Project: Family Drug and Alcohol Court
Purpose: To help substance-misusing parents involved in care proceedings and potentially keep more families together
Funding: Around £13,000 per family, covering assessment and treatment for up to a year. Funded by six London authorities: Camden, Westminster, Islington, Lambeth, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Southwark
Background: The 2003 Hidden Harm report by the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, estimated there were between 250,000 and 350,000 UK children with substance-misusing parents.
Parental substance misuse features in around two-thirds of care applications yet there were concerns not enough was being done to address the issues due to factors such as poor co-ordination between children's and adult services.
London family judge Nicholas Crichton found inspiration in the USA's successful Family Drug Treatment Courts, which provide a multi-agency team to help parents tackle their habit. In 2003, he and Camden's then assistant children's services director Catherine Doran set up a working group to examine the possibility of replicating these courts. A feasibility study, published by Brunel University in 2006, led to the Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) pilot from January 2008 until March 2012.
Since March last year FDAC has been based at the Central Family Court in High Holborn, seeing up to 56 new families a year. The project has been replicated in Gloucestershire, Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire.
Action: The FDAC's specialist team is provided by children's charity Coram and Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. It includes child and adolescent and adult psychiatrists, a clinical nurse specialist, substance misuse specialists, social workers, a family therapist and parent mentors.
Commissioning boroughs refer families to the scheme and FDAC's deputy service manager Hardey Barnett meets parents before the initial hearing to "reassure them about who we are". The team embarks on an assessment of the parents, which considers their substance misuse, parenting and the risk they pose to their children.
The FDAC team brings together the parents, their local authority and other support services to outline a detailed intervention plan. Parents identify personal goals, which feed into this plan and by the end of the third week, it has been submitted to court.
Parents are allocated a key worker from within the FDAC team, who connects them with a network of support for issues such as mental health, domestic abuse or parenting, alongside substance misuse. Parents meet with their key worker once a week.
A key part of the process is the fortnightly "non-lawyer review hearing", which parents attend, alongside social workers, their children's guardian and the local authority, before the same judge each time. "Parents get to know the judge and want to demonstrate the changes they've made," explains Barnett.
By the final hearing, "there should be no surprises" in the judge's decision, thanks to the regular meetings held between all parties, which make it clear how things stand.
Outcome: An evaluation of FDAC published in May 2014 shows 40 per cent of FDAC mothers stopping substance misuse by the end of proceedings, compared with 25 per cent of mothers who went through ordinary care proceedings. The cessation rate among FDAC fathers was 25 per cent, compared with five per cent among comparison fathers.
The evaluation, led by Professor Judith Harwin at Brunel University and based on a sample of 90 FDAC families and 101 comparison families, also shows 35 per cent of FDAC mothers stopped their substance misuse and were reunited with their children, compared with 19 per cent in the comparison group.
The rate of neglect or abuse one year after the children returned home was lower for FDAC parents than those from ordinary care proceedings: 25 per cent, compared with 56 per cent, based on a sample of 24 FDAC families and 18 comparison families.
If you think your project is worthy of inclusion, email supporting data to derren.hayes@markallengroup.com
