Research validates family drug and alcohol courts - but report authors warn about scope of findings

Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 15 August, 2023

A government-funded research centre has found children in care proceedings run by family drug and alcohol courts (FDACs) are four times more likely to be reunited with their families.

In its latest report, Foundations also found FDACs almost halved the proportion of children placed in local authority care.

Parents going through the courts were four times more likely to stop substance abuse and five times less likely to contest hearings.

However, Foundations (formerly the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care (WWCSC) warned no firm conclusions could be drawn from its study due to its limitations.

FDACs were set up in 2008 to hear care cases involving parental drug and alcohol abuse. They involve input from multi-disciplinary teams including substance misuse professionals and social workers.

There are currently 14 FDACs across 38 local authorities in the UK.

The Foundations report states: “Our evaluation found that families who participated in FDAC were significantly more likely to be reunified, and parents were more likely to stop misusing substances.

“These findings are consistent with the existing evidence base which suggests that problem-solving approaches in family courts can improve outcomes for children and families.”
But the report goes on to add: “There were, however, limitations to this evaluation which mean that we cannot attribute these effects entirely to FDAC and we are unable to draw firm conclusions about the impact of FDAC based on this study.”

Researchers said while they were “confident in the direction of the findings”, they were “less certain about the magnitude of our findings… These findings, therefore, should be treated with caution”.

Robin Sen, lecturer in social work at the University of Edinburgh, welcomed the findings but questioned the Foundations’ call for a randomised control trial (RCT) of FDACs.

He said: “If RCT evaluation is now the benchmark for governmental support of a model of social work practice in England, it begs the question of why pet projects such as systemic models of social work practice, or the controversial Pause project, remain untouched by such calls.

“From the outside, Foundations’ research strategy also appears puzzling. Though I personally would not have supported an RCT of FDACs, WWCSC/Foundations have clearly always held the view that RCT evidence of FDACs’ impact was desirable.

“That being so, it is unclear why they did not commission one, as they did of Family Group Conferences.

“Instead, we have Foundations announcing positive findings from the large-scale evaluation of FDACs heavily caveated by a claim that further large-scale evaluation is still required.

“It does not make good sense and raises the prospect of an endless churn of evaluative activity that will, I suspect, end up doing little to improve the experiences of families on the ground.”

Foundations was created through the merger of WWCSC and the Early Intervention Foundation last December and was formally launched last month.

The WWCSW has attracted criticism since it was set up in 2017 to provide “the best evidence into what works in children’s social care” backed by £20 million from the Department for Education.

Some academics objected to the use of a RCT in its evaluation of Family Group Conferences (FGC) at pre-proceedings stage. This was largely because it restricted families’ ability to choose an FGC during the study period as families were randomised without their knowledge.

The centre has also conducted a series of studies looked into whether “small scale interventions” including providing high-quality tea and coffee, goal-setting and a weekly email from senior managers creates “happier, healthier professionals”.

Uptake for the goal-setting trial was so low that no difference was observed and the tea and coffee trial found little difference to outcomes.

The letter of recognition trial was found to increase a sense of feeling valued, but was only tested at three local authorities due to Covid-19.