Family Engagement and Collaborative Decision‐Making Processes Provide Multiple Benefits in Child Welfare Cases

• Author: Kelly Browe Olson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12527
• Published date: 01 October 2020
• Date: 01 October 2020

FAMILY ENGAGEMENT AND COLLABORATIVE DECISION-MAKING

PROCESSES PROVIDE MULTIPLE BENEFITS IN CHILD

WELFARE CASES

Kelly Browe Olson

†

ABSTRACT

This article is about the importance of family engagement and collaborative decision making in child welfare cases. It briefly

reviews the history of mediation and family group meetings and suggests that juvenile courts and child welfare agencies

should thoughtfully prioritize and expand their use of the techniques and processes of interdisciplinary collaborative

decision-making and dispute resolution that have been successful for over thirty-fiveyears.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

The use of collaborative decision-making and dispute resolution techniques in child welfare cases provides multiple

benefits for the families and professionals involved in these cases;

Brief history of the development of mediation and family group meetings in child welfare;

Discusses the importance of creating an interdisciplinary collaborative relationship between families, attorneys and

child welfare agency professionals;

Parent engagement and empowerment, use of confidentiality, information exchange and expanded role of the profes-

sionals and parties are all benefits of these processes.

Keywords: Child protection Mediation; Child Welfare; Collaborative Decision-Making; Collaborative Process;Dependency

Mediation; Dispute Resolution; Family Group Conferencing;Mediation.

I. INTRODUCTION

Judge Len Edwards, a pioneer jurist and early champion of child welfare mediation said:

The creation and expansion of child protection mediation has been one of the most significant develop-

ments in national court improvement efforts. It has had a positive impact on the overwhelming majority

of courts that have introduced it…

1

This article is about the importance of usi ng family engagement and collaborative decision making

in child welfare cases. It reviews the history of mediation and family conferences in child welfare

and suggests that juvenile courts and child welfare agencies should prioritize and expand the use of

collaborative decision-making techniques and alternative dispute resolution while being careful not

to rely on these processes to inappropriately keep children and families from services they need.

Child welfare cases

2

involve allegations of abuse, neglect, or dependency that may or may not

lead to the temporary or permanent removal of children from their home. Child welfare state agen-

cies and juvenile court programs are distinct professional entities that have intersecting yet unique

roles to provide resources and services to ensure the health and safety of children and families in

Correspondence: kbolson@ualr.edu

†

Professor Browe Olson is an Associate Professor and the Mediation Clinic Director at the UA Little Rock Bowen School of

Law. This article was written with the support of a research grant from UA Little Rock Bowen. I also appreciate my draft

readers and my co-editors of this volume of Family Court Review, Phil and Rebecca Stahl.

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 58 No. 4, October 2020 937–954, doi: 10.1111/fcre.12527

© 2020 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts

their state. The agency and court personnel must work together and with the families they serve to

ensure the safety and well-being of the children in their care, yet they are frequently inadequately

funded and have limited personnel resources, leading to case delays and the squandering of multiple

system resources including time and funding.

3

According to Thomas Geraghty,

4

the procedures of the first juvenile court were purposefully

designed to be informal in the hopes that the outcome s would be more restorative than punitive.

5

The progressive reformers hoped this approach would allow judges and probation officers to pro-

vide individualized solutions in each child’s case, and increase their chances of success.

6

This is not

what has developed. Juvenile court litigation in 2020 frequently leads to polarization, discourages

open communication, and does little to support information sharing, joint problem solving, and a

focus on individual families. Little has changed since 2009 when Bernie Mayer said: “Few child

welfare experts deny that the predominant approach to decision making is inefficient, ineffective,

and even toxic for children and families.”

7

The lack of collaboration and the power struggles in con-

tested child welfare cases and hearings also increases the antipathy among the professionals and

parties. The collaborative decision making found in alternative dispute resolution processes such as

child welfare mediation, family group conferences and family team meetings are more in keeping

with the original intent of juvenile courts than the adversarial litigation that occurs today in most

courts.

8

Child welfare mediation and family centered meetings have become well established in many

jurisdictions across the United States.

9

Mediation is commonly defined as a collaborative problem-

solving process involving an impartial facilitator who works with parents, lawyers, child protection

and other professionals, to reach a consensus regarding how to resolve issues of concern when chil-

dren are alleged to be abused, neglected or abandoned.

10

Family group conferences are family-

focused, strengths-oriented, community-based processes where parents, extended family members,

social work professionals and others come together to make decisions collectively for children or

young adults.

11

These processes are administered by child welfare agencies and juvenile court sys-

tems either internally or with external partners.

12

These team decision-making and dispute resolu-

tion processes use a non-adversarial team approach to provide opportunities for the professionals

and parents to work together to create, evaluate and implement tailored cases plans and collabora-

tively plan for the parent’s and the child’s future.

13

They are family-focused, strengths-oriented, and

community-based processes where parents, extended family members, and others come together to

collectively make key decisions for children involved in the child welfare system.

14

The neutral

facilitators who run the processes help parents and professionals by making room for people to

vent, to be heard, to disagree, and to try to understand each other’s perspectives while exchanging

important information. They allow parents to share in the decisions that affect them and focus the

participants on a family’s strengths, not just their weaknesses.

Collaborative decision-making and DR processes have been successful during all stages of a

child welfare case, from the initial report of abuse or neglect, the entry of a case into the court sys-

tem, to the final stages after a child returns home or the case is closed through guardianship, adop-

tion or other event.

15

Surveys of court improvement projects indicate that the use of alternative

forms of dispute resolution is one of the most popular reforms identified.

16

Recent research in

Michigan, Texas, Washington D.C., Chicago, Nebraska and elsewhere shows lower system costs

and less time for children in state care when these processes are utilized .

17

This article has three sections. Part I briefly reviews the history and development of child welfare

mediation, facilitation and family meetings. Part II looks at how carefully incorporating collabora-

tive team-based decision-making techniques and processes benefits families, professionals and the

child welfare system. Part III describes some of the collaborative dispute resolution programs in the

United States.

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