Transcript Improving Multi-Agency Safeguarding Assessments

Improving Multi-Agency
Safeguarding Assessments
A Children’s Social Care Perspective
2013: A golden opportunity for us to
improve our safeguarding system by
strengthening our Early Help
assessment and intervention offer
2013 affords us a moment of opportunity
to strengthen our assessment work with
vulnerable children ~ the combination of
a much stronger focus on Early Help in
Norfolk together with the policy
messages from Working Together 2013
which give us the opportunity to
transform our services…….
Let us start with Working Together 2013….
Working Together 2013 describes a
sea-change in assessment practice
comparable to the ‘Guide for Social
Workers undertaking a Comprehensive
Assessment’ of 1988 which first described
the framework for an in-depth child
protection assessment..….
And the ‘Framework for the Assessment of
Children in Need and their Families’ (2000)
ushered in by Working Together 1999, the
former introducing the concept of an Initial
Assessment whose function was to afford a
brief assessment of each child referred to
Social Care and to determine whether a more
detailed assessment, the so-called Core (the
successor to the Comprehensive) Assessment,
is required……
Much of the good is retained. At the
heart of this is the ‘conceptual model’ of
the Assessment Framework, the triangle
with the 3 assessment domains for the
child’s developmental needs, the
parenting capacity and the
family/environmental factors……
Also, the ethos of good assessment
practice: that it is rooted in evidence,
that it leads to action focussed on the
needs and views of the child at all
points with the consistent and overriding purpose of improving his or
her outcomes.
What changes?
Working Together 2013 simplifies the
assessment process for Social Workers
describing a single assessment format
for ‘statutory assessment’ thereby
removing the distinction between an
Initial and a Core Assessment.
The assessment process is still subject to
time-scales ~ a maximum 45 working days
from the point of referral is established ~ but
the concept of flexibility and
‘individualisation’ of response becomes
much more prominent. ‘The speed with
which an assessment is carried
out….…should be determined by the needs
of the individual child and the nature and
level of any risk of harm faced by the child.’
Working Together 2013 also makes specific
reference, and thereby implicitly gives equal
weight to the importance within the
safeguarding function, to Early Help
assessment ~ ‘these early help
assessments..….should identify what help the
child and family require to prevent needs
escalating to a point where intervention would
be needed via a statutory assessment……’
For the first time within the Working Together
guidance, the concepts of Early Help and
Statutory Assessment are described as
mutually complementary components of
an inclusive safeguarding system for
children which becomes ‘everyone’s
responsibility’ to implement and which is
defined as ‘the action we take to promote the
welfare of children and protect them from
harm.’
Multi-agency collaboration in assessment work
is referred to time and again in Working
Together ~ it begins with the Early Help
assessment which is undertaken by a lead
professional who is chosen on a ‘case by case
basis..…informed by the child and their family’;
it is carried over into the Statutory assessment
phase whereby ‘every assessment should draw
together…… information from relevant
professionals including teachers, early years
workers, health professionals, the police and
adult social care’; ………..
it is prominent in the requirement to put in
place decision and review points involving
the child, the family and the relevant
professionals to ‘keep the assessment on
track’ and in the need for clarity to be
achieved as to how ‘agencies and
professionals undertaking assessments
and providing services can make
contributions’….…
Finally, Working Together ‘localises’ the process of
guidance in relation to assessment practice,
allocating specific duties on each Local Safeguarding
Children Board and the Local Authority.
Each Local Safeguarding Board is to develop its own
‘threshold document’ that includes ‘the process for
the early help assessment and the type and level of
early help services to be offered’ and ‘the criteria,
including the level of need, for when a case should
be referred to local authority children’s social care for
assessment and statutory services….’
Complementing this, each Local Authority
should develop and publish ‘local protocols
for assessment’ including a local protocol
which should ‘set out clear arrangements
for how cases should be managed once a
child is referred into local authority
children’s social care…The detail of each
protocol will be led by the local authority in
discussion with their partners and agreed with
the relevant LSCB.’
Included as a responsibility on the
Local Authority, is the need for
Children’s Social Care to set out the
process by which professionals in the
early help team ‘should be able to
discuss concerns they may have about
a child and family with a Social Worker
in the local authority.’
How are we responding in Norfolk?
We are moving systematically and on a
partnership basis to design and implement a
strengthened Early Help infrastructure
underpinned by a redesigned Early Help
assessment tool which will supersede the CAF ~
this vision will see Children’s Social Care as a
partner within a vibrant, multi-agency Norfolk-wide
Early Help offer, working alongside multi-agency
colleagues as equal partners in an agreed
framework for providing services for vulnerable
children and their families……….
We have acknowledged the imperative of
ensuring that a new Single Assessment for
Statutory Assessment, which we are also in
the throes of designing, complements and
builds upon the Early Help assessment
tool, mindful that the system for Early Help
and Child Protection planning must work in
such a way that the default position for
multi-agency assessment is always at the
Early Help level….….
We are looking to ensure that our existing Social
Care assessment process documents ~ the Norfolk
Matrix and Journey of a Child ~ dove-tails with and
are seen as a component part of the threshold
document that the NSCB will develop so that the
vision of a fully integrated assessment and
intervention service for safeguarding children in
Norfolk is expressed in a logically connected and
publically disseminated suite of documents, owned
by the Local Authority and the Norfolk Safeguarding
Board respectively and premised on the ethos of
Early Help as the foundation of an effective
safeguarding system….…
We will be working on making the voice
of the child fundamental to the
assessment process, so that we develop
the right tools to enable children and
young people to communicate with their
assessment whether at the Early Help or
Statutory Assessment phase….….
Thank you for taking time to listen
Paul Corina
Safeguarding Manager ~ Operational Delivery
[email protected]