Case Study: Family Drugs and Alcohol Courts case for investment and cost benefit analysis

Client: Department for Education (DfE)

Date: March-May 2024

Challenges faced by the client:

Family drugs and alcohol courts (FDACs) offer a groundbreaking, trauma-informed alternative to traditional care proceedings. Operating under the same legal framework as standard care cases (the Public Law Outline), FDACs distinguish themselves with their unique practice model. An independent, multi-disciplinary team provides therapeutic assessment and support, while a specially trained judge takes a hands-on approach, meeting with families every two weeks to guide their progress. This innovative model requires investment in both the approach and the multidisciplinary team to support families. However, there is compelling evidence that FDACs not only improve outcomes but also offer significant long-term savings to the public. The Department for Education (DfE) aimed to build a robust business case for a national roll-out of FDACs, gathering substantial evidence on costs and benefits.

Our support:

We partnered with the Centre for Justice Innovation to develop the business case for investment. Mutual Ventures played a crucial role in financial analysis. Our contribution was twofold.

Firstly, we developed an interactive Excel-based tool for local areas to support financial analysis, including mapping local costs, commissioning models, and benefits. This tool comes prepopulated with national data, some of which is derived from MV’s previous work on the costs of court delays but allows local areas to modify all assumptions to reflect their local realities. The tool was co-developed with several FDACs.

Secondly, we developed a comprehensive financial and economic case for investment in FDACs, considering various rollout scenarios and following HM Treasury Green Book guidance.

Outcome achieved:

Our tool has been praised by local authorities for being user-friendly, highly customisable, and providing unique insights. These features are invaluable when discussing with partners, preparing business cases, and reporting on outcomes. The financial and economic case confirmed that FDACs provide excellent value for money, demonstrating that the FDAC model delivers significant long-term savings to the family justice system, particularly for local authorities. For every pound spent on FDAC, three pounds are saved in the long term.

Download our tool here and see how FDAC can make a difference both for families and local authority budget. 

Quote from client:

“I believe in FDAC. I will tell you why, once I have expressed some sincere thanks. […] To the Centre for Justice Innovation for its crucial role in promoting and sustaining FDAC and Agata Miskowiec at Mutual Ventures, who have worked on the theoretical validity and cost-effectiveness of the FDAC model. […]

I believe in FDAC because it is a responsible use of public resources.  It cannot be said often enough, every FDAC case saves the public an average of £58,000 in state care costs, and £15,000 in legal costs.  The latter is because there are hardly any external experts (1 per 13 cases against 1 per case), half the number of legal hearings, and only 4% of final hearings are contested (as against 24%).  That is not just a financial saving, but it frees up court time to deal with other work and reduces delays.  Why then is FDAC not universal?  Because a budget-holder may not be confident of achieving an in-year saving, and because one form of saving is by stopping paying a bill and another is by not starting to pay one.  They come to the same thing in the end, but it seems to be harder to make a case for the latter.  That is why the matched central funding recommended by the most recent research commissioned by the DfE is so critical.”

Lord Justice Peter Jackson, the lead FDAC judge (from his speech at the FDAC case for investment launch event in November 2024)