ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the core principles that challenge communities to implement quality and integrity-loaded family group conferences (FGC) processes. FGC is supported and reinforced in the United States (US) by federal and state policy, practice, and law, which emphasize the significant role kin can play in providing care for, and supporting, their children. Lawyers, guardian ad litems, and court appointed special advocates can play an important role during a FGC, as demonstrated in New Zealand and some US communities. While FGC provides families of origin and communities with a process to share decision-making authority with formal child welfare systems, it does not prescribe an outcome. In the United States, a troubling phenomenon is occurring in an increasing number of communities that, to receive much needed political support to initiate FGC, are casting this approach as a cost-savings or containment mechanism, or one that results in certain outcomes.
