Family group conferences: User empowerment or family self-reliance? - a development from Lupton

This article is a response to Lupton (1998). It is not in the tradition of a critical response, but rather a complementary and extended exploration of the issues raised in the earlier paper. It draws on the authors' respective experiences as innovator and researcher in the held of child welfare and youth justice and presents, within the overall debate, new material both from child welfare initiatives and from the recently completed study into the use of family group conferences in youth justice. It concludes that some of the key tenets of family group conferences are in danger of being neglected by professional and political agendas if urgent attention is not given to the primary purpose of family empowerment and to adequate resourcing of FGC plans.