The Common Assessment Framework
Raising a Common Assessment
Various concerns can lead to the need to undertake a Common Assessment.
Anisa Oliviel
Youth Development Worker
African Caribbean Achievement Project
We were approached by a parent. Her daughter had been experiencing a lot of bullying at school through year seven to year nine. So this was just before she was supposed to go into year 10. She refused to go to school, she said that it was too difficult, she couldn’t deal with it. So we found out what the problem was, and that’s when we started to initiate the CAF, because we thought it would be very helpful, and because we were approached by the mum, and we needed to get the school involved as well, then the CAF would be helpful in that way.
Anne Cossavella
Senior Educational Psychologist
Education Bradford
This young person was referred to me through the school because they were concerned about his behaviour, about his inability to learn, and about his inability to socialise properly with other children. So its those three things that first involved me as a referral directly from the school.
Andrew Hinchcliffe
Family Support Worker
Wyke Children’s Centre
The child was referred to us from a health visitor. The child was three and a half, so the health visitor had some concerns with the child so she referred us to a children’s centre for some support.
Craig Farrell
Connexions personal Advisor
John St Connexions
The young person that I’ve got in mind that I actually started a CAF on, it was probably about seven months ago now that she came into the Connexions Centre. The problems that she was going through at that time obviously were money issues, she’d had her son removed from her, and she also was having trouble accessing benefits.
Kath Shorey
School Nurse
It was a mum that had gone along to the GP. Mum is quite depressed, and has two boys that she is finding very, very difficult to manage. And as I am the school nurse for these two boys the GP asked if I could intervene.
Pre-Assessment Checklist
The Pre-assessment Checklist is useful in establishing if a Common Assessment needs to be raised
Andrew
When we did the Pre-CAF Assessment I found that was helpful because the parent at first was a bit uneasy about it when I first mentioned the CAF, but sitting down and doing the Pre-CAF Assessment with the parent actually helped.
Pre-CAF Assessment
Kath
I explained to her the process and that we would be going through lots of questions, and that I would be asking her about who I could share information with, and draw in information from.
Craig
I explained this to the client as well that agencies would come on board quicker and we’d be working together as a team rather than individual units to try and support her.
Anisa
The mum when she came to us, she was very open, so we explained to her what the CAF was about, how it could be helpful, and after the discussion then she agreed, which was fine, so we were happy with that, she gave the consent and that’s when we started the process.
The Lead Practitioner
Acts as a single point of contact for the child or family. Co, the delivery of the actions agreed by the practitioners involved. Reduces overlap and inconsistency.
Anna
After I’d seen this child, with a discussion with the head teacher and the special needs co-ordinator for the school, we decided the issues were much wider than just within school, and much wider than just within the child, and we needed to offer a wider range of interventions really. So with the Head Teacher we discussed it, we decided that a CAF might be the appropriate way. At that point he took on the role of Lead Practitioner. Once we decided it was appropriate he and the Special Needs Co-ordinator moved forward to approaching the parent of the family, explaining to her what we wanted to do and why, being very, very clear this wasn’t about labelling or blaming or anything, but it really was about professionals trying to get their act together, to offer a consistent service to her and her child so that we met everybody’s needs.
Andrew
Mum could ring me up if she had any questions throughout the week. It didn’t have to be at the TAC (Team Around the Child) meetings, where she could ask things, and if she wanted to know anything I could speak to the professionals.
Anisa
We got her in to actually go through, to complete the form; the mum and the daughter. So we just went through the questions as they were, she had already given us loads of information at the beginning, so that was helpful in us prompting to know where we needed to pay more attention, in the CAF, because we covered so many areas. That’s how we did it and it was fine there wasn’t a problem for both of them, and then we agreed an action plan together, based on the meetings that we had had and having spoken to Mum about the difficulties her daughter was facing, and then we agreed an action plan and it was fine.
Team Around the Child (TAC)
The TAC meetings enables all practitioners who will be involved with the child/young person to get together. The child/young person and/or family should be encouraged to attend these meetings.
Anna
People were able to come from Education, from Health, from the Drug Unit, from CAMS, from Speech and Language Therapy, as well as people from the school, the school nurse and other people. So I would guess at least eight or ten different professionals (were)there. It was a very focussed meeting, and it lasted for just an hour and I think that was because we had a very clear form completed with all the details so we didn’t need to keep repeating ‘Well I know this about the family, I know that about the family’, because everybody knew that and we had it in one clear unit on the CAF form.
Andrew
At the TAC meeting the parent was a bit nervous as it was all professionals around the table talking about her child and I don’t really think that she felt that she could talk. But that was at the first TAC meeting, and then when I went back and spoke to the parent at the next meeting I supported her and engaged her in the conversations and it was a lot better and she was a lot happier at the next TAC meeting.
Craig
When I first got the client obviously I let her know that I’d arranged a meeting, or I was going to arrange a meeting. What I did was link her into some of the separate agencies and got her to speak to them on a one to one basis before we actually had a joint meeting so she found it easier to give us her needs and be quite honest and open with us in our first multi-agency meeting.
The Action Plan
What needs to change and how you will know when things have improved. An opportunity to identify desired outcomes with the child/young person/ family.
Anna
I think the Action Plan is the most positive part of the CAF. In this CAF we were able to go around eight or ten professionals, and each professional was very clear about what action they would take, what they expected the outcome for this child and this family to be for this action, and a time scale for it.
Anisa
Its good to have that standardisation, I think it really helps the process. Its presented in a way that everyone understands the process and everyone understands clearly where you’re coming from and what your asking and what needs your trying to meet for the young person.
Andrew
When the CAF’s done its set out who should be doing what, what’s everyone’s action. So you know what people should be doing, mum knows what people should be doing, and everybody else knows what people should be doing, so things aren’t getting overlapped and things aren’t getting missed so its really good.
Monitor and Review
Monitoring and reviewing the action plan is crucial to the successful outcome of the Common Assessment. Is it delivering what the family wants?
Anna
It was really positive because in this case Mum did feel able to come to the review, whereas she hadn’t felt able to come to the initial review, which actually says something about the CAF process in itself that clearly in planning those interventions and undertaking them, Mum had started to feel that she was able to face a group of professionals so she was a very active part of the review and was able to say what had worked and what she’d valued as were the school and the lead practitioner and the person working most directly with this little boy, they were also able to say the difference it had made to him, but (also) the difference it had made to their confidence in being the person who actually had to work directly with the child.
Anisa
At the review meeting with the school, which took place at the end, the feedback was positive from mum and positive from the school. I remember the mum said, before it was really difficult to get her out of bed, and she didn’t want to go to school, sometimes she would go to school and then come back home, saying she was ill. But mum said she was actually happy to turn off the alarm and get up and go to school, which was a great success. Speaking with the school, it was very good because she was able to speak to the teacher appointed and he addressed some issues that she was having with some other students, so at least that way she was seeing something was being done about her situation. She got involved with the ACAB dance group and she was brilliant. She was a quick learner, she was really in top form and we did a performance at Alhambra Studio Theatre, and she was one of the main dancers. So all together those were the things that we agreed and they really made a difference for her.
Benefits
A successful Common Assessment can have a number of benefits for the child and their family, as well as for practitioners and their agencies.
Anna
I think the benefits for the child was there was a clearer focus on what his needs were, and there was a clearer outcome in terms of what each professional could offer that child.
Kath
It eased my load, in a sense, because sometimes you felt, where am I going to go? And because we’ve developed this approach its probably far easier for us. It’s certainly widened the number of initiatives that I know about which has made it obviously easier for my practice.
Craig
The client I was working with obviously did say ongoingly how she was seeing the benefits of the CAF and how being at the multi-agency meetings were beneficial as well because she got to speak to different people from different support networks together, and she could speak to all of us in one place, rather than having to go to four different places so she could see the benefits there of having everyone together to speak to in one place.
Anisa
It was beneficial to ACAB but also beneficial in terms of integrated working for two reasons because its standardised so having to go through the form, then if any other organisation got involved, or anyone else got involved in the CAF process, it would be exactly the same. And also because the family doesn’t have to relate their story again and again and again to different professionals as they meet them. If anybody has concerns about the difficulty involved – it gets easier as you go along and as you engage with it you realise the benefit, not only to yourself but to the organisation. The process was quite easy to follow to get everyone involved and the benefits in the end, the benefits were obvious so that was great.
Anna
It’s just more….cost effective in some ways in terms of everybody’s doing their bit that they can do, and nobody’s repeating bits and no gaps are left as well.
Anisa
We were all on board for the action plan and we could clearly review at the end what had happened and if there had been any difference, or any improvement, which there clearly was in this case.
