by Stephen Whitehead and Carolyn Lipp

Family Drug and Alcohol Courts provide a therapeutic, problem-solving court approach to care proceedings for parents with drug or alcohol problems which often co-occur with trauma, domestic abuse and mental health illnesses.

Marking 15 years since their establishment, this paper provides an overview of the existing research regarding Family Drug and Alcohol Courts, with findings providing a strong case for additional investment to expand these courts across England and Wales.

Many of the families involved in care proceedings have multiple and complex needs. For example, drug and alcohol use is a major factor in nearly two-thirds of the cases in which a local authority is initiating care proceedings due to suspected child abuse or neglect.1 Moreover, some parents are repeatedly brought back in front of the courts with their subsequent children removed and put into state care (called recurrent care proceedings), with recent research suggesting that approximately 1 in 3 care applications are made regarding a mother who has already had previous children removed from their care.2 Family Drug and Alcohol Courts (FDACs) try and break these patterns, providing parents with access to intensive treatment and support, while the court regularly reviews their progress. The primary aim of FDAC is to improve outcomes for children and families, ensuring that children can either live safely with parents at the end of care proceedings (reunification) or, where reunification is not possible, have the best chance for permanency and stability outside the family home. Since the first FDAC pilot site opened in 2008, the model has been of significant interest to researchers. The initial pilot was the subject of a robust quasi-experimental outcomes evaluation3 which was later revisited to review long-term outcomes for FDAC families.4 Beyond this, there have been two mixed-methodology studies of local sites5 and a number of qualitative studies seeking to understand the functioning of the FDAC model.6 Most recently, Foundations, the Government what works centre for children’s social care, published a major national evaluation of FDAC, conducted by Natcen, which compared all cases from 14 FDAC sites with a matched comparison group, in the most comprehensive study of the model to date. Outside of the UK, the US Family Drug Treatment Court model, of which FDAC is an offshoot,-has been the subject of extensive outcomes research which was brought together in a meta-analysis in 2019.7

London: Centre for Court Innovation, 2023. 8p.