Family involvement meetings: Engagement, facilitation, and child and family goals

Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) is a strategy to engage family members and social service professionals in child welfare to make decisions for the child and family (Olson, 2009). Family Involvement Meeting (FIM) is a mid-Atlantic state implementation of FGDM in the United States. The current study sample is comprised of 460 participants who attended FIMs at local Departments of Social Services (DSS). The objectives of this study are to examine relations among participants' engagement, facilitators' practices, and child and family service planning outcomes during the FIM. Results of ANOVA tests show that family members, DSS workers and supervisors, and other professionals have significant differences in engagement levels and evaluations of facilitators' practice; and facilitators' practice also varied significantly based on reasons for FIM meeting. Logistic regression results indicate that participants' engagement and facilitators' practice are significant predictors of service planning on achievement of family's goals and protection of child's safety. Results imply that facilitators should improve facilitation performance and make more efforts in engaging family members to improve FIM outcomes and child well-being.