A council needs a mandate more than it needs members

A great many family groups already have a forum. It meets, it has been meeting for years, and the same three matters return to the agenda every quarter without being settled. Adding members does not help, and neither does meeting more often.

What is usually missing is a mandate: a written statement of which decisions belong to the council, which belong to the board, and which belong to the branch that raised them. Without it, a contested matter does not get resolved. It moves to whichever room seems most likely to agree with it, which is why the same matter can be raised three times and settled none.

A mandate is short. It names the matters the council decides and the matters it advises on, sets quorum, says how a member joins and at what age, and states where a deadlock goes when the room cannot resolve it.

The document takes a weekend to draft and a few meetings to agree. What it changes is that attendance starts to mean something, because a meeting that can decide is a meeting worth attending.