The Three Houses Model

Origin and purpose Created by Nicki Weld and Maggie Greening for Child, Youth and Family Services New Zealand For use in Child Protection assessments with children and young people The assessment method takes the three key questions of signs of safety assessment and planning

Signs of Safety What are we worried about? What is working well? What needs to happen?

Why don’t practitioners communicate with children? A primary reason practitioners fail to involve children is the fact that they are rarely provided with straight forward tools and practical guidance that equips them to involve children in a context where they fear that involving children can create more problems than it solves.

The Three Houses Model

Steps for using the three houses tool Explain the model to parent/carer and obtain consent Explain 3 Houses to the child using one piece of paper per house Obtain child’s permission to share information Use words and drawings to engage the child Start with the House of Good Things

For Younger Children Vania Da Paz developed a very similar tool that serves the same purpose as the Three Houses tool but with different graphic representation. Rather than Three Houses, Da Paz explores the same three questions using a drawing of a fairy with a magic wand (for girls) or a Wizard figure (for boys) as follows: