In  2000 the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs of Israel together with Ashalim (the Association for Planning &  Development of Services for Children and Youth at Risk &  their Families) launched extensive Family Group Conferencing (FGC) pilot projects in the areas of  youth justice, child protection and education.    I shall focus on the implementation of FGC in Child Protection since 2001.

FGC in the Child Protection Services

A National Steering Committee sought to accommodate FGC within the current framework of governmental policy and procedures; therefore, the process is used alongside traditional procedures. At the regional level, ministry supervisors sought to provide support and resources for smaller and/or peripheral municipalities and minority communities, especially in the Child and Youth Welfare Service. Eighteen municipalities all over the country were chosen to participate, including

• cities and rural settlements in the center and the south of the country
• small Arab towns in the north
• Bedouin settlements in the Negev desert.

Most municipalities referred only a few families to the project.

Stakeholders at all levels provided differing reasons for participating in the project.

• Local social services departments expected to find new ways to deal with multi-problem families and to access informal community resources and supports as well as formal resources and professional benefits.
• Coordinators – especially those who were recruited from the community, social, religious or political leadership – wanted to improve their status and their community acknowledgment, to learn more about effective ways to deal with problems and to benefit financially. 
• Families hoped to find a better solution to their problems, to regain control over their lives and to obtain more help and resources.  

In many cases the parents simply did not wish to disagree with the practitioner’s suggestion that they could benefit from participating in a FGC.
Families referred by Social Services for Child Protection

Key operational responsibilities around referral remain primarily with the social services department and the process is still slow. The main issues dealt with by FGC were:

• conflictual divorces
• family violenceaddictions and severe psychiatric problems of parents.

41 families have been referred since the beginning of the pilot implementation in 2001. More than half of the children referred to the project belonged to ethnic minorities. Two factors explain the over-representation of the Arab population in the pilot project at this stage:

1. The Northern Regional Director of the Child Welfare Ministry’s decided that the pilot project should be implemented in Arab towns and villages only.
2. The Arab local services were more prompt to accept and work with the model, as it is congruent with traditional ways of coping within the Arab society. 

These families were considered by the social workers as the most difficult cases and professionals referred them while having reservations about the families' ability to use the process effectively.  

Almost all the child protection FGC meetings produced a plan to which the agencies subsequently agreed. This should be viewed as a process with many stages between the initial plan and the final plan agreed upon and implemented. The coordinators invested a lot of time monitoring the implementation of the plans by both the practitioners and the families. 

Dilemmas in Implementing FGC

I wish to describe briefly two of the main dilemmas we have to deal while implementing FGC in Israel.  

Dilemma no. 1: Culture Relativism vs. Universal Child Rights 

Can cultural values be reconciled with the promotion, protection, interpretation and application of a child's human rights?  If cultural tradition alone governs, there is a risk that widespread abuse and violation of human rights would be given legitimacy. If traditional culture is insufficient to protect children from all kinds of abuse, universal human rights imposed by the State are necessary.

On the other hand universal human rights can be intrusive and disruptive to traditional protection of human life, liberty and security. Traditional culture is not a substitute for human rights; it is a cultural context in which human rights in general and the rights of children in particular must be established, integrated, promoted and protected. Traditional cultures should be approached and recognized as partners to promote greater respect for and observance of children rights. 

Dilemma no.2:  Neutrality of the coordinators vs. active intervention and guidance

It seems that neutrality issues in FGC for Child Protection might be quite complex, especially if the coordinator is a member of the same community, and even more so if he/she is kin and a community leader. In the Arab villages and the Bedouin Settlements, the coordinators were recruited among local leaders and professionals. As the inhabitants were all members of three or four extended families, the coordinators were either related to the families referred to the program or well known to them.

In these cases the demise of neutrality can be seen from 3 perspectives:

• Coordinators could influence decisions or even dictate certain courses of action according to the norms and rules of the community.
• The client could find it difficult to refuse or withdraw consent when an influential member of the community or the extended family member is the coordinator.
• There is no genuine sense of privacy between all the agents involved and the consent of the family to participate in a FGC could not always be limited to specific and predictable issues.

On the other hand, partnerships between the Local Social Services and the community's informal networks and voluntary organizations provided the families with help they would not have otherwise received.  Moreover the community's commitment to child welfare was enhanced. As I was told by one of the coordinators, a prominent community leader: “Whether the State will continue the FGC project or not, in our town we shall continue to collaborate with the social workers and organize family group conferences.”     
Challenges and Future Directions

The success and contribution of FGC to Child Protection in Israel are currently being assessed. Questionnaires are to be completed by the social workers and all the families that participated. The pilot study will include interviews and group discussions with managers, social workers and coordinators.

At an  FGC Conference for Child Protection, held in Jerusalem on the 30th of December 2002, the following issues were addressed:

• Mainstreaming the FGC practice depends on the government commitment to continue implementing the model. The Israeli Ministry of Social Welfare is ready to allow family members to lead on the decision-making in relation to children at risk within their family. Yet, investigates the possibility to ensure more family participation in professional child protection committees instead of developing FGC.
• Financial resources are a problem.  Employing coordinators and conducting FGCs at times and places that are convenient to the families require resources that are not necessarily available in Israel presently. 
• Issues like the confidentiality and neutrality of the process and a more accurate definition of the resources required have to be investigated.

For more information, please contact:

Simon Spak, director of FGC in Child Protection, Ashalim, Israel.

E. mail: Spak@netvision.co.il

Anat Goldstein, manager of FGC's programs, Ashalim, Israel.

E. mail: anatg@jdc.org.il

Simone Spak

March 2003