Family Group Conference: A Bridge between Lifeworld and System

Abstract

Family Group Conferencing (FGC) has been used in New Zealand since 1989. This new approach to care and protection for children and adolescents was triggered by an accusation of ‘institutional racism’ ( Ministerial Advisory Committee, 1988, p. 25) which denied Maori families their own ways of problem solving and decision making, thereby prolonging the process of colonisation as ‘institutional decisions were being made for, rather than by, Maori people’ (Ministerial Advisory Committee, 1988, p.18). FGC has been adopted in European countries for non-racist issues in response to the unwanted side effects of care and protection work. This article examines the hypothesis: what makes FGC necessary is not the issue of racism, but a more fundamental phenomenon of administration, law, professionalism and modern government. We will argue that FGC is a legal and professional procedure, needed to cure the unhelpful side effects of a legal and professional welfare state system. To explain this, we will follow Jürgen Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action (1987), which explains why system logic overpowers peoples' logic, even when this is not the intention of social work professionals.