Family Group Conferencing Market Work

The Department for Education is seeking early market engagement on training provision and capacity for facilitators of family group decision making (FGDM) meetings. A widely used model of this is Family Group Conferencing (FGC).

We are developing policy which seeks to legislate to mandate local authorities to offer FGDM meetings to all families at the pre-proceedings stage (i.e. families with cases on the edge of care). This will support the Department’s objectives of keeping children safe and helping families thrive, with the support of family networks.

The Department plans to run a market engagement process over the next two months, to give potential suppliers insight into the future development of this policy.

As part of this process, we are interested in gathering insight from suppliers and organisations of all sizes in the following areas:

Providers of training for staff involved in FGDM meetings (including but not limited to the specific FGC model).

We will use a number of different routes to gather feedback and insight, including questionnaires and in-depth sessions.

A Pre Market Engagement event will be held on Thursday 12 December 2024,14.00-15.00, which will provide further information on the structure of the market engagement process, the information the Department would like to gather and the opportunities suppliers will have to offer feedback and insight.

For suppliers interested in attending this initial on line Pre Market Engagement event, please indicate your interest via the email address available here by midday 11th December. A MS teams invite will be forwarded to you prior to the online event.

Subject: Family Group Decision Making Pre Market Engagement Event

Vicki.Gregg@education.gov.uk