Transcript

SI:

My name is Si and by profession, I'm a social worker, so I'm currently working as senior practitioner in Milton Keynes, Bucks FDAC. I've been working for them since August 2020, so just coming up to three years.

I think there's lots of really, really interesting things about the FDAC model in terms of how it works. And not every core area or local authorities has bought into the FDAC process yet. And nationally, the model operates slightly different depending which area you're working in. And as part of the ongoing national research where we're very aware of that. And we link with other FDACs and with other colleagues up and down the country that are running the FDAC project to see what's working for them.

So it's very much not fixed, not just that we're kind of making it up as we go along, but we're open to continued review about what we think is helpful or might be done differently really, because that's important. It's a different way of doing things.

I think for, as a worker, what's really nice about the model is that you get to do proper work, by which I mean you are engaged in a range of tasks. It's not just that we have all the fun of going around and collecting people's saliva and urine, and seeing whether or not it's positive for various substances. For each parent we're working with, we're working in a holistic, multidisciplinary, formulated means in terms of what are their holistic needs? Although we're the drug and alcohol court, and one of the expectations is that the parents will very quickly work towards abstinence, so that's one of the main criteria, it's never just about the drugs and the drink. It's always about the deeper issues.

If we're looking for long-term change, it's not just about the problematic behavior. That's really easily measured. We can measure that in blood tests. We can measure that in hair strand tests. That's fine. But if we're looking at a long-term meaningful change so that parents can address their difficulties and work towards parenting their children more safely, then we need a kind of deeper understanding of what's brought them to that point. And the FDAC process really focuses on that.

Traditionally, children's social work, the clues in the name, you're the social worker for the child and so all although it's very much about working with the family, et cetera, et cetera, that's not often the experience of parents within that system, and that's not how it feels for them. And in FDAC, that's what we want. If things can be managed safely in the long-term, then we want children to be reunified with those parents where we think that that's a possibility.

Our stance nationally and locally for our branch of the experiment are really good. I mean, we still have fewer children reunified with their parents than not - something like 4 out of 10 - but I think standard track you're looking at about 1 out of 10. If I was a parent, I'd take that all day long.

And really, much lower rates of contested hearings where children can't go back home. Parents get it. They understand that there's still more work to do. They know that how far they've come. Their time frames for change are not going to align with the timescales of the court or the needs of kids. Under the PLO, 26 weeks is a really short amount of time to address often decades of trauma resulting from abuse, neglect. This is on the part of the parents.

We're looking at a maladaptive strategies to cope with the very worst experiences that life can throw at individuals. It's not a surprise that when someone has found something that's helped them to cope, people do what they know. So there's a lot of damage to explore, unpack, and try and help people heal.

And what we know about traditional care proceedings is it's not a very therapeutic context for people to be working in. You are under real threat. That the risk is that your children will be removed from your care permanently. There is no greater intervention into family life than that on the part of the state.

That's problematic when as I say, most of our parents have a history of trauma. So the responses and the problematic behavior is a direct result of those experiences in the first place. You're retriggering. And FDAC gives you an opportunity to help really understand and explore that with the parents and with the other professionals in the process.

I think some of the main differences between FDAC and petitional proceedings are that parents have a greater sense of being seen and heard within the process. Standard track, it's just as I'm sure you know and listeners of the transcript will know, there's limited opportunities for parents to actually engage in court. And where there is they don't speak, their advocates will speak for them.

So my experience as a social worker is that you would have your initial hearing and then you'd have your first case management hearing. And at the first case management hearing, parents would come in, and they'd walk out and say, when am I getting my kids back then? And yeah, well, that's not what today's hearing was about. Today's hearing was about setting dates and timetabling. And when this report's got to come in, when that report's got come in, and this is what you need to do now between now and then.

I've been a social worker with families and care proceedings. And it's really, really difficult. That's when they need help and support the most. It's terrifying. It's confusing. You have no idea what's going on. You have an advocate paid for through legal aid. They speak in legalese. It's a complete different language for even the most articulate and well-educated of parents.

I'm not wishing to stereotype families that might find themselves in this position, although, of course, inequality does play a very large factor in that. Nonetheless, the task of the social worker at that stage is overwhelmingly around paperwork as children become part of the looked after process. And being able to keep parents meaningfully involved in decisions around their children, or even meaningfully informed about how decisions are being made around their children. Obviously, that's a professional and ethical aspiration, but you have to be a certain sort of social worker to really go the extra yards to be able to do that. And either way you do, it's still incredibly painful for parents and for wider families.

In FDAC, it's very different. They will see someone from the FDAC team at least once a week. I often talk to my parents most days. They will see the same judge in court without the lawyers present every two weeks. That's huge. So the judge is there to get to know mom and dad. How's the last two weeks been? Good, bad, indifferent, whatever. How are you? What are you aiming the next two weeks to look like? And when we see each other in two weeks, we'll be looking at that. We're not here on this occasion to be gathering evidence or finding fact. This is about us being able to understand how you're growing, changing, developing throughout this process from the papers I had in front of me.

Standard track parents may be before a judge three, four times depending how many issues there are that require resolution. That might not be the same judge. That might not be the same judge more than once. So parents really struggle with that. This person doesn't know me. What they're doing is reading a load of stuff about me, most of which I don't even agree with. So that's really hard.

You're in an acrimonious relationship based around conflict. It's adversarial by its nature. It's called, we're in court because people are not agreeing, and we're having to ask a judge to make a decision on the balance of evidence before them, which is about the safety and welfare of children. That's really difficult. There's obviously an explicit criticism of parents within that process as having not been good enough.

FDAC's very different. We recognise the experience of shame as being linked to experiences of complex trauma, and the court process in terms of how it triggers those responses being less than helpful in terms of really supporting people to make the changes that they need to. And if they don't, then there is a massive cost in terms of human misery, never mind to the public purse as regards the outcomes of those matters. So very different, night and day.