Supporting High-Risk Families Through a Pregnancy Family Conferencing Model: Experiences of Professionals

ABSTRACT

Effective child protection responses in the perinatal period can reduce the need for long-term service intervention. A Pregnancy Family Conferencing (PFC) initiative was established in one Local Health District in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, by child protection and health services to facilitate strengths-focused planning with families identified as high risk. This qualitative study explores the experiences of professionals engaged with PFC. Findings highlight the importance of hope, building trust in difficult circumstances, and ensuring transparency, with benefits for interagency partnerships and finding meaning in the work. Findings have implications for services seeking to support families engaged with statutory child protection services during the perinatal period.

IMPLICATIONS

• PFC provides an alternative model for child protection and health systems, promoting collaborative decision making through a strengths-based framework to benefit families and children.

• The findings show that PFC participation also can benefit professionals through the formation of trusting interagency and interdisciplinary collegial relationships, and working effectively with families to reduce risks.

KEYWORDS:

• Child Protection
• Strengths-Based Approaches
• Family Interventions
• Collaboration
• Pregnancy
• Family Conferencing
• Australia
• Trust
• Hope
• Professional Practice Experiences
• Social Worker Practice Experiences

The perinatal period is one of the most vulnerable periods in human development. Abuse and neglect during infancy is known to affect the structure and functioning of the developing brain (Mueller & Tronick, 2019), leading to lifetime vulnerabilities (Toth & Manly, 2019). Effective child protection responses in this period can support families to reduce the need for long-term intervention (Waldfogel, 2009). However, professionals face challenges in providing collaborative and early support to expectant parents, resulting in crisis responses after birth, traumatised parents, distressed staff, and disrupted infant attachments (Lewkowicz & Tayebjee, 2019).

In Australia, child protection services and health services are predominantly state based. In New South Wales (NSW), the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) is the government department with statutory responsibility for care and protection of children and young people. DCJ responds to child protection reports. In NSW, all health workers are designated mandatory reporters of children at suspected risk of significant harm. Prenatal reports of risk of potential harm can be made to DCJ to enable support for parents to work towards reduction of risks before birth. However, while engagement with DCJ during the prenatal period is voluntary in most states of Australia, child protection jurisdiction is activated at birth (Wise & Corrales, 2023), leading to prenatal engagement being complicated by the statutory powers of child protection services to remove infants at birth (Taplin, 2017).

In NSW, public health services are co-ordinated into Local Health Districts (LHD), which engage with expectant parents with identified vulnerabilities through hospital-based social work and maternity services. Any involvement from statutory child protection services in the prenatal period involves close collaboration with health services and families, to address interdependent vulnerabilities, as system fragmentation is a documented contributing factor in many cases of serious harm to infants (Boydell, 2015).

Traditionally, the paradigm of “child protection” has had an implied focus on the assessment of risk, with actions carried out by professionals who direct families on what they are required to do to reduce these risks (Featherstone et al., 2014; Lonne et al., 2013; Morley et al., 2022). Globally, there have been longstanding calls for, and efforts towards, shifting the paradigm of child protection services and realigning support to focus on supporting family strengths and capabilities (Featherstone et al., 2014; France & Utting, 2005; Hyslop & Keddell, 2018). In Australia, research has identified a need for greater collaboration between DCJ and the Aboriginal community to ensure the paradigm of services reflects Aboriginal knowledge-informed practice (Wardle, 2023), as Aboriginal infants continue to be dramatically overrepresented in child protection reports and removals (Wise & Corrales, 2023).

Family Group Conferencing (FGC) models are one established approach within child protection services that promote empowerment for families through involvement from extended networks of formal and informal supports (Pennell & Burford, 2000; Troedson & Robert, 1996). FGC has shown efficacy in reducing risk of harm to children across contexts (De Jong et al., 2015; Dijkstra et al., 2017; Sheets et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2012). However, there is limited literature on the use of family conferencing during the prenatal period.

The Pregnancy Family Conferencing Model

Pregnancy Family Conferencing (PFC) was developed, funded, and delivered in one Local Health District (LHD) in Sydney, NSW, Australia, as a partnership between the LHD and the DCJ commencing in 2012. Pregnancy Family Conferencing (PFC) was developed by health and child protection workers, based on the Family Group Conferencing (FGC) model and the “Signs of Safety” model (Turnell & Edwards, 1999), adapted for pregnancy. The program provides a structure for professionals to facilitate collaborative engagement with families and a forum for families and professionals to have open and transparent conversations about child protection issues. Expectant parents linked with child protection services are offered the opportunity to engage with PFC at any stage throughout pregnancy. Health or DCJ workers can refer families to PFC when there is an allocated DCJ caseworker. Engagement with PFC is voluntary, yet does not negate the need for ongoing DCJ involvement. Families are informed that PFC is a component of DCJ’s work, with DCJ also continuing to identify and address risks of significant harm throughout and beyond involvement. A series of meetings are facilitated by an independent health or DCJ professional. The facilitator helps participants develop co-ordinated plans to attempt to address child protection risks to increase the likelihood that babies can remain in the care of their parents. The Three Houses tool (Weld & Greening, 2004) is used to guide PFC with Hopes and Dreams; Strengths; and Worries identified by all participants. Since commencement in the LHD, local evaluations identify that approximately 30 families each year have participated in PFC. Local evaluations have also demonstrated positive outcomes for families, including reduced assumptions of care (Tayebjee & Lewkowicz, 2019).

In drawing on the Signs of Safety model, emphasis in PFC is placed on collaborative development of risk assessment and safety plans and transparent conversations about strengths and risks with families, in a context of building constructive relationships between professionals (Caffrey & Browne, 2023). PFC relies on active participation of professionals from across health and child protection services; however, little is known about their experiences of the process. Subsequently, this study aimed to explore professionals’ perceptions of PFC, for the purposes of deepening understanding of the processes of collaboration in PFC and sustaining service partnerships to best support families. The guiding research question was “What are the experiences and perceptions of professionals engaging in Pregnancy Family Conferencing?”

Method

Research Design

An inductive qualitative methodology with thematic analysis was used to explore the experiences of professionals involved with PFC. The methodology was influenced by assumptions that knowledge is produced relationally by interactions between people within contexts (Burr, 2015), and allowed for exploring experiences and perspectives without preconceived frameworks (Braun & Clarke, 2022).

Participants

Professionals who had participated in a PFC in 2018–2020 were invited to participate, via an email sent to service managers of identified organisations. Interested participants received detailed information about the study and provided written consent to participate. Twenty professionals agreed to participate (N = 20): four from DCJ; nine from health services including social work, drug health, and midwifery; three from NGOs; and four facilitators. No demographic data was collected to preserve confidentiality. However, it is noted that none of the participants identified as an Aboriginal person. One health worker occupied a professional position working exclusively with Aboriginal families.

Data Collection

Interviews lasted for an average of 30 minutes and were audio recorded. Face-to-face semistructured interviews were conducted with all participants. The questions asked of participants were about program goals, exploring experiences of interagency relationships, case planning, and family participation to elicit a broad understanding of professionals’ experiences of PFC.

Data Analysis

Analysis was undertaken inductively using reflexive thematic analysis guided by Braun and Clarke (2022). This robust and flexible approach was deemed appropriate for a study driven by the co-ordinators of the program being explored. The collaboration with a researcher external to PFC was purposeful to aid reflexivity. Each interview recording was listened to and manually transcribed by the researchers, facilitating deep familiarity with the data. Initial codes were identified based on the study aim of exploring the overall experiences of professionals. Experiences were considered collectively and not separated by organisation in line with the relational framework of this study. The exception was when divergent experiences from health or DCJ participants were clearly identifiable and relevant to understanding the outcomes of the study. The researchers organised codes into potential groupings individually and then came together to compare, refine, discuss, and agree. Themes in inductive qualitative studies are iterative and broad, seeking to describe patterns and shared ideas from the overall experiences of participants, through the interpretation of the researchers (Braun & Clarke, 2022). Themes were developed from across the participant accounts and described conceptually. Themes were collaboratively named, refined, and defined by all members of the research group. Illustrative participant quotes were chosen to add depth (Lingard, 2019).

Ethical Considerations

Ethics approval was granted by the Ethics Review Committee (RPAH Zone) of Sydney LHD (2019ETH11543). The study was undertaken by PFC Coordinators (ZT, DL) as part of their professional roles with no additional funding. A social work student on field placement undertook the interviews. The co-ordinators collaborated with a Senior Clinical Academic (SI) with experience in qualitative methods and health service research to support analysis.

Findings

Five themes were developed to describe the professionals’ experiences of PFC: the importance of hope; building trust for engagement; strengthening interagency relationships; ensuring transparency and accountability; and finding meaning in the work.

The Importance of Hope

Participants described that PFC fostered hope for families by focusing on strengths and resilience. Meetings allowed families to see that services were invested in the family staying together. Through a reciprocal process, the participants also subsequently felt more hopeful themselves.

I’ve been doing this job for three years and if it wasn’t for PFCs it wouldn’t be 3 years. And that’s because when I came, the level of assumptions of care were so distressingly high that I just didn’t think I could keep doing this job. But when I saw how well PFCs worked and I saw that I could actually give a different level and different kind of care … and … that kind of difference in outcome … it’s all heading [in] the right direction. Yes, there are many miles to travel, but this is the right direction. (p. 5, health worker for Aboriginal families)

Participants identified the importance of ensuring that identified strengths were meaningful in relation to addressing serious child protection concerns and that the focus on strengths was integrated into the PFC meetings in nontokenistic ways that supported hope. Professionals having hope was important for PFC, and PFC also fostered hope.

PFC … creates some stories of hope … it’s very easy for workers to hear all the stories of things going wrong and to really struggle and to feel that it’s an uphill battle … but there’s some great stories of hope in here. (p. 17, health facilitator)

Participants described difficulties in enabling decision making for families when there were “bottom lines” in relation to expectations or requirements imposed by child protection services to ensure safety. At times, this disrupted their hope that families had choice in the process. Despite this, they observed that PFC created hope and empowerment for families, which had flow-on effects on their own sense of hope, efficacy, and agency.

Sometimes I have a client who is pregnant and … has had other children removed … but she’s here, I’ve heard her narrative, I see a woman who wants change … The reason why I love PFC so much [is] that she suddenly becomes a face to DCJ … she’s a woman that has a narrative, she’s a woman that has a history but she’s also a woman who has hopes and dreams for the future and she’s a woman that is currently facilitating change for herself. (p. 12, NGO worker)

Building Trust for Engagement

Participants identified building trust and engagement with families as critical in the process of PFC. Trust and engagement with families also required interagency trust to ensure collaborative approaches. The families’ fear about child protection involvement and implications often impeded families’ initial engagement in PFC, meaning that building a relationship with families prior to PFC meetings was identified as crucial.

I think we have to do a lot of convincing initially when we first meet women, especially if they have a history of previous children that have been removed … I find that with the clients that I have had, it’s the ones where it’s their first baby that are more open to PFC from the beginning and the ones that have had a history [with DCJ] take a lot of convincing. (p. 14, health worker)

Trust and engagement seemed to increase across the period of PFC for both families and professionals. During the process of the meetings, families became more trusting of the professionals as the focus remained on attempting to build family strengths and work together on a plan for the baby to go home with them. Holding hope for an outcome where baby remains with parents was crucial to ongoing trust and engagement.

[Families] are seeing actually that we are not adversaries, that we are there to help and support them. Whereas historically they might have said, “Well look, they … are going to take our babies” … but now there’s really good stories going out … I think the script has changed. (p. 6, health facilitator)

Participants had to actively work to build and maintain trust and engagement with families, and if they gained families’ trust and were viewed as supportive, they were able to endorse other professionals, thereby “transferring” trust to other individuals and services, and to the PFC process itself.

I think it is, in a subtle way, an important role, because I proved myself and then I say and I know you can trust this person, and for the Aboriginal community in particular if someone that is trusted gives the thumbs up to the next person … it actually does make a big difference. (p. 5, health worker for Aboriginal families)

Building engagement and trust was sometimes not possible and families declined to participate or stopped engaging if the process was too distressing or confronting, or experiences with child protection services impeded trust. Supporting Aboriginal families was an area where trust could be most challenging to establish, as negative community experiences with child protection services compromised willingness to engage. A need for Aboriginal PFC professionals to support trust and engagement throughout the process was identified.

[A]s a bunch of white workers—which we all are … when there’s an Aboriginal DCJ worker or somebody that the family want to bring that is culturally safe, I think [it] does seem to open up [things] and [we] have more transparent communications. (p. 8, health worker)

Strengthening Interagency Relationships

Participants viewed relationships and collaboration with other professionals as being crucial to PFC. They described the ways PFC strengthens relationships and promotes greater understanding: building strong interagency relationships had benefits beyond PFC, through ongoing strengthened service relationships.

[O]utside the PFC sphere sometimes it’s hard working with services because they don’t carry as much risk as us. They think that more harsher decisions, quicker decisions need to be made … But for me in the PFC sphere … it’s built some relationships so that I’ve then been able to talk about … other situations other families are experiencing. (p. 3, child protection worker)

Health professional participants described how the PFC process increased their empathy and understanding for child protection caseworkers, as the relationships in PFC were very different to their usual interactions at times of babies being assumed into care. This facilitated a shift in the way individuals and services worked together, altering historical divisions between health and child protection.

[C]oming from two different health districts where one didn’t have PFCs I can really notice a difference and the cohesiveness of the case plans and that all workers I guess are working towards the same goal … And I think showing families that everyone’s on the same page and working together is a huge benefit. (p. 14, health worker)

The importance of demonstrating unity to families was echoed when disagreements among professionals occurred within PFC. Practice or systems issues or fundamental differences of opinion about the level of risk to a baby were identified as better to be discussed without families present. The role of the facilitator was key in navigating these challenging situations. There was agreement that the facilitator, regardless of their professional background, was critical for keeping meetings strengths-focused and goal-oriented. While differing points of view in PFC meetings were acknowledged as likely, meeting processes, led by the facilitator, could also encourage understanding and agreement.

Because we all get to speak on every component that’s brought up, and we all get to question things that have been said and we all get to clarify what’s said and we all get to make sure that the language is clear … by default we end up with every single person basically in agreeance that this is a fair representation of the situation. (p. 5, health worker for Aboriginal families)

Ensuring Transparency and Accountability

Participants emphasised the importance of professionals and families being open, honest, and accountable through PFC. Time was spent enhancing safety in the meetings and ensuring there was time to have direct conversations with families about child protection risks, even if this did not always go smoothly.

Sometimes there can be challenges … information might come up that the family might not have heard before and that’s very confronting. Or sometimes … DCJ for whatever reason … maybe don’t feel comfortable to say all of the worries and so might not be super transparent but then I think part of the role of the facilitator is … to ensure that doesn’t happen. (p. 2, health facilitator)

It was particularly important for child protection caseworkers to be clear about nonnegotiable factors and failure to clearly articulate these could lead to confusion and a breakdown in trust. Transparency and honesty among professionals were key in enabling the process to go well.

What’s helped is us being honest about what our bottom lines are. When we’ve been clear about what our worries are but also what the impact upon the family and the child will be. When we haven’t articulated that well then it’s led to services or clients being distrustful of the process. (p. 10, child protection worker)

While a focus on strengths and goals was important, at times this led to identified child protection risks being minimised to “protect” the family. Participants described examples of meetings where they felt that child protection services had not been transparent about having made a decision about a baby coming into care, which compromised transparency and trust. Participants also talked about balancing the need to be optimistic, encouraging, and hopeful with being transparent and realistic. At times this balance created ethical tension for professionals.

[O]ne I have at the moment, the chances of this baby going home are very slim. We’ve had conversations for some time now and that’s been expressed that it’s unlikely baby will go home. So ethically I feel quite torn in knowing that … I worry that being optimistic instils false hope. (p. 3, child protection worker)

Finding Meaning in the Work

Participants described their work in PFC as being rewarding and feeling “worthwhile”, particularly when families retained care of their babies. Participants believed that PFC was reducing the number of babies being assumed into care, which ensured that the process felt meaningful and important. Although meetings could be long and challenging, participants recognised the importance of putting in place plans that could prevent lengthy crisis responses and trauma for families and staff.

When I first started here and when I did the first couple of PFCs, I did not enjoy them. I thought they were too long … however, now I think that they’re incredibly useful. I think the length of time … has allowed me to stop being in a hurry about things and I think perhaps maybe I listen slightly more to some other professionals. (p. 11, health worker)

Facilitators described being motivated to engage in PFC in addition to their usual roles because of the benefits for families and how this subsequently made them feel. The relationships formed with professionals from other services also made the role fulfilling and professionally beneficial.

I wish we could work this way with all our families, [in PFC] we have the luxury … we have the element of time. There are other avenues we can go down in the Child Protection space in terms of like FGCs, having case plan meetings, but definitely some of the tools, the conversations that we can have in the PFC setting can add to your toolbox for when you’re working with other families. (p. 1, child protection worker)

Participants who had been involved in assumptions of care as an outcome of the PFC process described that although the outcome was distressing for families, PFC was seen as empowering families within that process. PFC enabled families to have some control and input into what may happen for their baby and the context was supportive for having difficult conversations. Transparent conversations allowed them to feel they were still supporting families’ agency and to feel that the work was still meaningful, regardless of the outcome.

It also gives you the opportunity to then say this doesn’t have to be a forever decision, because whatever it is we’re saying we want you to work on now … for the child to be safe to go home—you still have an opportunity to work on those, so it still means people can plan into the future. It also means that people get to think about where might this baby go and so they can start to think about how they still have a relationship with this baby … So I think it empowers them. (p. 17, health facilitator)

Discussion

The findings detail the experiences of professionals in engaging in a PFC program to support expectant parents with identified child protection risks. Professionals’ experiences were largely positive, despite the inherent challenges of addressing serious risk in a strengths-based model, within short timeframes and across sectors. Participants observed the program to benefit families, and identified reciprocal benefits for them as professionals. They described the importance of fostering hope, building trust to support engagement, and ensuring transparency and accountability for families, which concurrently led to them feeling more hopeful, trusting, and safe of their colleagues and the process. The experience of being involved in PFCs allowed for strengthened interagency relationships and facilitated the finding of personal meaning within the work.

Understanding the experiences of professionals working within programs like PFC is a critical component of ensuring initiatives are sustainable. Child protection systems are under perpetual strain in responding to increased reports of risk, rising costs of interventions, and low staff retention (Cortis et al., 2019). In response, reforms have sought to reorient child protection systems around supportive family services and structured approaches to responding to risk, although there are ongoing calls for increased relational practices to support positive outcomes for children and families (Cortis et al., 2019). PFC is one initiative aimed at promoting collaboration and shared decision making through voluntary case planning and goal setting. Partnerships with families and across services, such as those in PFC, are known to create stronger families and communities (Pennell & Burford, 2000). Building on evidence of how strengths-based approaches benefit families, the findings of this study contribute to understanding how such approaches can also support a resilient and collaborative workforce, through fostering hope and building sustained partnerships.

The professionals emphasised the importance of trust, underpinned by transparency and hope, in influencing engagement of families and their own experiences of participation. Trust is dynamic and complex (Wu et al., 2016) and evokes issues of power (Robbins & Cook, 2018); building and maintaining trust in child protection contexts requires actively addressing issues of power. Families require trust to initially engage in PFC and then that trust needs to be reinforced and developed throughout the process to enable action and disclosure (Behnia, 2008; Robbins & Cook, 2018). In this context, engagement in PFC requires fostering of elements that contribute to trust including optimism, agency, and hope (Robbins & Cook, 2018). Professionals in this study referred directly to these elements and expressed them throughout their reflections. Trust was also crucial among professionals and services. Interorganisational trust links to commitment, reliability, and integrity (Wu et al., 2016) and is maintained through PFC by the facilitator, and the engagement of professionals. PFC allows for trust transfer between services that have historically been siloed, subsequently improving interagency relationships and collaborative care for families. In evaluating FGC models, Pennell and Burford (2000) noted that FGC meetings should be viewed not as an outcome, but as one collaborative step in an ongoing process to encourage and support families to take active roles in decisions about their wellbeing. In their evaluation they observed that FGC not only benefited families but also “fundamentally changed the way in which the service providers … responded to them. Participation in conferencing interrupted usual modes of intervention and encouraged mutually sustaining links” (p. 153). Similarly, in the present study, professionals described shifts in their practice and relationships with other services that had potential to alter the way they approached engagement with families in their wider work.

As a statutory agency, DCJ is required to make final decisions about whether infants remain in the care of their parents. The professionals in this study highlighted that PFC could be impeded without transparency about “bottom lines”. Bottom lines refer to the minimum requirements that need to be met to avoid removal of infants (Government of Western Australia, 2011; Turnell & Edwards, 1999). PFC does not alter bottom lines but is one process to ensure collaborative and transparent planning with families to address contributing factors. Decisions about child protection are based on assumptions of risk, with intervening unnecessarily or not intervening both having significant consequences for families and infants (Hultman et al., 2020). Although local data on PFC show reduced assumptions of care at birth (Lewkowicz & Tayebjee, 2019), when assumptions occur, PFC supports transparent decisions, with support for families. Health workers in this study struggled to accept whether alternative outcomes to assumptions of care were possible when risk was present. This reflects the unavoidably complex nature of “voluntary” interventions led by statutory agencies (Pösö et al., 2018). In contrast to child protection service-led decisions, which occur when the risk of significant harm requires immediate and pressurised actions (Helm, 2011; Hultman et al., 2020), intervention in the antenatal period through PFC allows for time to facilitate safety planning collaboratively.

When considering examples of “unsuccessful” family group conferences, De Jong et al. (2015) note that families who experience helplessness in service contexts are less likely to benefit. Examples include families who have a history of involvement with child protection services or are from overrepresented communities. The Aboriginal communities in Australia are communities who have longstanding mistrust of child protection services due to historical and ongoing overrepresentation (Harnett & Featherstone, 2020). While PFC endeavours to ensure cultural representation at meetings, the findings of the current study highlight a need for ongoing consideration of how to build trust and cultural sensitivity within service structures and collaborative models. Wardle (2023) explored Aboriginal people’s experiences of engaging in FGC in Australia and identified a need for Aboriginal-identified positions to support interactions between kinship systems and professionals (Wardle, 2023). Although participants in the current study recommended Aboriginal facilitators for PFC, the creation of independent, dedicated Aboriginal positions also can lead to untenable professional contexts for incumbents and promote a lack of awareness of diversity among Aboriginal cultures (Herring et al., 2013). Subsequently, the ongoing challenge of addressing child protection issues in Aboriginal communities, including through processes such as PFC, requires continued consideration and collaboration with communities to ensure individual Aboriginal workers are not tasked with the sole responsibility for making services culturally sensitive, nor expected to build and transfer trust with systems that continue to be associated with harm.

Despite the introduction of prenatal reporting of infants at risk of harm in Australia, rates of infants being taken into care at birth continue to rise (Wise & Corrales, 2023). The child protection mandate in Australia is of a stand-alone authority, meaning there is little formal involvement in child protection decisions by other services (Price-Robertson et al., 2014), leading to siloing of professional roles and a lack of awareness of how decisions are made and the complexity of these processes. Professionals in this study benefited from opportunities to work alongside each other, leading to increased compassion and understanding for the challenges of child protection work. The existence of voluntary child protection programs is a significant shift in a system largely built on compulsion, with voluntary models inherently shifting focus from risk and mandates to partnership and needs (Pösö et al., 2018). However, innovative models of support are required to ensure that voluntary prenatal engagement with DCJ reduces the risk of infants being removed at birth.

Child protection workers directly witness trauma in their work and experience criticism and blame from other professionals and community members (Horwitz, 2006). Many child protection workers also demonstrate significant resilience (Russ et al., 2020). Vicarious resilience occurs through engaging empathically with stories of resilience in the context of adversity, facilitating professionals to gain a greater appreciation for their clients’ hopes, strengths, and potential with bidirectional impacts (Silviera & Boyer, 2015). In other settings, participants working in strengths-based ways with clients apply skills in noticing strengths to other aspects of their work and lives, leading to increased experiences of optimism and hopefulness (Silviera & Boyer, 2015). Professionals in the current study describe reciprocal processes of fostering hope and trustworthiness for families, while also experiencing these constructs themselves and applying them across their wider work.

Limitations

This study was a small qualitative project undertaken by the project leads of PFC. While this may have impacted upon the findings, this reflects the reality of much social work research in health and social services. A convenience sample of participants was used based on self-recruitment in a single urban setting; it is not known what the experiences of those professionals who chose not to participate might have been or how the findings may translate to other settings, including rural and remote areas. None of the study participants identified as Aboriginal and further research exploring the experiences and perspectives of Aboriginal professionals and families is indicated. This study only explored professional experiences; the lack of experiences of families is significant and will be undertaken separately.

Conclusion

Pregnancy Family Conferencing demonstrates one model that could provide an alternative to current, crisis-focused approaches of child protection and health systems. PFC promotes collaborative decision making and a strengths-based approach to early intervention with families in prenatal settings. Participation can benefit professionals through the formation of trusting interagency and interdisciplinary collegial relationships, which then impact upon working effectively with families to reduce risks. Professionals benefit personally and professionally from processes of trust building, transparency, and hope. Many child protection services struggle with increased emphasis upon risk-aversive procedures, increasingly complex and fragmented systems, and limited opportunities for new and innovative thinking due to crisis orientation. Pregnancy Family Conferencing provides one model to support positive outcomes for families, with an embedded focus on strengths and hope that benefits professionals and cross-agency relationships.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Magali Legrand, a Master of Social Work student, for conducting the interviews, and all of the professionals who participated in the interviews.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).