Facilitating groups

Group facilitation is an important part of your child and family partnership strategy and can help develop and enhance relationships. For groups to be effective, there must be clear purpose and intent which is communicated effectively and with respect.

Groups enable people to travel to a meeting location and undertake large pieces of work. Often, they are a good time to conduct an orientation and provide social opportunities (such as group meals), which help to foster trust and build relationships between staff and participants.

Groups with child and family partners must always have two goals in mind:

  1. For partners to gain confidence about the intent and purpose of their input.
  2. For the organisation to gain valuable input into how to make their outcomes more effective.

Please note that this process has been developed to use when organising groups for family partners aged 18 years and over. If you wish to organise a group with children, please refer to our resources on child participation.

Groups can be time-consuming and costly to organise, so it is important to consider if you have the capacity to run a group well. If after consideration you feel you do not have the capacity to run a group, then you may consider other ways of involving child and family partners, such as one-on-one interviews.

Download a copy of Emerging Minds’ group facilitation guide

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