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Picking the ‘right’ cases for FDAC – is it possible?
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Mary Ryan FDAC National Unit and Independent ConsultantWhen evidence of promising outcomes for families began to emerge from the evaluation of FDAC this prompted a further question about whether it was possible to predict which families were going to be successful in FDAC and linked to this which were the ‘right’ cases to select for FDAC. This question became particularly important once government funding for the FDAC pilot ended in 2012 and the burden of funding the FDAC specialist team fell onto children’s services departments in the participating local authorities.
As FDAC has been rolled out to more areas across England the FDAC specialist teams continue to be primarily funded by children’s services with some areas receiving contributions from Public Health commissioners. In each site commissioners set out the number of cases they anticipate will enter the FDAC process each year. This varies between 35 and 6 cases depending on the area and whether the team is funded through a consortium of local authorities or by one or two only. The limit on numbers necessarily involves senior managers and/or local authority lawyers having...
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