Family drug and alcohol courts boost reunification with children, research finds

While just 12.5 per cent of parents with an alcohol and drug addiction are reunited with their children at the end of care proceedings, this proportion increases to 52 per cent among those where a FDAC is involved.

In cases where these courts are involved a third of parents stop misusing drugs or alcohol, compared with eight per cent where such specialist help for parents is not part of care proceedings.  

• Case study: How specialist court helps families overcome substance misuse

• Analysis: What kind of family support can avert looming care system crisis?

FDAC were introduced through the 2014 Children and Families Act as an alternative to standard care proceedings and involve a multi-disciplinary team working with parents and a judge to reduce substance abuse issues.  

Evaluation of their use has been carried out by Foundations - formed from a merger of What Works For Children's Social Care and the Early Intervention Foundation - and found FDAC can cut local authorities’ care bill.

Almost three in ten of children whose parents involved in FDAC proceedings were placed in local authority care, compared with more than half of those where they were not offered such specialist support.

“A normal court wouldn’t help you off the drink and drugs to keep your child,” according to one parent researchers spoke to.

“They’d just say, ‘look, you’re obviously putting your drink and your drugs before your children, so bang, we’ll have your child off of you.’

“FDAC is different. It gives you the maximum opportunity to do what you need to do to keep your child. It’s so much kinder.”

Another parent describes their experience as “very intense” and told how at one session with FDAC staff “we discussed everything from my past … my family, my daughter, my drinking, my relationships … my childhood, the lot”.

“I knew it was something I had to do, so I forced myself to get … through it all,” they added.

“Family drug and alcohol courts can have a positive impact on child and family outcomes,” said Foundations, which is urging the government to ensure evaluation is considered when analysing costs involved in scaling up such problem-solving approaches to care proceedings.

This “would enable more families to benefit from extra support, while building the evidence government needs to assure itself that problem-solving approaches in family courts improve outcomes and present good value for money”, it added.