Assessment of Children in Need and Care Planning
| Author | Safda Mahmood/Julie Doughty |
| Pages | 209-216 |
16.1 Developments and materials
Following the Quality Protects Programme, to ‘ensure that referral and assessment processes discriminate effectively between different types and level of need, and produce a timely response’ (John Hutton, Minister of State for Social Services, March 2000), it seems that there is still considerable progress yet to be made. To facilitate the implementation of the Quality Protects Programme, the Department of Health had set up steering and advisory groups, and the Department of Health, the Departments for Education and Employment and the Home Office all issued new materials to provide guidance, practice material and training resources. The emphasis was on evidence-based practice and careful consideration of the needs of the individual child, with an expectation that inter-agency child protection and social work practice was to be based on analysis, reflection and sound judgment in decision making.
Two major assessment materials are the companion volumes, Framework for the assessment of children in need and their families (DoH, 2000) and Assessing children in need and their families: Practice Guidance (DoH, 2000). Both of these are essential reference material for child protection practice. They replaced the old ‘Orange Book’, Protecting Children: A Guide to Social Workers Undertaking a Comprehensive Assessment (DoH, 1988), but they still referred to Mary Sheridan’s very useful basic child development charts for children from birth to 5 years.
Note that Working Together to Safeguard Children, A guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children (DfE, March 2010), replaced all earlier versions. There was an amendment in February 2017, by way of adding the definition of child sexual exploitation. At the time of writing, the relevant statutory guidance in England is Working Together to Safeguard Children, A guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children (July 2018), and in Wales, Working Together to Safeguard People. Volume 5 – Handling Individual Cases to Protect Children at Risk (Welsh Government, 2018). The position with assessments in Wales is that since
210 Child Care and Protection: Law and Practice
April 2016, the Framework for Assessment tools for assessing children and families are now included in the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 – Part 3 Code of Practice (assessing the needs of individuals) (Welsh Government, 2015).
16.1.2 Resources for Professionals
• The Child’s World, Assessing Children in Need, Training and Development Pack (DoH, 2000) is put together by the NSPCC and the University of Sheffield. It contains a video, training guide, and a reader.
• J Howarth and D Platt (eds), The Child’s World: The Essential Guide to Assessing Vulnerable Children, Young People and their Families (Jessica Kingsley, 3rd edn, 2018).
• CAFCASS has introduced a plethora of ‘tools’ for working with both children and adults, all available from the CAFCASS website, www.cafcass.gov.uk. These include, amongst others, the following:
Ѹ My Needs, Wishes and Feelings Pack.
Ѹ Child Impact Assessment Framework: this sets out how children may experience parental separation. The framework brings together guidance and tools into four guides which the practitioner can use to assess different case factors. These include, in particular, domestic abuse, conflict, child refusal or resistance to spending time...
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