Chairing Effective Family and Multi-Agency Meetings

Overview

Professionals working with children, families and adults experiencing complex challenges are increasingly required to lead and facilitate multi-agency meetings.

These meetings may include:

• Team Around the Family meetings
• Family help meetings
• family network meetings
• early help reviews
• safeguarding and multi-agency planning meetings.

However, we are seeing across the Country that many practitioners have not been trained to chair meetings effectively, despite being expected to lead them.

This can result in:

• unclear plans
• limited family engagement
• professional disagreement
• missed opportunities for change.

Our practical one-day course focuses specifically on building confidence and competence in chairing effective family and multi-agency meetings.

Participants will learn how to structure meetings, manage group dynamics, ensure families are meaningfully involved, and achieve clear outcomes and actions.

The training is highly interactive and grounded in real practice.

Who is this for?

This course is ideal for:

• Early Help practitioners
• Family Help practitioners
• Social workers
• Family support workers
• Lead professionals
• Team Around the Family coordinators
• professionals responsible for running multi-agency meetings.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course participants will be able to:

• Understand the purpose and principles of effective family and multi-agency meetings
• Feel confident chairing meetings with families and professionals
• Structure meetings to ensure productive discussions and clear outcomes
• Facilitate balanced participation between professionals and families
• Manage conflict, challenge and difficult conversations
• Keep meetings focused on strengths, solutions and outcomes
• Ensure clear actions and accountability following meetings.

The course will cover

The purpose of family and multi-agency meetings

• Why meetings matter in supporting families
• The role of meetings within Early Help, Family Help and Families First
• How meetings can support meaningful change

Preparing for successful meetings

• Setting clear aims and outcomes
• Planning agendas
• Ensuring the right people attend
• Preparing families to take part

The role of the chair

• Responsibilities of the chair
• Setting the tone and expectations
• Maintaining structure and focus
• Managing time effectively

Creating a respectful meeting environment

• Ensuring families feel comfortable to contribute
• Balancing professional and family voices
• Using strengths-based language

Managing group dynamics

• Handling disagreement and challenge
• Managing dominant voices and encouraging quieter participants
• Maintaining professionalism during difficult conversations

Keeping meetings focused on outcomes

• Moving from discussion to action
• Ensuring shared understanding

Creating clear actions and plans

• Agreeing actions and responsibilities
• Ensuring accountability
• Linking actions to whole-family plans

Participants will explore practical tips, common pitfalls and real practice scenarios to build confidence in chairing effective meetings.

Training approach

This course is highly interactive and includes:

• discussion of real practice examples
• practical exercises
• facilitated reflection
• tips and tools for immediate use in practice.

Participants will leave with practical techniques they can apply immediately when chairing meetings.