Putting Analysis Into Child and Family Assessment, Third Edition

Undertaking Assessments of Need

Ruth Dalzell, Emma Sawyer

• Publisher: National Children's Bureau
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781909391239
• eBook ISBN: 9781909391277
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Putting Analysis into Child and Family Assessment bridges theory and practice, and provides clear guidance to improve assessments in child and family social work.

It addresses the issues of central concern to child and family social workers, including analytical assessment, outlines how to avoid common pitfalls, provides strong theoretical foundations, and demonstrates how the theory can be translated into practice. With reference to common and specialist assessments, the book covers every stage of the assessment process: planning and preparation, hypothesising, involving children, and making, recording and reviewing decisions. It features practice tools, case studies and practice development sessions and activities. This third edition has been fully updated with recent policy changes and new research findings.

This book will be valued by practitioners, managers, trainers and lecturers looking for a grounded resource which provides practical guidance on how to improve assessments.

1

The assessment process in context

Background

For over 15 years the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (Department of Health 2000) otherwise known as ‘The Assessment Framework’ has been the primary tool for undertaking assessments of the needs of children under the Children Act 1989. It provides a systematic way of analysing, understanding and recording what is happening to children and young people, both within their families and in the wider context of the community in which they live, in order to be able to make professional judgements. These judgements include: whether the child is in need, or is suffering significant harm; what actions should be taken; and what services would best meet the needs of the particular child and family.

The Assessment Framework was intended to ensure that: referral and assessment processes discriminate effectively between different types and levels of need; there is a timely service response to identified needs; and, in turn, there are better outcomes for children.

The Assessment Framework takes the broad approach to identifying children in need, as intended by the Children Act 1989, and has proved to be an effective working tool for social workers and others involved in inter-agency assessments. The triangle of the assessment framework with its three domains – the child’s developmental needs; the capacity of parents to meet those needs; and the impact of family, community and environmental factors – is now widely accepted across the range of agencies. There is no doubt that The Assessment Framework has improved and standardised practice across England. However, messages from inspections and research have regularly identified that analysis continues to be a major area of concern for practice.

The report Learning Lessons, Taking Action: Ofsted’s Evaluations of Serious Case Reviews (Ofsted 2008), highlighted failings in practice, indicative of poor analysis including a failure to consider the impact of parental issues on children, responding reactively to information rather than taking a long-term view and taking what parents said at face value rather than speaking directly to children.

Similarly, Turney et al.’s review for the Department for Education’s Social Work Assessment of Children in Need, What Do We Know – Messages From Research (2011, p.8)states:

It is clear from the studies we reviewed that the analysis of information has continued to be problematic in practice so attention needs to be focused on strengthening this crucial aspect of the assessment process.

Following a period of frequent complaints and concerns about the impact of increasing prescription, bureaucratisation and unwieldy systems such as the Integrated Children’s System (ICS) on professional practice, the Coalition Government, elected in 2010, commissioned Professor Eileen Munro to undertake a review of child protection in England. In the 2011 final report of the review Professor Munro described the current child protection system as over-bureaucratised and focused on compliance, and as a defensive system that emphasises procedures over the development of expertise. Munro called for the development of a system that prioritises ‘doing the right thing’ (checking whether children are being helped) over ‘doing things right’ (following procedures).

Munro recommended amongst other things a reduction in the amount of central prescription, including the removal of timescales for assessment, revision of statutory guidance and greater investment in the development of professional expertise.

Following Munro’s recommendations, the government gave power to eight local authorities to set aside the requirement in statutory guidance to have a two-stage assessment system (Initial and Core) and to test more flexible assessment processes. Following this piloting process, the findings were used to inform revisions to Working Together to Safeguard Children: A Guide to Inter-agency Working to Safeguard and Promote the Welfare of Children (HM Government 2013).

The revised guidance, which came into force on 5 April 2013 and which has since been further updated in 2015, removed the requirement to conduct separate initial and core assessments, creating instead a single assessment process that should take no more than 45 days. If, after discussions with the child, the family and other professionals further time is found to be necessary, the reasons why must be clearly recorded. It remains to be seen what impact this will have on analysis in assessment practice but there is some room for optimism. Anecdotally, social workers in some local authorities have described a more straightforward, less repetitive process with a greater potential for creating a narrative more easily understood by service users. On the other hand, practitioners have also described pressures coming from constant demands from managers to complete assessments in well under the 45-day timescale. These perceptions vary hugely from one local authority to another and must be, in part, affected by local culture and priorities.

Some recent insight into the current quality of assessment practice comes from the Ofsted overview report, The Help Care and Protection of Children (Ofsted 2014), which reports on the first 17 inspections under the new Single Inspection Framework. The report highlights features of the strongest local authorities and contrasts them with the weakest.

Assessments in the strongest include:

•identification of risks, needs and clear next steps with timescales

•plans with explicit objectives and clarity about the consequences of no change

•good chronologies that provide a cumulative picture to inform practice

•centrality of well-established relationships and direct work with children and families

•evidence of a theoretical framework informing professional practice.

Whereas practice in the weakest is characterised by:

•assessment being conducted as a single exercise dominated by forms and characterised by several disconnected separate attempts at assessing

•the meeting of a threshold criteria being more dominant than seeking an understanding about what is needed

•plans that are not specific in either action to be taken or the changes that need to take place.

Analysing information in a way that makes the process transparent and able to be explained to a broad audience is no easy task and is challenging for a range of professionals, not just social workers. This book focuses on analysis because it is such an essential and integral part of the social work task and is the process upon which decisions about children’s welfare, within and after assessments, hinge. Before considering some of the specific challenges of social work analysis, it is important to define what is meant by ‘analysis’ in this context. A definition is important because when a practitioner is gathering information, reviewing what they know and making a decision, it is difficult for them to identify what part of the process constitutes ‘analysis’. It is hardly surprising then, that social work decisions often take some explaining and justifying to service users, to other professionals and in courts. In truth, analysis occurs throughout the whole assessment process – it influences whether assessments are carried out in the first place and the decisions, however small, about how to go about them, whom to involve and what information to gather.

Dictionary definitions of the words ‘assessment’ and ‘analysis’ suggest that they should in theory be comfortable bedfellows. Assessment means to appraise, measure, estimate or give consideration to a situation, whilst analysis means to examine, study and break down into simpler elements.

It should therefore follow that in order to carry out a proper assessment of any situation, a certain amount of analysis needs to be undertaken. When faced with a complex situation one usually gathers all the facts and gives them consideration, separately and in relation to one another. This might be done by breaking down the information into simpler elements or manageable chunks under headings and then weighing up the options. For example, a parent choosing a school for their child might gather information about which schools are available within travelling distance of where they live. They would then find out what they could about each school, asking certain questions determined by their individual priorities: Is the school more geared towards the arts, sciences or sports? How does this match with their child’s needs or indeed their aspirations for him or her? What is the academic record of the school and what are its policies and record on pastoral care, bullying and discrimination? Is it convenient for local bus routes or walking to school and what is their child’s preference? Would their child be able to transfer with existing friends or make friends they could socialise with outside of school?

The parent would then analyse the information gathered, which would require a certain amount of weighting of the different options. Is an easy journey to school more important than the school record in sports for example? This would lead ultimately to the decision that, it would be hoped, was right for their child and for them. As any parent who has been through this process knows, this is not a pain-free activity and it is hard. There are some gains and losses and some likely compromise in any decision that is made. In many human situations there are also too many variables to be certain that the decision made is the ‘right’ one. Many of the factors that will contribute to the experience that the child has at school will be outside the parent’s control, so the parent can only ever hope to make the best choice out of a range of available options at that given time. Important as the decision in the above example undoubtedly is, it may seem rather straightforward when compared with some of the practice judgements and decisions required by social workers trying to support children and families living in the most challenging circumstances. Deciding how to protect and promote good outcomes for children – when they are living, for example, with parents with mental health or substance misuse problems, helping parents with learning disabilities to understand the needs of their children or trying to assess the likelihood of significant harm occurring to a child living in poverty or in the context of chronic neglect – throw up huge challenges for workers trying to reach a balanced view in the knowledge that decisions that they make could have a massive and enduring impact on a child’s future health, well-being and family relationships.

In much the same way that the parent choosing a school for their child may have to settle for a decision that seems the ‘best option’ given all that they know, social workers, when dealing with such complex and unpredictable variables, can only hope to draw conclusions that are the ‘least likely to be wrong’ (Holland 2004, p.138). They must strive to do all they can to ensure that decisions and recommendations are made with rigorous checks and balances to counteract their human tendencies (to be influenced by time pressures, anxiety, false optimism or negative judgements).

So what makes the desired standard of analytical practice so elusive and difficult to achieve? Well, as discussed earlier, the decisions to be made are by no means easy. The use of evidence from research and theoretical approaches can support the task, but how far can these be generalised to individual situations and how confident can busy practitioners be in their acquisition and application of knowledge from such sources?

How much time is there to be reflective? As one social worker in the Putting Analysis into Assessment project commented:

You don’t tend to have a pen and paper to hand when you reflect, as it is more likely to occur when you are doing something else, such as driving or washing up!

In fact, can a form – even guidelines, checklists or complex equations – show us how to be analytical? To what extent is analysis an intuitive creative skill that either you’ve got or you haven’t? Theories about human decision-making abound; and some of these have been explored in the context of social work decision-making specifically by, for example, Eileen Munro (2008), Sally Holland (2004), and Ann Hollows (2003). These complex arguments are not explored in great depth in this toolkit, but they have been drawn upon to identify practical approaches for helping social workers to make judgements. These approaches were tested, with social workers, as part of the Putting Analysis into Assessment project (described on p.23); and their experiences are shared in Chapters 2 and 3. Also covered are some of the factors identified by practitioners as having a bearing on the nature and quality of analysis in their assessments. First, however, it is important to consider the context within which social workers are operating, so as to take it into account when examining the many influences on their thinking, decision-making and capacity to be analytical.

Wider context

Social work with children and families does not operate in a vacuum. Practice is influenced by a whole range of social and cultural norms and traditions. Definitions of childhood and child abuse are socially constructed, varying over time, and approaches to social work practice have been subject to rather more influence from fashion than perhaps some other pro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Of Related Interest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Epigraph
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Donald Forrester
• Foreword by Cheryl burton
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The assessment process in context
• 2. Preparing for and planning assessments
• 3. Conducting the assessment
• 4. Making, recording and reviewing decisions
• 5. Team development activities
• 6. Challenges and opportunities for analytical practice
• References
• Further Reading
• Resources and useful information
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• Also available