority.
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Pre-birth cases to prevent adoption and identify placements with family members if parents are not a safe option.
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Domestic abuse cases, to aid victims to safely flee abusive situations and become survivors.
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Coming soon:
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Multi linguistic FGC services.
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At Relative Strength our aim is to provide the FGC model to as wide an audience as possible. Within every locality around the UK there will be various cultural demographics. Individual FGC services will not have the capacity to have coordinators who are linguistic in various languages, therefore find themselves utilising interpretation services. Whilst these services are often excellent, the interpreters often do not understand the complexity of the FGC process. These services can often be costly too. We are exploring the option of recruiting a bank of FGC coordinators who will be multi lingual and who are fully qualified to convene FGC's. These can then be spot purchased as and when an FGC is required in a certain language. We would appreciate your feedback on this new service, therefore if you have a few minutes to spare, please complete this brief survey?
Advocacy
From time to time individuals may find themselves in a situation where they feel they are not being heard, and that their wants, needs, thoughts, feelings and their voice and opinions are not being considered. This can be especially difficult when this coincides with when decisions are being made, which will have a direct impact upon them. In order to ensure equal participation and a balanced and fair approach, at Relative Strength we provide advocacy support to bridge the gap and support those that need it, ensuring that their gender, race or cultural needs are thoroughly considered.Advocacy forms a vital part of the FGC process, as its primary aim is to support those who may struggle with engaging with the process and have their voices, views and opinions heard. By providing a trained advocate, we are able to ensure that the child, young person or vulnerable adult are thoroughly prepared for the FGC, ensuring that they have had the time and space to objectively consider their perspective, and those of others. The advocate will remain impartial throughout the process, and will either attend the FGC with the individual to support them directly, or attend on their behalf to promote their views and needs. The advocate will follow the individuals lead and will remain throughout the meeting or withdraw at the individuals request. The Advocate will also attend the follow up review meeting to provide continued support, until the individuals engagement with the FGC service comes to an end.
Mediation
At Relative Strength we recognise that there can sometimes be barriers to problems being resolved. This is often due to conflict between various parties, which are preventing things moving forward, causing a ripple effect on the wider family.
By providing mediation as a conflict resolution strategy, we are able to meet those challenges head on, identifying the issues, find solutions to problems, improving communication between parties and encouraging a collaborative approach to issue resolution.
Mediation between parties is convened by our qualified mediators, who have a wealth of experience and expertise in this field and who will ensure a fair and balanced approach to mediation.
Mediation provides each party with the opportunity to discuss their perspective uninterrupted, ensuring that they are listened to and heard. An agenda is then compiled, and discussion then takes place to explore the agenda items and create an agreement in regard to what each party will do to help improve the situation. This is then drawn up by the mediator and distributed to both parties.
Mediation is confidential, and the resulting agreement will not be shared with other parties not involved.
Mediation will not be considered as an option where there are mental health issues present or a power imbalance within situations such as domestic abuse unless it were felt that advocacy support could address the imbalance and provide a safe approach.