Core Practice Standards

CORE PRACTICE STANDARDS

ASSESSMENT SERVICE

Scope Box

This chapter seeks to provide a range of guidance around conducting assessments for children and their families. This includes the values that should underpin an assessment; assessments around specific issues; child protection enquiries/child protection conferences and transfer and closure thresholds.

Relevant Links

Appendix A: Working with Hostile Families and Disguised Compliance

Appendix B: Ten Pitfalls in Assessments of Need and Risk and How to Avoid Them

Appendix C: The Eight Data Protection Act Principles

Liverpool Safeguarding Children Board

This chapter was added to the Manual in September 2017.

CONTENTS

What is Children’s Social Care Assessment Service?
Assessment Service Core Values
Our commitment to Children and Young People
Voice of the Child
Life Work
Assessment Service Practice Standards
Assessment and Needs Analysis

Why this is important
Standards
The Social Work Planning and Assessment Model – Flowchart
Key Practice Issues for all Assessments
The place of description and analysis in assessment
The analysis of risk and need in safeguarding children and young people
Multi-agency information gathering in assessment
Incorporating issues of equality and diversity within assessment
Safeguarding Children whose Parents have Complex problems
Domestic violence
Mental health
Alcohol and drug misuse
The SCR review
Re-establishing the importance of the home visit
Over optimism and disguised compliance when undertaking assessments
Importance of Supervision
Preparation gathering information and history
Planning and undertaking the initial home visit
Concluding the Single Assessment

Assessments Including Section 47 Enquiries

Section 47 child protection enquiries
Allocated social worker responsibilities
Concluding section 47 enquiry
Strategy Discussion Flowchart

Child in Need Plans and Reviews
Child in Need Meetings
Child Protection Plans

Quality of child protection conference reports and child protection plans
Key practice issues

Team Manager Responsibilities
Core Group meetings
Advocacy
Family Group Conference Service
Children with SEN and Disability
Legal Advice and Gatekeeping Panel
Looked after Children
Managers Key Practice Issues
Supervision
Service Culture and Support
Support
Auditing
Recording and Report writing
Chronologies
Closure/Transfer of Case Responsibility

Early Help
Early Help step down flow chart

Liverpool Children’s Social Care

1. What is Liverpool Children’s Social Care Assessment Service?

Liverpool Children’s Social Care Assessment Service is a city wide social work team. The service consists of 3 area patches: North, Central and South and 2 social work teams are attached to each patch area. Each team consists of one team leader, two consultant social workers and nine social workers. These areas also link with the Early Help Hubs for these areas. The service also operates a Joint Investigation Team working together with our colleagues in Merseyside Police.

The social work teams action all new referrals for assessment from Careline and allocate as appropriate. The threshold of statutory services can be found atLiverpool Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) Website.

Responding to Need Guidance and Levels of Need Framework.

The outcome of assessment will determine ongoing support and intervention for children and young people to ensure they are safeguarded and their needs are met. Where the assessment identifies ongoing support under child in need or children protection case responsibility will remain with this service.

All managers will lead their staff group and ensure that staff work in a professional environment that is conducive to delivering good professional practice. This includes having a staff culture that brings support, constructive challenge and professional rigour to daily practice.

ASSESSMENTS

Different types of assessments frequently undertaken by practitioners.

The main assessments undertaken by practitioners in assessment teams are:

•Single Assessments;

•Signs of Safety;

•Risk Assessments;

•Parenting Assessments;

•Viability Assessments;

•Capacity to Change Assessments;

•Pre-birth Assessments;

•Sec 47 Investigations;

•Private and Public Law matters;

•Parenting Assessment Manual (PAMS);

•EHC Assessments. (This needs to be completed within a six week timescale and any requests for revisions within five days of request).

2. Assessment Service Core Values

Promoting the well-being of individual children and young people: this is based on understanding how children and young people develop in their families and communities and addressing their needs at the earliest possible time;
Keeping children and young people safe: emotional and physical safety is fundamental and is wider than child protection;
Putting the child at the centre: children and young people should have their views listened to and they should be involved in decisions;
Taking a whole child approach: recognising that what is going on in one part of a child or young person’s life can affect many other areas of his or her life;
Building on strengths and promoting resilience: using a child or young person’s existing networks and support where possible;
Promoting opportunities and valuing diversity: children and young people should feel valued in all circumstances and practitioners should create opportunities to celebrate diversity;
Providing additional help should be appropriate, proportionate and timely: providing help as early as possible and considering short and long-term needs;
Supporting informed choice: supporting children, young people and families in understanding what help is possible and what their choices may be;
Working in partnership with families: supporting wherever possible those who know the child or young person well, know what they need, what works well for them in their family and what may not be helpful;
Respecting confidentiality and sharing information: seeking agreement to share information that is relevant and proportionate while safeguarding children and young people’s right to confidentiality;
Promoting the same values across all working relationships: recognising respect, patience, honesty, reliability, resilience and integrity are qualities valued by children, young people, families and colleagues;
Making the most of bringing together each worker’s expertise: respecting the contribution of others and co-operating with them, recognising that sharing responsibility does not mean acting beyond a worker’s competence or responsibilities;
Co-ordinating help: recognising that children, young people and families need practitioners to work together, when appropriate, to provide the best possible help;
Building a competent workforce to promote children and young people’s well-being: committed to continuing individual learning and development and improvement of inter-professional practice.

3. Our Commitment to Children and Young People

We will help and support you to stay safe and have a healthy lifestyle;
We will involve you in all decisions about your life;
We promise to have high aspirations for you and encourage you to reach your full potential;
We promise to support you throughout your education and to plan for the future;
We promise to listen and make sure you know what will happen next;
We will celebrate your achievements;
We will make sure you have the right people to support you;
We promise to help you have new experiences and develop your own interests.

The social worker must:

Be a good listener;
Make time for you and be on time for visits;
Do their best to get to know you;
Be able to explain things clearly with no jargon;
Show that they care, e.g., remembering birthdays and special dates;
Show that they are there because they enjoy it, not because of thewage packet;
Be aware of your feelings;
Ask where you want to talk, when you want to talk and what you want to say;
Treat you like an individual;
Show respectfor your wishes;
Give you some space when you need it without questioning it;
Be prepared to challenge on your behalf.

4. Voice of the Child

The views of children and their families are essential to good practice in social care. Everyone working in Children’s Services must seek the voice of the child and reflect and respond to it in all aspects of the work. This is rooted in legislation and good practice -

•Children Act 1989 s1(3)(a) the ascertainable wishes & feelings of the child concerned (considered in the light of his age & understanding);

•Munro report 2011;

•Working Together 2015;

•Learning from Serious Case Reviews;

•SEND Code of Practice.

Our aim should be to share and practice positive approaches to effective communication & listening through active learning. We are committed to communicate clearly, purposefully and honestly with children & young people. We should remember to consider identity, diversity, culture, language, disability, delayed speech, low confidence and trust.

Everyone who works in Children’s Services should commit to seeking and recording the voice of the child with every child they work with.

The voice of the child should be sought and evident in every aspect of practice pertaining to children, young people and families. The voice of the child should provide an understanding of the lived experience of the child from their perspective and should include their explicit wishes feelings and experiences pertaining to the issue of concern. Each service area has a voice of the child champion who can offer advice, guidance and support to practitioners using a variety of tools to elicit the child’s voice. Find out who is the champion in your area.

5. Life Work

Life work is a social work intervention with children and young people designed to recognise their past, present, and future. It is a collection of pictures, narratives, letters, gifts, significant events, milestones and memories gathered for and with the child to assist them in developing a positive sense of self as they grow and develop and assist them to understand their past and decisions made about their future. Life work should begin as soon as it is assessed that the potential for child to remain in the primary care of their parents may not be viable. Commencement of this work should be discussed and agreed with the team leader and/or practice supervisor and should be commenced as part of a twin track plan.

Socialworkers should take the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that children who are expected to be adopted or to be in long term care have a life book. Social workers often hold the most factual information about the child's background and reasons for becoming Looked After or Adopted and it is important that they provide this information for use in the life work. Day-to-day carers such as; Foster Carers, Residential Support Workers or Adoptive Parents can offer the best informal life story work. They have the information about the day-to-day events in the child's life, their milestones and achievements. (See also Life Story Books Procedure.)

Birth Parents are a critical part of the life work with children as they can offer information to construct a family tree and provide pictures or descriptions of family members.

Why do life work:

Children who live with their birth families have the opportunity to know about their past. Children separated from their families can be denied this. They may think their past is bad, they may think it’s their fault and they may have an unrealistic fantasy about their birth family;

Children and young people can experience a range of difficult feelings that are hard to express verbally. These feelings can often get bottled up and internalised or can be expressed through worrying or challenging behaviour;

Life work can give children back their past in terms of information, facts, time, place and history and gives voice to their feelings;

Life work provides an activity based way of discussing with children, events in their lives, thereby containing and reducing their anxiety and/or feelings of guilt, shame or anger about their past;

Life work provides children with a narrative about their life and journey to where they are now, that helps them to integrate past trauma. Without this narrative children are left vulnerable to a range of emotional and behavioural issues and poor mental health outcomes.

6. Assessment Service Practice Standards

WHAT ARE PRACTICE STANDARDS?

The standards and practice matters should be viewed as part of an approach to ensure that services are delivered to an agreed quality. They do not stand alone, but are an integral part of achieving service strategies and policies and meeting procedural and operational requirements.

The delivery of these standards is everyone business and is the responsibility of all staff.

The standards are designed to improve consistency in practice across the city and to drive up the quality of the service provided to the vulnerable children and young people of Liverpool and their families.

It is important that the practice standards are read in conjunction with other relevant chapters and Liverpool Safeguarding Board procedures.Social Workers should also be aware of the required professional standards as set out by the professional registration body, health care professional council and their responsibility for adhering to these. HCPC (2012) standards of conduct, performanceand ethics.

7. Assessment and Needs Analysis

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

If we are to help vulnerable children and young people, and provide a caring and nurturing environment for them to be able to grow and develop, we need to understand what has happened to make them vulnerable, what sense of the world they have, and what the futureholds for them.

A good quality social work assessment is central to this understanding of what is happening to a child and family, and to informing decisions about action to be taken or services to be provided. An assessment is also an intervention in itself and the process of assessment may create change and lead to help from the extended family and/or the provision of services. Assessment is ongoing throughout the child’s journey.

The social work assessment has a particular contribution to make to a holistic understanding of a child’s needs, taking account of other professional assessments from health colleagues, psychologists, or educationalists.

BE CURIOUS – QUESTION EVERYTHING – EVIDENCE – IMPACT – OUTCOMES.

STANDARDS

All children and young people for whom the local authority has a responsibility will have a good quality social work assessment and analysis of their needs on their record that is produced within specified timescales.

The assessment and continuing analysis of need will be shown not just in reports but also in the planning processes and recording so as to provide a rounded view of a child. A good assessment will include the child’s history, current behaviours and view of the world, and indications of what the future holds.

Good quality assessments will show evidence that they:

•Are child centred;

•Are rooted in child development;

•Are ecological in their approach (an understanding of the child is located within the context of the family, community and culture);

•Take account of a child’s religious, cultural or racial background;

•Involve working with children and their families;

•Take account of individual and family strengths as well as identify difficulties;

•Identify risk factors and preventative factors;

•Take account of parent’s own childhood experiences and the impact that this may have on their own parenting capacity, experience and knowledge of support services;

•Are interagency in their approach to assessment and the provision of services;

•Area continuing process, not a single event;

•Separate out facts from opinions;

•Are carried out in parallel with other actions and provide a service;

•Are grounded in evidence-based knowledge.

The Department for Education has published the 2015 edition of the Working Together guidance.

The guidance covers:

The legislative requirements and expectations on individual services to safeguard and promote the welfare of children;
A clear framework for local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) to monitor the effectiveness of local services;

In Liverpool, after a decision is made to complete an assessment,the manager and allocated social worker will discuss the allocation plan. If the child already has an Early help Assessment, this should be used to inform the assessment. Included in this allocation plan will be the agreed timescale for seeing the child. This assessment should take no more than 10 working days and the outcome discussed with the manager to agree the outcome plan. At this point the team manager will make a decision about any further assessment needed which will take up to a further 35 working days. A Team Manager could decide that the family needs a full assessment (up to 45 working days) from the outset. If the child or the family require help immediately and can’t wait for the assessment to be completed, we will provide this help before the assessment is finished.The manager will record their plan and oversight of the case in the child’s electronic records.

Consider joint visits with professional who know the family. Should the person making the referral undertake this visit with you?

Once the full Assessment is completed, a plan will be drawn up setting out what help and support will be provided and by whom. However, assessment is ongoing and not just a stand-alone document. Clear outcomes must be recorded so families are clear about what is expected, why and within what timescale.

Feedback the outcome of the assessment to the referrer where appropriate. Professional should always be given feedback.

Provide children, parents and carers with a copy of the completed assessment.