Child, Youth and Family have partnered with Te Awatea Violence Research Centre (VRC) at the University of Canterbury to provide independent evaluation of Family Group
Conference (FGCs) practices and outcomes. Evaluation input is across a number of priority areas and initiatives from the Children’s Action Plan and Child, Youth and
Family’s (CYF) strategic plan 2012-2015, Mā Mātou Mā Tātou, that impact on outcomes for vulnerable children including:
· Introduce a new set of Family Group Conference practice standards and an enriched training curriculum for social workers, coordinators and other agencies.
· Working together with other Government agencies and NGOs to be collectively responsible for giving children or young people the same chance in life as all other
Kiwi kids.
· Sharing the Responsibility which is a shift to cross-agency joint accountability for outcomes for vulnerable children.
The evaluation approach reflects the priorities outlined in Mā Mātou Mā Tātou in regards to seeking the views of children and young people and being child focused; working
together with Māori; focusing on practice improvement and measuring outcomes for children and young people; and connecting with communities.
This study was intended as a scoping phase to provide a foundation for future phases of evaluation and describes preliminary findings which cannot be extrapolated without
further stages of evaluation. The scoping phase focused on care and protection FGCs as relatively recent evaluations have been conducted in the youth justice area. (From the Executive Summary). Record #4907