3.1 An example of problem-solving courts in the UK: FDAC

This section explores Family Drug and Alcohol Courts (FDAC) in the UK. They are explored as an example of dealing with social rupture using a problem-solving model. As you will see, they are more person-centred and seek to understand much more of the specific detail behind what has led to a social rupture. Their aim is to problem solve and, if possible, seek to reconnect a person who is struggling with a more supportive social environment, thus facilitating a different kind of repair to an adversarial court.

You will learn about the family drug and alcohol courts by hearing about the experiences of real people who have worked or been through proceedings in FDAC. Specifically, you will hear from:

• Heidi, a parent who has been through the FDAC process
• Charley, a solicitor working for a local authority in relation to the FDAC process
• Si, a practitioner working in the Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire FDAC
• Jenny, a team manager in the Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire FDAC
• Katie, a parent who has been through the FDAC process.

In the below clips, each of the five people discuss their experiences of FDAC. Listen to one or more of the audio clips, and then answer the corresponding question(s) in Activity 1.

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Transcript: Audio 1 Heidi

HEIDI ENGLAND:

My name is Heidi England. My experience of FDAC was, obviously, I was referred there for drug usage. They were brilliant help. I worked with them for quite a long time. And my experience with them was very good, very positive, very helpful.

When I started with FDAC it was very hard, initially, going into the programme. It is hard for everyone coming off drugs, et cetera, et cetera. But it stayed the same through the whole period really. They work the same the whole way through. And really, things didn't change. It started one way, and it continued that way. Obviously, as the time goes by, things get better with yourself. You get more and more clean. So things obviously go off a bit with testing, et cetera, et cetera. But generally, it was the same experience the whole way through.

What worked really well with FDAC is they keep you busy, they keep you very, very busy. So they put you on courses. They get you out of there every single day, Monday to Friday, doing something, taking up your time.

Also, what is a very positive thing with FDAC is the testing. Constant. They test you. They can go from five days a week. And obviously it goes lower as time goes on. But that continuous testing helps a lot.

FDAC just the way they interact with you, the way they treat you like a human being and not just another statistic. So that was a big help for me. I couldn't interact with social services at all because it's just another number in a book to go to that, you're not a person. You're just another scumbag out there. Do you know what I mean?

FDAC, my support worker anyway, she was an angel. She helped me. And I will always be thankful to her for giving me my life back.

If I'd gone to a traditional care proceeding plan, I do believe I would have failed. I worked with social services for quite a long time before they took me to FDAC. I know people that have gone through the traditional, obviously people I worked with as I was getting clean. I worked with a few people that it was horrendous experience for them.

So I do think there would have been a big difference. I don't think I would have succeeded as I did, and how quick I did. So I do think there would have been a big difference.

I don't really have nothing bad to say about FDAC, apart from a couple of members of staff I came across, a bit inexperienced, a bit not really understanding. But other than that, a bit of training, it's there. But I don't really have a negative thing to say about them.

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CHARLEY

My name is Charley and I'm currently working for a local authority. I am fairly new to the local authority actually, started in December. But prior to that, I had 15 years experience in private practice. I have moved to different areas, so I do have experience of the Coventry and the Milton Keynes FDAC courts.

So in terms of FDAC and the traditional family courts, I think that there are a few differences. We're obviously in statute that we've got to look at a timetable of 26 weeks. With FDAC, it is more or less accepted that it won't run within 26 weeks, because the FDAC model itself takes such a time, both to have the assessment to get up and running, then to allow the trial for change. Then there may be an extension thereafter. Then we're subject to court listing. And so it's really hard. It's a really tight time scale to fit everything in.

With the normal family track, if I can call it that, you don't have to consider the FDAC models. So you're then looking at things like a parenting assessment. And if that's all that's needed, that can quite easily then be put in that 26-week time scale. But yeah, if you throw in a different variable where an expert assessment is needed, again, that can make it still really tight.

A significant difference, I think, would be that a parent or family would have to almost find their own way through the normal track of care proceedings, in that if they needed therapy, the onus is on them to go to their GP to seek their therapy, or if they've got a drug and alcohol issue, that they would need to seek help with that.

And sometimes that's a big ask, actually taking that step. And it depends very much on where that parent or carer is in the cycle of change, whether they're ready to take that step. With a multidisciplinary team in the FDAC model, I would say that you've got a much better chance of being supported to be able to take those steps and it be measured throughout.

But going back to the normal family track, I think you haven't got what the FDAC has got. You don't have the fortnightly non-lawyer reviews. So with the FDAC, you can go and talk to the judge; the judge will say how well you're doing or things that need to be improved or the judge can understand what are the issues.

And it's very much that things are keeping a check on regularly throughout the FDAC model. Whereas within the normal track of care proceedings, you don't have that at all. You won't have that judge's input from one hearing to the next. And I think that is a significant issue.

The guardian as well that's involved in the process, the guardian and the social worker would be invited to the non-lawyer reviews in the FDAC process. They can't always attend, but they are involved in that. And so, again, there's that regular professional input and working with the judge. So if there are issues, they're highlighted much quicker, I think, than in the normal track. I mean there are cases where the normal track is required. So for example, where you need a significant expert report when there's a non-accidental injury and things like that. There are places for that track. But I think if we're looking at a case where there's drugs, alcohol, domestic abuse, and areas that perhaps parents need that learning, they need that support, that is given to them, or every opportunity is given to them, and it's up to them whether they grasp that.

I think the FDAC model is a more sympathetic model, and I think that it has a very good framework. You've got a multidisciplinary team which is available to the family. So you would have a psychologist or psychiatrist. You'd have a social worker. You'd have a drug or alcohol worker. There'd be regular testing. There'd be regular reports, there'd be regular reviews, as in taking stock after so many weeks after a child for change. Sometimes we'd extend it if we can see some positives.

And I think it is very much focused on problem-solving. And I find that a really useful way of perhaps the families being able to measure and see some progress in themselves. And I think that's a big difference compared with the usual family proceedings track, which we may go on to talk about shortly.

I think the families have much more involvement in the FDAC process. And it can receive higher success rates, I think, even if it is that the child is not returned at the end of it. Using the family model in the FDAC process, I think they've been given absolutely every opportunity. And whilst I was in private practice, I used to refer to it as the golden ticket, where you've got all the help readily available, you've just got to grab it.

I think that the traditional care proceedings, I feel that the parent or carer is very much-- the onus is on them to make the change. And they've got to find their own way out of the difficulties that they have found themselves in. They obviously generally have a solicitor to help them, and sometimes they have a key worker. But I think it's very much down to whether or not they are willing and able to make the changes for themselves.

And I think that's the hardest part for them. I think it's difficult that sometimes we don't have input or professional input for periods of time, and I think the parents or carers perhaps lose sight then of their way. And that's where the FDAC model, I think, can improve success rates.

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Transcript: Audio 3 Si

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.

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Transcript: Audio 4 Jenny

JENNY SWIFT:

I am Jenny Swift, and I'm the team manager of the Milton Keynes in Bucks FDAC. And I've been there for about six years. And before that, I was a child protection social worker for about 10 years.

I did frontline child protection for about 10 years, all of that in the family courts. And there's such a stark difference to FDAC, and that's why I really like it. Even the really good social workers in frontline child protection teams struggle to work with parents in court proceedings, struggle to have the time to give them, and just don't have access to the resources.

So the fact that in FDAC we've got a multidisciplinary team, there's counsellors, there's drugs workers, there's a psychiatrist, there's social workers, people can really get what they need, and it feels like a proper therapeutic process.

Whereas social work, however empathetic you try to be, you're in court representing the local authority. And if the local authority's case is that these children aren't safe at home, that is what your job is. Whereas with FDAC, our job is to work really intensively with parents and see if they can make changes, give them every opportunity, every ounce of support.

And if they can do that, then great. And if they can't, we work with them on what else life might look like. How can they be there for their kids maybe through contact, or supporting their children to live with a family member? And that's the real difference. It takes all the adversarial aspects out, all of the he said, she said, fact findings in the court, did she or didn't she do this to say, OK, well, that was the baseline. Where can we go? And can we support you on that journey?

So when a family enters proceedings, aside from urgent cases where there's been an injury to a child or a very serious child protection concern, most families will have been working with children's social care for quite a long time. They will have been through child in need processes, child protection processes, and the public law outline, which is access to solicitors before it hits court.

FDAC comes in when the local authority issues an application to the court. So all of our families are in active court proceedings. And at that point, they have a choice between standard proceedings where they would see a judge maybe three to four times through the process, work with their social worker, and normally be seen by an expert in psychology, psychiatry, and have a parenting assessment.

Or they can come into FDAC, which is a non-adversarial way of doing care proceedings. They would get a full assessment by the FDAC team looking at their entire narrative, their history from birth to now, their mental health, their substance misuse.

And if they then chose to come in and agreed with the intervention plan that we suggested, they'd work really intensively with the team, with therapists, with drug and alcohol services, with the fellowship, so Alcoholics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, to really intensively-- it's almost like rehab in the community.

We want people to be doing something about their recovery every day, because if you've been having difficulties, whether that's drugs and alcohol or mental health, you will have those difficulties every day. So you need to do something about your recovery at the same level.

And you get the therapeutic team supporting you. You also get to see a judge every two weeks without lawyers, which is really different to the standard process. And the parents I talked to really value that, knowing their judge. And even if that's the judge telling them this isn't good, you're not doing well, if you keep on this way, I'm not going to be able to send your child home to you. The parents really value that.

And actually, even when the judges have been really clear I don't see enough evidence for your child to go back, the parents still choose to have that judge as their final judge to make a decision about a child. They have a right to have a different judge if they feel the judge might be biased or for any reason. I've never, ever had a parent want to do that. They want the judge that knows them as people with their strengths, with their weaknesses, even when it's going really badly.

The fact that the person making final decisions about their child knows them is massive. I've sat in standard proceedings and had adoption orders, so placement orders are the order you'd get to start to look to place a child for adoption. And the judges have got children's names wrong. They've never met the parents. They're reading things out that they clearly don't understand or have got wrong.

And the parents are understandably irate and feel like, well, if the judge understood this decision would never have happened. And the difference in FDAC is the judge does understand. She knows the kids. They've been speaking about the children, seeing pictures of the children, speaking about the parents, knowing all of the context. All of the little details that we as professionals can say, well, it didn't change the final decision, but for parents are really vital, and it's that relationship with the judiciary, with an authority figure who is going to make that final decision that really kind of tips parents on FDAC, I think, just knowing that the person making those really important decisions knows them and cares.

And even if they're making a decision they don't agree with, they're making it on all of the evidence and out of the best interests of their child. And I don't think parents see that in standard proceedings, even if that's where the judges are coming from. It doesn't come across because they don't know each other.

I think with standard proceedings you can make progress. As a social worker in child protection teams, I have got children home with families, and I've got children who were really, really unsafe out into more safe situations. It's far from perfect. It's very adversarial. I think it adds trauma for parents going through that and for kids who are in limbo and don't know what's going to happen for six or nine months.

And it's also very hit and miss. If you get a good social worker, if you get a judge who's understanding, if you get a guardian who really takes the time to get to know children. Standard proceedings can feel like a real lottery as to whether you get the support or not and whether you do it or not.

There's also a lot of reliance on independent experts. So a psychologist will come in, meet a parent for three hours, write a report. And in standard proceedings, that can be all and end all those three hours and what that psychologist or psychiatrist thinks. And one of the frustrations with that is they will quite often, they won't be from the local area. They'll put out recommendations for parents. So to get your children back, you need to do two years of dialectic behavior therapy. Well, we don't have two years. The child doesn't have two years, and there's no DBT in our local area. And it used to feel like banging your head against a brick wall. And that was as a professional. How the parents must have felt getting this report saying you are wrong in all of these ways and the only way to fix it and be safe is to have this magical therapy which isn't available to you, that must just be soul destroying.

And those were the bits that used to eat away at me, really, and the reliance on external professionals and asking people to do the impossible. You can't do two years of therapy in six months care proceedings.

Relationship-based work should be the foundation of everything, whether it's court work, social work. We're asking human beings in their moments of shame and when life is in crisis to open up. And if we don't have good relationships, then it's not going to work.

And that's where an independent team and a judge can really help with that. And then once parents start to trust the team, they can then move on and make good relationships again with social care and with other agencies where there might have been mistrust. They see that some people are trustworthy and so they're willing to risk it again.

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Transcript: Audio 5 Katie

KATIE

My first name is Katie. I first came to FDAC in September '21. Completed FDAC the beginning of this year '23. My experience of FDAC was great, I came into FDAC when my son was born. My son was born in the September, and I started FDAC in the January.

And things were very slow in the normal-care proceedings. From September till January, nothing sort of went anywhere. I was having to do a lot myself. I started with FDAC and things instantly were just very sort of, I'll say intense. But I knew where I was going, and I knew what was expected of me. And yeah, I just went forward from there, and I completed it the January after.

I think what worked for me was the fact that you had a worker with you and an allocated worker that visited you every week, done relevant testing, and was just interested in how you were getting on. It wasn't just focused on recovery, it was about yourself as well. Very, very rewarding. You had court. We'd go to court every two weeks. Which was a big achievement, really, that you got good feedback from the court as well.

And I think the more encouragement I got, the more I wanted to do it. It wasn't just you were left to your own devices. It was very intense. Different things to do every day nearly. Yeah, and I think once you'd completed it, there'd be another thing to go on to as well. So there was always planning ahead. You always planned different things to do, and it just kept you busy the whole time.

I think FDAC were a lot more involved, if I'm honest, I must say, it's been my personal social worker, very much. It wasn't just as I say, focused around recovery, it wasn't focused just around addiction. It was just more about your own well-being. And even just down to, how are you, and things like that, some people don't get from a social worker. It was just a much more intense relationship. And you know you can trust them because they want the best for you. They don't want a negative outcome, they want a positive outcome.

I think at first, as I say, at first, it's quite daunting because you have so much expectations of you. You have so much to do really. When you're not in a routine and you're not used to doing much, and then you get put into FDAC and you're expected to do things every day, testing every week or every two weeks. And I had a newborn baby as well. So obviously it was quite hard. But I think the first month was a bit tough, but then after that, it just seemed like a normal way of life.

I mean, you meet fantastic people that are in the same position as you. That are very supportive. Everyone's so supporting of each other with the different groups that you go through and things like that. So yeah, mine was a great experience.

Me personally, there's not anything that I changed because it all went really well for me. I think the assessments at first were probably the hardest part for me, because you do have to relive a lot of what you've been through. And basically, so to speak, air your dirty laundry to everyone, people you don't know. But once that part's over and done with-- and I think that was the hardest part, but not something that I'd want to change. But yeah, that's just the hardest part. But after that, no, things fall into place. And I think once you're in, started the routine, a few groups every week. And I think it gave me a massive structure to what I needed to do.

I think if I went through traditional care proceedings, I think I wouldn't have been given the push that I was with FDAC. And my working relationship with my social worker wasn't the best at the time. Obviously, her main focus was my son that was born. Obviously, she needed to keep him safe, but there wasn't much based around what I was going to do next. It was about just me making certain phone calls. But you don't always get the same response from the agencies that you're calling.

You're trying, but they're so overwhelmed with people they don't always get back to you as soon as you give them a call. So there was a lot of delay in that. But then luckily for me, from the September to the January, is all I had to wait to join FDAC. So in the January straight away I was on FDAC. And it just seemed like a totally different way. I was pushed into doing things straight away, which helped me. So I do think that it probably would have been a lot more waiting around, a lot more stuff that I would need to find to do myself, rather than being told what to do.

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