1.13.1 Family Assessments Procedures

Contents

1. Referral Criteria/Process and Ending of Services     
2. Assessment General     
3. Principles Underpinning Assessments
4. Regulation 25 Visits
5. Protection of Vulnerable Adults (PoVA)   

1. Referral Criteria/Process and Ending of Services

1.1 Referral Criteria/Process

Parents must be 14 years and above upon admission

Babies/children from birth to 5 years

Minimum placement – 2, 6 and 12 weeks

All interested Local Authorities to send relevant background information required prior to decision whether to accept or decline

Complex referrals discussed by referral panel

Initial visit to the Centre by client and Social Worker to afford client the opportunity to look around the Centre, meet the Staff, have the process explained to them and answer any questions

Pre-Placement Meeting held attended by client, Social Worker and case holder.  Written Agreement devised detailing restrictions, named visitors and detailed specific work to be carried out

Admission (in some circumstances this can be completed at the same time as the Pre-Placement Meeting)  Written Agreement read and signed by all parties (Client, Placing Authority, Family Centre)  Consent to Medical Treatment signed.  Registration for Doctors completed.  Health Visitors Admission form completed.

1.2 Ending of Services

All proposed packages for when the client leaves the Centre are detailed in the Final Report.

If the placement breaks down prior to the end of the assessment, recommendations are made to the Local Authority

2. Assessment - General

This section should be read in conjunction with Assessments Guidance

The assessment within Continuum Family Centre will be addressed through a combination of formal sessional work and informal monitoring support observations and supervision (i.e. Kardex).

Formal sessions will be booked in consultation with and where possible the agreement of Parent(s), this will be via a weekly timetable. It is however a clear understanding that Parents are expected to attend and actively participate in all sessional work.

All sessions will be undertaken within the following modular themes.

• Childcare
• Health
• Personal Development
• Relationship Analysis
• Life Management
• Finance

It is to be noted that within each module, sessional work will encourage Parents to address all key areas identified in accordance with the ‘Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their families’. (Department of Health 2000)

In addition to this consideration should be given to Every Child Matters: change for children’s outcomes

The objectives of which are:-

Be healthy:

• Physically Healthy
• Mentally and Emotionally healthy
• Sexually Healthy
• Healthy lifestyles
• Choose not to take illegal drugs

Stay Safe:     

• Safe from maltreatment, neglect, violence and sexual exploitation.
• Safe from accidental injury and death.
• Safe from bullying and discrimination.
• Safe from crime and anti-social behaviour in and out of school.
• Have security, stability and are cared for.

Enjoy and Achieve:     

• Ready for School.
• Attend and enjoy school.
• Achieve stretching National Educational Standards at Primary School.
• Achieve Personal and Social Development and enjoy recreation.
• Achieve stretching National Education Standards at Secondary School.

Make a positive contribution:

• Engage in decision making and support the community and environment.
• Engage in law abiding and positive behaviour in and out of school.
• Develop positive relationships and choose not to bully or discriminate.
• Develop self confidence and successfully deal with life changes and challenges.
• Develop enterprising behaviour.

Achieve economic well-being:

• Engage in further education, employment or training on leaving school.
• Ready for Employment.
• Live in decent homes and sustainable communities
• Access to transport and material goods.
• Live in households free from low income.

3. Principles Underpinning Assessments

Important principles underpin the approach to assessing children in need and their families, as outlined in the guidance for the ‘Framework of the Assessment of children in need and their Families’.

Assessments

• Are child centred
• Are rooted in Child Development
• Are ecological in their approach that is understanding of a child must be located within the context of the child’s family(Parents, caregivers and the wider family) and of the community and culture in which he or she is growing up. For example ‘ Living on a low income in a run down neighbourhood does not make it impossible to be the affectionate, authoritative Parent of healthy, sociable children but it does undeniably make it more difficult’  (Utting 1995 P40)
• Ensure equality of Opportunity.
• Involve working with children and families.
• Build on strengths as well as identify difficulties.
• Are inter-agency in their approach to assessment and the provision of services.
• Are a continuing process, not a single event.
• Are carried out in parallel with other action and providing services.
• Are grounded in evidence based knowledge.

Assessments should therefore take account of 3 domains:

1. A child’s developmental needs.
2. The Parents or ‘caregivers’ capacities to respond appropriately
3. The wider family and environmental factors.

The interaction between the three domains and the way that they influence each other must be carefully analysed in order to gain a complete picture of a child’s unmet needs and how to identify the best response to them.

Basically, a child does not exist in isolation, they are part of, and influenced/affected by

• Their immediate family
• The care they do/do not receive
• Their extended family
• The wider community
• Health Care, GP etc.
• Education, nursery groups etc.

1. CHILD'S DEVELOPMENTAL NEEDS: (Physical and emotional, child care, health)

Health

Includes growth and development as well as physical and mental wellbeing, receiving appropriate health care when ill, an adequate and nutritious diet, exercise, immunisations where appropriate and developmental checks, dental and optical care and, for older children, appropriate advice and information on issues that have an impact on health, including sex education and substance misuse.

Education

Covers all areas of a child’s cognitive development which begins from birth. Includes opportunities: for play and interaction with other children; to have access to books; to acquire a range of skills and interests; to experience success and achievement. Involves an adult interested in educational activities, progress and achievements, who takes account of the child’s starting point and any special educational needs.

Emotional and behavioural development

Concerns the appropriateness of response demonstrated in feelings and actions by a child, initially to Parents and caregivers and, as the child grows older, to others beyond the family. Includes nature and quality of early attachments, characteristics of temperament, adaptation to change, response to stress and degree of appropriate self control.

Identity

Concerns the child’s growing sense of self as a separate and valued person.

Includes the child’s view of self and abilities, self image and self esteem, and having a positive sense of individuality. Race, religion, age, gender, sexuality and disability may all contribute to this. Feelings of belonging and acceptance by family, peer group and wider society, including other cultural groups.

Family and social relationships

Development of empathy and the capacity to place self in someone else’s shoes. Includes a stable and affectionate relationship with Parents or caregivers, good relationships with siblings, increasing importance of age appropriate friendships with peers and other significant persons in the child’s life and response of family to these relationships.

Social presentation

Concerns child’s growing understanding of the way in which appearance, behaviour, and any impairment are perceived by the outside world and the impression being created. Includes appropriateness of dress for age, gender, culture and religion; cleanliness and personal hygiene; and availability of advice from Parents or caregivers about presentation in different settings.

Self care skills

Concerns the acquisition by a child of practical, emotional and communication competencies required for increasing independence. Includes early practical skills of dressing and feeding, opportunities to gain confidence and practical skills to undertake activities away from the family and independent living skills as older children. Includes encouragement to acquire social problem solving approaches. Special attention should be given to the impact of a child’s impairment and other vulnerability, and on social circumstances affecting these in the development of self care skills.

2. PARENTING CAPACITY (childcare, personal development and relationship analysis)

Basic Care

Providing for the child’s physical needs, and appropriate medical and dental care.

Includes provision of food, drink, warmth, shelter, clean and appropriate clothing and adequate personal hygiene.

Ensuring Safety

Ensuring the child is adequately protected from harm or danger.

Includes protection from significant harm or danger, and from contact with unsafe adults/other children and from self-harm. Recognition of hazards and danger both in the home and elsewhere.

Emotional Warmth

Ensuring the child’s emotional needs are met and giving the child a sense of being specially valued and a positive sense of own racial and cultural identity.

Includes ensuring the child’s requirements for secure, stable and affectionate relationships with significant adults, with appropriate sensitivity and responsiveness to the child’s needs. Appropriate physical contact, comfort and cuddling sufficient to demonstrate warm regard, praise and encouragement.

Stimulation

Promoting child’s learning and intellectual development through encouragement and cognitive stimulation and promoting social opportunities.

Includes facilitating the child’s cognitive development and potential through interaction, communication, talking and responding to the child’s language and questions, encouraging and joining the child’s play, and promoting educational opportunities. Enabling the child to experience success and ensuring school attendance or equivalent opportunity. Facilitating child to meet challenges of life.

Guidance and Boundaries (Enabling the child to regulate their own emotions and behaviour.)

The key Parental tasks are demonstrating and modelling appropriate behaviour and control of emotions and interactions with others, and guidance which involves setting boundaries, so that the child is able to develop an internal model of moral values and conscience, and social behaviour appropriate for the society within which they will grow up. The aim is to enable the child to grow into an autonomous adult, holding their own values, and able to demonstrate appropriate behaviour with others rather than having to be dependent on rules outside themselves. This includes not over protecting children from exploratory and learning experiences. Includes social problem solving, anger management, consideration for others, and effective discipline and shaping of behaviour.

Stability

Providing a sufficiently stable family environment to enable a child to develop and maintain a secure attachment to the primary caregiver(s) in order to ensure optimal development. Includes: ensuring secure attachments are not disrupted, providing consistency of emotional warmth over time and responding in a similar manner to the same behaviour. Parental responses change and develop according to child’s developmental progress. In addition, ensuring children keep in contact with important family members and significant others.

3. FAMILY AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS childcare, life management, finance

Family History and Functioning

Family history includes both genetic and psycho-social factors.

Family functioning is influenced by who is living in the household and how they are related to the child; significant changes in family/household composition; history of childhood experiences of Parents; chronology of significant life events and their meaning to family members; nature of family functioning, including sibling relationships and its impact on the child; Parental strengths and difficulties, including those of an absent Parent; the relationship between separated Parents.

Wider family

Who are considered to be members of the wider family by the child and the Parents?

Includes related and non-related persons and absent wider family. What is their role and importance to the child and the Parents and in precisely what way?

Housing

Does the accommodation have basic amenities and facilities appropriate to the age and development of the child and other resident members? Is the housing accessible and suitable  to the needs of disabled family members?

Includes the interior and exterior of the accommodation and immediate surroundings. Basic amenities include water, heating, sanitation, cooking facilities, sleeping arrangements and cleanliness, hygiene and safety and their impact on the child’s upbringing.

Employment

Who is working in the household, their pattern of work and any changes? What impact does this have on the child? How is work or absence of work viewed by family members? How does it affect their relationship with the child? Includes children’s experience of work and its impact on them.

Income

Income available over a sustained period of time. Is the family in receipt of all its benefit entitlements?  Sufficiency of income to meet the family needs. The way resources available to the family are used. Are their financial difficulties which affect the child?

Family’s Social Integration

Exploration of the wider context of the local neighbourhood and community and its impact on the child and Parents.

Includes the degree of the family’s integration or isolation, their peer groups, friendship and social networks and the importance attached to them.

Community Resources

Describes all facilities and services in a neighbourhood, including universal services of primary health care, day care and schools, places of worship, transport, shops and leisure activities.

Includes availability, accessibility and standard of resources and impact on the family, including disabled members.

1. CHILD CARE GOAL
   
   To ensure that the basic needs of children are met with consistency, safety and affection. To be able to distinguish that both the Child's physical and emotional needs are met. This will include exploring what support and social relationships are available to the child and the degree to which the Parents maximise the child’s opportunity to develop its potential. It is important to establish the nature and depth of Parental bond with the child and similarly the child’s attachments.
2. HEALTH EDUCATION GOAL
   
   To provide direct input, literature and access to specialist resources to promote hygiene and health for children and encourage Parents to acknowledge and understand their own and their children’s health-related needs.
3. LIFE MANAGEMENT GOAL
   
   To ensure that sufficient routine, planning and commitment exists to maintain a child’s health and safety in a consistent manner.
4. FINANCE GOAL
   
   To encourage the competent and controlled management of finances. In considering this we will ‘explore whether problems are acute and temporary or whether indicate a chronic pattern resulting from a chaotic lifestyle’ The question answered will be whether or not money is impulsively spent leaving basic needs such as food, warmth, clothing and shelter unmet for the vulnerable.
5. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT GOAL
   
   To encourage and promote the self-development of Parents as individuals in order that their increased esteem and competency may be used to the benefit of their Parenting attitudes and skills. This module will encourage Parents to give consideration to any specific area of difficulty. For example anger management, stress management, assertiveness etc.;
6. RELATIONSHIP ANALYSIS GOAL
   
   To explore with Parents how the quality and stability of their relationships will have a direct effect on their children- both positively and negatively. The goal is to encourage and foster positive and constructive interactions from which children and their families derive satisfactory outcomes.

4. Regulation 25 Visits

Continuum will arrange visits to be conducted to the Family Assessment Service as required by Regulation 25 of the Residential Family Centres Regulations December 2002.

These visits will take place once a month, and maybe unannounced.

The persons carrying out the visits shall:

a.	Interview with their consent and in private such of the residents and persons working at the residential family centre as appears necessary in order to form an opinion of the standard of care provided in the residential family centre
b.	Inspect the premises of the residential family centre, its daily log events and records of any complaints; and
c.	Prepare a written report on the conduct of the residential family centre
d.	The registered provider shall supply a copy of the report required to be made under paragraph (c) to: the Regulatory Authority; the registered Manager; each of the directors/partners or other persons responsible for the management of the organisation.

5. Protection of Vulnerable Adults (PoVA)

A vulnerable adult is a person aged 18 or over who is or may be in need of community care services by reason of mental or other disability, age or illness; and who is or may be unable to take care of him or herself, or unable to protect him or herself against significant harm or exploitation.

For the purposes of this procedures, such adults may include people with:

• learning or physical disabilities
• a sensory impairment
• mental health needs
• who are HIV positive
• substance misuse needs
• dementia

Where adults with such needs are in receipt of services from The Continuum Group (e.g. Parents) Staff should be alert to possible abuse perpetrated upon them.

Abuse may consist of a single act or repeated acts.  It may be physical, verbal or psychological, it may be an act of neglect or an omission to act or it may occur when a vulnerable person is persuaded to enter into a financial or sexual transaction to which he or she has not consented or cannot consent.  Abuse can occur in any relationship and may result in Significant Harm to or exploitation of the person subjected to it.  Some cases of abuse and neglect may fall under the classification of domestic violence.

Where there is a suspicion that a vulnerable adult is suffering or is likely to suffer from abuse, the Manager must consult (see last paragraph) relevant Social Worker(s) or the Placing Authority.  Such consultations should not be made without the consent of the vulnerable adult, unless notifying the adult places them at risk; in which case, the Manager must consult the Social Worker/Placing Authority before notifying the adult.

In consultation with the Social Worker/Placing Authority, consideration should be given to making a referral to the Safeguarding Adults Team in the area where the abuse is suspected to have taken place.

Where a child is also at risk, e.g. as a result of Domestic Violence, the local Safeguarding Children's Board must be contacted (see Child/Adult Protection Procedures)

At all times, the Manager must take reasonable steps to protect the vulnerable adult from harm; where a person is in immediate danger, urgent action should be taken at once by calling the emergency services.

End