The closing conference was organised by the leading partner of the project Département de la Gironde. It took place in the Gironde building of the County Council of Gironde with the participation of some 250 specialists from the partner countries and mostly from France. The conference was opened by Mr. Jean-Luc Gleyze, President of the County Council of Gironde. A presentation of the Erasmus+ project and of the experiment on FGC in Gironde by Nicole Ouvrard, Caroline Legrand and Clélia Phiquepal followed.
The round table on FGC basics and practices included presentations by Sean Haresnape, Principal social work adviser at Family Rights Group; Andreas Hampe, Territorial Manager at Bezirksamt von Neukölln in Berlin; Maria Petkova, Director of Tulip Foundation; Christophe Jabet, Social worker and FGC coordinator at the County Council of Gironde and Christophe Berthelot, Team manager at Association Girondine Education spécialisée et Prévention sociale.
Various forms and applications as well as new perspectives for the model were presented by partner organisations - Cathy Ashley, Chief executive at the Family Rights Group on “Lifelong Links”; Beate Tensfledt, social worker at Bezirksamt von Neukölln on “Personal Future Planning”; Miroslava Georgieva, Project coordinator at Tulip Foundation on FGC practice for Roma families and Bruce Larrieu, Team manager for childhood protection, County Council of Ardèche on the “early prevention protocol” in the second session.
The aspects of the theoretical perspective and academic research on FGC was presented by Marie-Pierre Auger, doctoral student at University of Paris X – Nanterre, Prof. Mary Mitchell, Lecturer in social work, University of Edinburgh and Prof. Galina Markova, Director of the Know-How Centre for Alternative Childcare, New Bulgarian University.
The last session was devoted to the state of play on FGC practice in France and impacts on social work. The interesting discussion included Anne-Claire Campese, Territorial Director, social department, County Council of Ardèche; Kévin Lafrance, Territorial manager, social department, County Council of Nord; Hélène van Dijk, Founder of the French national network of FGC coordinators and Nicole Ouvrard, Technical adviser in social work, County Council of Gironde.
As usual we invited colleagues from partner organisations in Bulgaria to join the meeting. Galina Markova from the Know-How Centre for Alternative Childcare at New Bulgarian University and Svetla Sivcheva and Nina Nikolova from Naia Association Targovishte and Sauchastie took part in the closing conference.
The blooming tulips were announced a symbol of the partnership of Gironde Departmental Council from France, Family Rights Group from the UK, NeuKolln von Berlin from Germany and Tulip Foundation from Bulgaria.
On the following day the partners had a working meeting to discuss the next steps and the preparation of the best practice guide. The “Exchange of practices for Family Group Conferencing in Europe” project is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the EC.