The place of family group conferencing in child welfare in the Republic of Ireland

This paper provides a brief overview of the practice of Family Group Conferencing (FGC) in the Republic of Ireland through a review of what has been occurring within the child welfare arena. The Irish legislation, policy and practice developments are reviewed against international trends. The chapter focuses on what has been working in conferencing in Ireland as well as the aspects that need attention and identifies key questions about the future direction and place of the practice.This paper is based on a review of small scale Irish research studies as well as legislative, practice and policy documents and a number of interviews with key service providers. It is written through a reflective process from the vantage point of one who was deeply involved in the development of kinship care (O'Brien 1997, 2012) and Family Group Conferences in Ireland from 1998 - 2003 (O'Brien 2001, 2002, O'Brien & Lynch 2002). Reflexivity involves looking again at perceptions in the light of new knowledge, understandings and perspectives. Doolan's (2007) conceptual framework for analyzing the provision of conferencing is used to aid and structure this examination and presentation. This distinguishes between legislative, procedural, and 'best practic' elements and uses the differences between 'mandate', 'strategy' and 'fit with other agency processes' to identify key implementation issues.