Introduction

Multi-agency meetings in child protection in England are attended by professionals from different disciplines and by family members, typically parents and other close relatives. Initial child protection conferences (ICPCs), the focus of this chapter, take place early in the child protection process, when serious concerns about the welfare of children have been identified. The meetings consider the gravity of the concerns and make decisions about what needs to be done. ICPCs are enshrined in policy guidance (DfE, 2018) and have an explicit institutional function, providing a record of accountable multi-agency practice. Potentially they provide a forum for the co-creation of knowledge about the children's circumstances, taking into account the perspectives of different professionals and family members to inform the decision making. This chapter is principally concerned with the role of the chair, and the relationship between chairs’ interactional behaviour and service user participation.

Involving families in child protection processes is more than a policy principle. There is a consensus that removing children from their parents is a last resort, and the child protection system aims to work with families to improve the situation of children so that they can stay at home and thrive. It appears, then, that an implicit function, or possible outcome, of the ICPC is to build a working relationship between professionals and service users. Do chairs accomplish this, and if so, how? This chapter uses the concepts of ‘relational agency’ (Edwards, 2011) and ‘epistemic justice’ (Fricker, 2007) to make sense of how chairs include family testimony and co-create an understanding of family circumstances.

The chapter first considers the child protection system in England and the place of ICPCs in child protection policy and process. Next, the concepts of ‘institutional talk’, ‘relational agency’, ‘epistemic rights’ and ‘epistemic (in)justice’ are introduced as the basis for the analysis. The data, which come from audio-recorded ICPCs in two local authorities in England, are discussed, and this is followed by an analysis of extracts from the ICPCs. Policy guidance offers no prescription for involving families in the meeting, and the analysis here shows how the behaviour of chairs may facilitate or obstruct their involvement. The conclusion suggests that leaning on institutional talk is associated with reduced relational agency and disregard for service users’ epistemic authority.