Into the swampy lowlands. Evaluating family group conferences

Abstract

A recent debate in the UK on the merits of randomised controlled trials in evaluating Family Group Conferencing is a reason to bring this debate to a wider audience than the UK. Other countries are also struggling with accountability and the desire to know what works in the light of public spending. This paper explores, debunks and rethinks ways of evaluating FGCs and how it is connected to our desire to predict and control future circumstances. For the latter insights of the Dutch philosopher Kunneman are used to understand what is going on. The rise of personalised medicine, however, holds practical reasons to rethink the value of population-based randomised controlled trials in social work in general. Where the field of medicine is moving from ‘one cure for all’ and population-based RCTs to individually tailored therapy and N-of-1 studies in order to meet the complexity of particular cases, some fields in the social sciences seem to have difficulties in moving from reductionism towards a more integrated view of life.