Rosalie Metze

With a Little Help from Your Friends: Family Group Conferencing and Home-evictions Rosalie Metze

What would you do if you were unable to pay your rent and you were threatened with home-eviction? Would you ask you family or close friends for help, or would you prefer the professional help of a social worker? Or maybe both? What kind of support can family, friends, neighbors, offer in a situation like this? This thesis tries to answer these questions. The research project focused on vulnerable people who were threatened with home-eviction. A Family Group Conference (FGC) was offered to them by social workers. An FGC is a meeting with a person and his/her social network, during which they make their own plan. Professionals merely give information but are not present during the decision-making process and they carry out their part of the plan as presented by the person and the social network. The experiences with nearly evicted persons were compared to FGC experiences with two other target groups. This way, conditions were identified for a successful implementation of the FGC method with people facing home-eviction.