We spoke to Jane Dunne, the Team Manager of Coventry and Warwickshire FDAC about her work, the key challenges and successes of running an FDAC team, and her hopes for FDAC.
Tell me, what is a typical day for you as a FDAC Service Manager?
My role is multi-faceted and generally no two days of the week are the same. A key part of the role aside from formulation is the supervision and one to ones with team members thinking about and reflecting on individual cases, hypothesising, and planning as well as structuring personal development. In addition, the staffing and service planning, strategically sustaining the partnerships with stakeholders including FDAC graduates, and maintaining the relationship with the toxicology lab problem solving if there are delays or difficulties.
In Coventry I participate in the public health drug strategy group alongside the treatment agency, local universities health and police as well as individually meeting with both Coventry and Warwickshire treatment service team managers on a bimonthly basis to share information ensuring a timely intervention for our FDAC parents. In addition to this I work directly with parents in FDAC, I might deliver a specific intervention to a parent as part of their plan or simply drug test or complete unannounced visits, and if we are short staffed then to ensure the service delivery, I will step in on some occasions key working too.
What have been the key challenges and successes of managing a MDT team working in the FDAC arena?
My initial contract was a secondment for six months and eight years later I am still here and as passionate, if not more so, about this team and the model. One of the most daunting aspects of the role when I started was managing the different disciplines within the team and differing professional values and expectations. I really had to consider how I would inspire and lead the team and set out quite early on into my role time for staff to co- work, learning from each other to retain and develop their individual specialism as well as diversifying to strengthen their knowledge in other areas of the work.
We did a lot of team building and appreciation of each other and as for me, well I had to ensure I had the right knowledge and understanding to supervise and mobilise the team, hence completing my diploma in addiction.
My aspiration had been for a FDAC team first approach and a sense of strong team identity with high support and high challenge. Staff welfare is key and establishing a work life balance so important, knowing when someone has a family crisis or is experiencing vicarious trauma and offering support at the right time, I hope, helps team members to feel confident to raise what they might be struggling with and feel supported in a similar way to how we intervene with parents.
One of the difficulties when we first came into the court and in establishing FDAC was ascertaining the confidence of the private law firms and the Local Authority solicitors, as there was some hesitance on their part to think of FDAC as an option. I set up a FDAC practice development forum that had representatives from the FDAC judges, Local Authorities, Cafcass and private law firms setting out to model problem solving approaches and really work together to share information and agree practice standards and expectations. Through the forum we have developed a FDAC court draft template as standard, inclusion criteria and training around drug testing.
There have been many highlights, sustaining funding to continue the service and the delivery of the combined Coventry and Warwickshire FDAC through a partnership with Warwickshire County Council, which means that there is parity in the court for families across both authorities, and also the expansion of the team from five practitioners to 12.
The existing Coventry team won the children and young people now award for innovative practice in the public sector in 2018, a commendation for the work of Coventry and Warwickshire FDAC with families in 2022 and more recently I was awarded the social worker of the year award as team leader of the year 2023.
This was such an accolade to be amongst so many worthy practitioners and to win for my inspirational leadership but more importantly, regardless of the award, to be nominated by my team, FDAC graduates and Judges has been overwhelming. As a team manager you hope you are doing a good job inspiring and motivating people but to hear how you have impacted them is just humbling. They definitely inspire me.
What made you want to work in Children’s Social Care with a focus on FDAC?
I started my career as a nursery nurse and at 16-year-old when I embarked upon a career choice, I think I always knew I wanted to make a difference for families and be part of the solution for their difficulties. The family first, family valued approach I had then has not really changed throughout my work in the field as social worker.
I was a statutory front line team manager for nine years in an inner-city area, I saw time and time again families where trauma and addiction were at the heart of their problems and children’s experience of being parented and frustrated that services to support just did not exist or were not timely, repeat removals of children from their parent and generations of involvement discouraging.
In 2015 Coventry launched its family drug and alcohol court team, FDAC, and reading about the model and outcomes I felt inspired and interested in how this would evolve in Coventry. Five months after the launch of the FDAC court in Coventry, the City Council decided that the FDAC needed a manager but for a six-month period only to the end of the initial grant period. Despite the short period of time, I knew this was an opportunity for me to be part of change for families but equally important to effect and be part of shaping the way services, assessments, interventions and court processes were delivered.
It was to my delight I was successful in that application, stepping into post March 2016. The success of the team and more importantly the outcomes for families has been amazing, collaborative, emotional, challenging but overall liberating enabling creativity, problem solving and in the true sense family valued approach to practice.
In your view, what are your hopes for the future of FDAC?
One of the most frustrating aspects of being a team manager in FDAC is the worry about funding and future of the service and model. This is not just my worry it’s something that the whole community of practice are concerned for. My hope is that FDACs become core funded and that every parent with a child/children who are subject to proceedings can be offered FDAC as an alternative to usual proceedings and that is it not a lottery in terms of where you are living and if they have a FDAC court. The FDAC model crosses over with the outcomes and objectives for health, public health and the police, we are fortunate in the West Midlands to be granted money from the West Midland’s Crime Commissioner for a domestic abuse social worker. It would be wonderful if stakeholders across each authority were able to contribute to FDAC services delivery as a collaboration. It could really make a difference.
For Coventry and Warwickshire, my aspiration is that we will continue to develop as a team, consolidate our learning and be able to extend the model into pre proceedings and post support interventions. I also have an aspiration (which we have started implementing) for a graduate’s group. We know recovery is not linear and that those parents where there has been reunification meeting with each other inclusive of the children as a continuum of support in their recovery, not only strengthens the community but sustains the link with the FDAC team and value of the relationship work as having lifelong links in a similar way we advocate for children and young people who are looked after by Local Authorities.