SCOPE OF THIS CHAPTER
When children and young people are referred into children's social care for assessment and meet the threshold they are allocated to a qualified social workers to undertake a single assessment which should identify their needs and risks and understand the impact of any parental behaviour on them as an individual. Through this process the qualified social worker must remain the lead professional and have due regard to a child's age and understanding when determining what (if any) services to provide under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 if needs are identified that meet the threshold or if protective action is required to ensure their safety Section 47 of the Children Act 1989.
All local authorities with their partner agencies have published a threshold document offering guidance to underpin professional decision making and all single assessments must be based on good evidence gathering and sharing of information, analysis, timeliness, transparency and outcomes and recommendations should be proportionate to the needs of the child and their family.
- Focus on the Child
- Developing a Clear Analysis
- Contribution of the Child and Family
- Contribution of Agencies Involved with the Child and Family
- Actions and Outcomes
- Regular Review
- Principles for a Good Assessment
- Further Information
- Local Information
1. Focus on the Child
Children should to be seen and listened to and included throughout the assessment process. Their ways of communicating should be understood in the context of their family and community as well as their behaviour and developmental stage.
Assessments, service provision and decision making should be regularly reviewed and overseen by a manager to ensure understanding about the impact on the child of the assessment process and the services provided, so that the best outcomes for the child can be achieved. Any services provided should be based on a clear analysis of the child's needs, and the changes that are required to improve the outcomes for the child. The assessment process should be able to respond to presenting risks and needs during the assessment period and remain flexible in terms of provision dependant on these issues.
Providing services if required should complement the assessment process and a family should not have to wait until the assessment is completed to be able to access services and interventions that may assist their circumstances.
Children should be actively involved in all parts of the process based upon their age, developmental stage and identity. Direct work with the child and family should include observations of the interactions between the child and the parents/care-givers.
All agencies involved with the child, the parents and the wider family have a duty to collaborate and share information to safeguard and promote the welfare of the child.
All Single assessments should be planned and coordinated by a lead social worker and the purpose of the assessment should be transparent, understood and agreed by all participants.
It is helpful for all professionals and families to be clear about the purpose of the assessment and the aims it is trying to achieve. This can be achieved through an agreed statement that sets out the aims of the assessment process at initial visits to the family and through multi agency meetings. The forum for setting this out needs to be proportionate to the presenting risks and needs and can change through the process of case review and management sign off.
Any planning process should identify the different elements of the assessment including who should be involved. It is good practice to hold a planning meeting to clarify roles and timescales as well as services to be provided during the assessment where there are a number of family members and agencies likely to play a part in the process and where the assessment requires a longer time period to ensure it is completed robustly.
Questions to be considered when an assessment include:
- What is the presenting risk and need;
- How will the consent of family members be obtained and recorded?
- What will be the timescales?
- How will the information be recorded?
- How will it be analysed and who will be involved?
- Who will contribute to the assessment and what resources will be needed?
- Who in the family should be included and how should they be involved (including absent or wider family and others significant to the child)?
- How will visits be planned including who is to be seen, with whom and ensuring the child or young person is seen on their own;
- Potentially what services are to be provided during the assessment?
- Have there been any identified communication needs? If so, what are the specific needs and how they will be met?
- How will the assessment take into account any diversity or equal opportunity issues if required particular issues faced by black and minority ethnic children and their families, disabled children and their families, LGBT and their families?
- What will be the most appropriate method of collecting information and engaging family members including children and young people. Are there any tools / questionnaires available that will assist in direct work that would be helpful?
- What information is already available and have we taken the chronology into account when considering risk and need? Do we have a chronology?
- What other sources of knowledge about the child and family are available and how will other agencies and professionals who know the family be informed and involved?
- When will the outcomes be discussed and service planning take place.
The assessment process can be summarised as follows:
- Gathering relevant information and evidence;
- Analysing the information and making evidence based professional judgments;
- Making professional decisions and planning services and interventions;
- Proportionately intervening including service delivery and/or ongoing assessment;
- Evaluating and reviewing progress;
- Understanding of outcomes and impact and the recording of necessary actions and plans to secure these;
- Influencing families lives to assist them in thinking about how they could affect change themselves;
- Making sure children and young people are safe when they need to be.
Assessment should be a dynamic process, which analyses and responds to the changing nature and level of need and/or risk faced by the child during the process and beyond if necessary.
A good assessment will monitor and record the impact of any services delivered to the child and family and review the support being delivered during the period of assessment.
Whilst services may be delivered to a parent or carer, the assessment should be focused on the needs of the child and on the impact any services are having on the child.
A collaborative and partnership approach will always result in a clearer understanding of risk and need.
3. Developing a Clear Analysis
Research has demonstrated that taking a systematic approach to assessments using a conceptual model is the best way to deliver a comprehensive analysis. A good assessment is one which investigates the three domains; set out in the Assessment Framework Triangle. The interaction of these domains requires careful investigation during the assessment. The aim is to reach a professional judgement about the nature and level of needs and/or risks that the child may be facing within their family.
An assessment should establish:
- The nature of the concern and the impact this has had on the child;
- An analysis of their needs and/or the nature and level of any risk and harm being suffered by the child;
- How and why the concerns have arisen;
- What the child's and the family's needs appear to be and whether the child is a Child in Need;
- Whether the concern involves abuse or Neglect; and
- Whether there is any need for any urgent action to protect the child, or any other children in the household or community;
- Any factors that may indicate that the child is or has been trafficked, or is a victim of compulsory labour, servitude and slavery;
- Any factors that may indicate that the child has been exposed to some form of radicalisation or extremism.
Note: if there is a concern with regards to exploitation or trafficking, a referral into the National Referral Mechanism should be made.1
The assessment will involve drawing together and analysing available information from a range of sources, including existing records, and involving and obtaining relevant information from professionals in relevant agencies and others in contact with the child and family. Where an Early Help Assessment has already been completed this information should be used to inform the assessment. The child and family's history should be understood.
It may be appropriate to arrange a Medical Assessment to assist in the assessment process.
Where a child is involved in other types of assessment processes it is important that these are coordinated so that the child does not become lost between the different agencies involved and their different procedures. All plans for the child developed by the various agencies and individual professionals should be joined up so that the child and family experience a single assessment and planning process, which shares a focus on the outcomes for the child.
The social worker should analyse all the information gathered from the enquiry stage of the assessment to decide the nature and level of the child's needs and the level of risk, if any, they may be facing.
The social work manager should provide regular supervision and challenge the social worker's professional assumptions as part of this process.
An evidenced based decision should be taken on the nature of any action required and which services should be provided. Social workers, their managers and other professionals should be mindful of the need to evidence base the level of need and risk in a family from the child's perspective and ensure action or commission services which will mitigate these risk and needs as effectively as possible and have the maximum positive impact on the child's life.
If and when new information comes to light or circumstances change the child's needs during the course of an assessment these issues and information must be taken into consideration and be shown to influence the ongoing planning and intervention accordingly e.g. if child protection matters are escalating responses must be made at the time they are known and not be subject to delay in response. Retaining a child focus and a needs led approach should facilitate this practice and ensure that children and young people are not overlooked as noted in many lessons from national and local Serious Case Reviews.
4. Contribution of the Child and Family
The child should participate and contribute directly to the assessment process based upon their age, understanding and identity. They must be seen alone and if this is not possible or in their best interest, the reason should be recorded. The social worker should work directly with the child in order to understand their views and wishes, including the way in which they behave both with their care givers and in other settings. The agreed local assessment framework should make a range of age appropriate tools available to professionals to assist them in this work.
The pace of the assessment needs to acknowledge the pace at which the child can contribute. However, this should not be a reason for delay in taking protective action. It is important to understand the resilience of the individual child in their family and community context when planning appropriate services.
Every assessment should be child centred. Where there is a conflict between the needs of the child and their parents/carers, decisions should be made in the child's best interests. The parents should be involved at the earliest opportunity unless to do so would prejudice the safety of the child.
The parents' involvement in the assessment will be central to its success. At the outset they need to understand how they can contribute to the process and what is expected of them to change in order to improve the outcomes for the child. The assessment process must be open and transparent with the parents. However, the process should also challenge parents' statements and behaviour where it is evidenced that there are inconsistencies, questions or obstacles to progress. All parents or care givers should be involved equally in the assessment and should be supported to participate whilst the welfare of the child must not be overshadowed by parental needs. There may be exceptions to the involvement of parents or care givers in cases of Sexual Abuse or domestic violence and abuse for example, where the plan for the assessment must consider the safety of an adult as well as that of the child.
5. Contribution of Agencies Involved with the Child and Family
All agencies and professionals involved with the child, and the family, have a responsibility to contribute to the assessment process. This might take the form of providing information in a timely manner and direct or joint work.
Differences of opinion between professionals should be resolved speedily but where this is not possible, the local arrangements for resolving professional disagreements should be implemented.
It is possible that professionals have different experiences of the child and family and understanding these differences will actively contribute to the understanding of the child / family.
The professionals should be involved from the outset and through the agreed, regular process of review.
The social worker's supervisor will have a key role in supporting the practitioner to ensure all relevant agencies are involved.
Agencies providing services to adults, who are parents, carers or who have regular contact with children must consider the impact on the child of the particular needs of the adult in question.
6. Actions and Outcomes
Every assessment should be focused on outcomes, deciding which services and support to provide to deliver improved welfare for the child and reflect the child's best interests. In the course of the assessment the social worker and their line manager should determine:
- Is this a Child in Need? (Section 17 Children Act 1989);
- Is there reasonable cause to suspect that this child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, Significant Harm? (Section 47 Children Act 1989);
- Is this a child in need of accommodation? (Section 20 or Section 31A Children Act 1989).
The possible outcomes of the assessment should be decided on by the social worker and their line manager, who should agree a plan of action setting out the services to be delivered how and by whom in discussion with the child and family and the professionals involved.
The outcomes may be as follows:
- No further action;
- Additional support which can be provided through universal services and single service provision; early help services such as the CAF process;
- The development of a multi-agency child in need plan for the provision of child in need services to promote the child's health and development;
- Specialist assessment for a more in-depth understanding of the child's needs and circumstances;
- Undertaking a Strategy Discussion/Meeting, a Section 47 child protection enquiry;
- Emergency action to protect a child.
The outcome of the assessment should be:
- Discussed with the child and family and provided to them in written form. Exceptions to this are where this might place a child at risk of harm or jeopardise an enquiry;
- Taking account of confidentiality, provided to professional referrers;
- Given in writing to agencies involved in providing services to the child with the action points, review dates and intended outcomes for the child stated.
Assessment timescales should be determined by the presenting needs and risks of the child and young person but should never exceed 45 working days from the point of referral. If, in discussion with a child and their family and other professionals, an assessment exceeds 45 working days the social worker and professionals involved should record the reasons for exceeding the time limit.
7. Regular Review
The work with the child and family should ensure that regular reviews are embedded in the assessment process so that delays or obstacles if they occur will be acted on and the assessment plan reviewed in a timely manner if any circumstances change for the child.
The social worker's line manager must review the assessment plan regularly with the social worker during supervision and ensure that actions such as those below have been met:
- There has been a timely and direct communication with the child alone and their views and wishes have been recorded and taken into account when providing services;
- All the children in the household have been seen and their needs considered;
- The child's home address has been visited and the child's bedroom has been seen;
- The parents have been seen and their views and wishes have been recorded and taken into account;
- The analysis and evaluation has been completed;
- The assessment provides clear evidence for decisions on what types of services are needed to provide good outcomes for the child and family.
A useful comment from 'Working Together to Safeguard Children' to bear in mind for all professionals when reviewing progress:
"A high quality assessment is one in which evidence is built and revised throughout the process. A social worker may arrive at a judgement early in the case but this may need to be revised as the case progresses and further information comes to light. It is a characteristic of skilled practice that social workers revisit their assumptions in the light of new evidence and take action to revise their decisions in the best interests of the individual child."
Recording by all professionals should include information on the child's development so that progress can be monitored to ensure their outcomes are improving. This is particularly significant in circumstances where neglect is an issue.
Records should be kept of the progress of the assessment on the individual child's record and in their Chronology to monitor any patterns of concerns.
Assessment plans and action points arising from plans and meetings should be circulated to the participants including the child, if appropriate, and the parents.
The recording should be such that a child, requesting to access their records, could easily understand the process taking place and the reasons for decisions and actions taken.
Supervision records should reflect the reasoning for decisions and actions taken, and each entry should be signed and dated.
9. Principles for a Good Assessment
The assessment triangle in Working Together to Safeguard Children 2015 provides a model, which should be used to examine how the different aspects of the child's life and context interact and impact on the child. It notes that it is important that:
- Information is gathered and recorded systematically;
- Information is checked and discussed with the child and their parents/carers where appropriate;
- Differences in views about information are recorded; and
- The impact of what is happening to the child is clearly identified.
Assessment Framework Triangle