What is a Family Listening Day?
At INQUEST we understand the importance of redefining the narrative around deaths involving the state.
Our Family Listening Day model offers public bodies, policymakers, researchers and other bereavement-focused organisations the opportunity to hear directly from bereaved families about the circumstances surrounding a person’s death in state custody or care, or in a similarly contentious circumstance.
Developed over decades of casework and drawing on the principles of Transformative Mediation, INQUEST’s model provides a consistent and replicable way to bring family voices into reform processes, ensuring that those most affected are heard, understood and involved in change.
Family Listening Days aim to ensure bereaved families can:
- speak directly to organisations that either influence policy and practice, or state agents responsible for making policy work in practice;
- describe the death of their loved one and the impact the deaths has had on their lives;
- reflect on the post-death inquest and investigations and their impact;
- participate in finding solutions to problems and failings that exist within the current systems.
How Family Listening Days work
Each Family Listening Day is designed and facilitated by experienced INQUEST staff who understand the issues and systemic failures families face. The process is built around the following principle:
- Planned – in conjunction with the commissioning organisation, families and INQUEST.
- Facilitated – by experienced INQUEST staff with in-depth knowledge of on key issues, and the families’ particular cases.
- Thematic – focused on specific issues to ensure meaningful discussion.
- Discursive – by creating a safe, supportive environment for open conversation.
- Inclusive – by ensuring a range of families feel able to attend and contribute.
- Confidential – protecting what is shared and recognising the sensitivity of the information.
- Compassionate – acknowledging the emotional weight of bereavement and taking a trauma-informed approach.
- Reflective – enabling participants to examine the impact of failures and power imbalances.
- Archived – capturing families’ insights and placing them in the public domain to influence change.
Why are Family Listening Days important?
Family Listening Days allow families to share their insights into institutional failings and to highlight what must change. Their testimony strengthens investigations, challenges unsafe practices, shapes public policy, and helps assure the public that scrutiny is genuine.
I was very struck by what I was told and it very much shaped my thinking.
Bishop James Jones, chair of the Hillsborough families’ experiences
Our experience
INQUEST has been commissioned to run Family Listening Days for:
- The Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody
- The Independent Police Complaints Commission
- The Equality and Human Rights Commission
- The Care Quality Commission
- And other statutory bodies and review teams
It was an extremely powerful and humbling experience. I was very grateful for the opportunity to hear directly from families about their experiences. I have already fed back to colleagues and asked them to think about how we can incorporate some of what I heard into our work.
Family Listening Day attendee, Scottish Government
How to commission a listening day
With over 30 years’ experience of supporting bereaved families, INQUEST work closely with commissioning bodies to design Family Listening Days shaped by your terms of reference. We carefully select participants based on relevance and ensure a range of family experiences are represented.
Make a Donation
Every year, INQUEST supports hundreds of families bereaved by deaths involving the state. We are independent of government and entirely reliant on grants and donations to continue our vital work.
Support us and bereaved families in the fight for truth, justice and accountability by becoming a regular donor today.
