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 over- riding 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